Inflation Reduction Act: Climate Questions Persist
by Lee H. | Aug 22, 2022 | Climate Action Committee
“The world is burning.” Will government and technology lead us away from a climate crisis tipping point? Or is it up to ourselves, and the testimony of simplicity, to lead? Links to explore:
- The climate bill spends massively on tax credits to industry for expensive “carbon capture” and underground carbon dioxide storage sites, and CO2 pipelines that inject gas into oil fields to force out still more petroleum: https://theconversation.com/biden-signs-inflation-reduction-act-its-climate-promise-relies-heavily-on-carbon-capture-meaning-thousands-of-miles-of-pipeline-188591
- CO2 pipelines can rupture; disturbing results in one Mississippi town: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gassing-satartia-mississippi-co2-pipeline_n_60ddea9fe4b0ddef8b0ddc8f
- Among the climate bill’s gifts to big oil, a gas drilling go-ahead for the Cook Inlet, Alaska, where environmentalists thought they’d stopped it: https://www.hcn.org/articles/north-politics-alaska-environmentalists-disappointed-by-inflation-reduction-act-compromise
- Among the fracking and oil drilling leases the Climate Act mandates is the largest ever, across the Gulf of Mexico: https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-approves-largest-oil-gas-lease-sale-us-history-steamrolls-eco-review-inflation-bill
- Through the new law, Manchin got a go-ahead for the enormous Mountain Valley gas pipeline project in West Virginia: https://www.propublica.org/article/manchin-gas-pipeline-climate-change-bill
- Meanwhile, a new study shows newborns in Pennsylvania have about twice the chance of getting leukaemia if they’re near gas pipelines: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP11092
- Manchin secured pledges for a follow-up bill to help greenlight oil and gas infrastructure and make it harder to oppose this under the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/07/climate/manchin-schumer-pipeline-political-funding.html
- Lithium is a major extraction target to replace fossil fuels. Is desecrating a mountain any better when done for electric car batteries than for coal?: https://unicornriot.ninja/2022/indigenous-fear-desecration-of-burial-sites-at-thacker-pass-lithium-mine
- More on dubious environmental solutions in this piece from Lee Hall on ocean pollution and “green fuel“: https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/19/is-sea-greenwashing-a-word-it-is-now/
“Are we fiddlers? Or part of the fire brigade?”