Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they)

@doctorvive.bsky.social

Founding Director, End Climate Silence

Author, *The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It*

genevieveguenther.com

@doctorvive.bsky.social

Republicans have been salivating for permitting reform for years. Don’t tell me Dems will never again have leverage or that the Republicans wouldn’t sign a bill that is truly an even playing field, not a boost to methane gas.

@moira.bsky.socialReposted by @doctorvive.bsky.social

The authoritarian right and the center-left (especially the abundance bro set) share a commitment to protecting capital above all else -- and in particular, the short-term accumulation of capital for elites.

@doctorvive.bsky.social

Ok I cannot stand this appeal to questionable authority. Daniel Palkin works at Arnold Ventures, the philanthropic group founded by John Arnold, a billionaire natural gas trader who began at Enron. They are explicitly “all of the above” folks—pro fossil fuels. I prefer this expert, thank you.👇

Jody Freeman • 2nd Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, writing in my ... 1d • Edited • + Follow ... Today's post is about the Senate's new permitting reform bill, which would shorten the process for approving major energy projects, like natural gas pipelines & power plants and, at least in theory, wind and solar. With the greatest respect, I hope members of Congress, supporters of this bill, and all of us who care about clean energy weigh its pros and cons carefully. Quite apart from the environmental safeguards it gives up (a separate issue), a close read suggests it's structurally designed to lock in and subsidize natural gas & other fossil projects over cleaner renewables for years to come, using the courts and taxpayer dollars. I hope I'm wrong, but I fear I'm not, and few people have read the whole bill closely enough to see it. & You won't see this effect if you read only the transmission provisions, which have a lot to recommend them: they empower the federal government to approve grid expansion over state inaction, help spread costs more fairly, and make the Al industry pay its way. • But look at the "project certainty" provisions, which make it harder for future presidents to block approved projects, together with the judicial review provisions, which direct courts to award huge damages to projects that complain of disparate treatment compared to prior projects. The concern is that Courts must measure "disparate" treatment against a baseline of approvals set during the current administration, which has blocked renewables and privileged fossil projects, so the baseline will tilt toward fossil. Judges would also gain unprecedented authority to dispense billions in public funds as damages for these same projects. Meanwhile, nothing in the bill compels the administration to lift its blockade of wind and solar.This skew isn't obvious. It's buried in legal language, as explained by Matthew Littleton (former DOJ) and Justin Pidot (former CEQ), who describe the effect in a series of detailed posts I urge you to read. 5 I fear this analysis is the most plausible reading of the provisions together and the one most likely to be urged on courts. I worry that these provisions haven't been fully considered or modeled by those touting the bill's clean energy benefits. For the record, I recognize that every bipartisan deal exacts concessions, some painful. I support federal permitting reform & have said so publicly. I also think project certainty is a good thing: future presidents shouldn't pull back a fully permitted project on a whim. But that presumes the project went through a process to ensure it's well designed and lawful. • Most importantly, what if the bill doesn't deliver its core promised benefit? It's one thing to clear regulatory obstacles and set up a competition to build out the grid because we think clean energy competes well in a fair fight. It's another to stack the deck for fossil projects so the competition never happens. ¿l hope there's still time to improve the bill.
@doctorvive.bsky.social

Harvard law Professor Jodi Friedman doesn’t think this bill was “entirely designed to benefit clean energy.” I don’t think it’s fair to argue this question on the basis of that assumption. Wether the trade offs are knowable and worth it are what’s at issue, no?

Photo, no descriptionPhoto, no description
@doctorvive.bsky.social

And we all do this! That what podcasts are for, in part. Anyway, Freeman AND the American Petroleum Institute BOTH identifying this as a fossil-fuel bill seems dispositive to me. /end

@doctorvive.bsky.social

Like, for example, I am not a lawyer. And I am not going to be able to become a lawyer and read this 400+-page bill before it either passes or dies. So I look to experts I trust, and experts I don't trust, to help me know what to think about it. 4/n

@doctorvive.bsky.social

And before anyone gets on my case for not "arguing on the merits of the bill," let me introduce a term called "distributed cognition," which signifies the way that humanity builds knowledge by allowing experts to help shape non-expert understanding. 3/n

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