I will occasionally send these missives from my good friend Ned who is an expert in all things having to do with energy production and fossil fuels. Read it and weep.
This is the most recent of my occasional emails about the rapid restructuring of US fossils policy in the US.
Today the House is expected to vote to rescind the Interior Department's recent rule to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas exploration, production, processing, and transportation on public lands. Rescinding this rule (requiring the use of available technology to sharply cut the climate threat from fugitive emissions, and protecting American taxpayers' interest in efficient production and full royalty payments for production on public lands) is a disgrace. Here's a link to a summary of the issue by an editor of the West's environmental paper, High Country News: http://www.hcn.org/articles/methane-rules-in-danger
This comes the day after the successful rescission of the previous Administration's mountaintop mining rule limiting the disposal of mine waste in mountain streams and valleys. (Have you seen what has been happening in West Virginia?) See the story here: http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/overnights/317663-overnight-energy-congress-does-away-with-obama-coal
And this morning, in a "pre-dawn vote," the Senate voted on party lines to send President Trump a measure throwing out a recent Security and Exchange Commission anti-corruption rule requiring transparency about oil companies' payments to foreign governments - contrary to the international Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (https://eiti.org/) that the Bush Administration started with the support of international human rights organizations and (supposedly) oil giants including ExxonMobil. See: http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/317700-senate-votes-to-repeal-transparency-rule-for-oil-companies
2 comments:
Those "jobs" removing these regulations will supposedly create or bring back, will matter little if the workers are dying from cancer or any number of things removing these regulations create. Are people really so ignorant that they don't realize that they can't live without water, the very water that these republicans find no problem allowing to be polluted in the name of profit? Or how about the air they intend to pollute with no regard for anything but profit? The Republican supreme court judges have put us in this mess with Citizens United. Money was already a problem in politics, but now it's enabled ONLY the rich to have a say in how this country is run. So Alito "true" "true", it has done exactly what President Obama said it would!
Also, I'm sick and tired of hearing the people whining that they have been left behind or forgotten. Boo boo. It's called progress. I lived in Raton, but had enough sense to see that there would be no future or advantages for me or my children. I didn't sit around and whine about the racetrack and the mine closing, I moved to Albuquerque, by myself with 2 girls and $400.00 to my name. I got here, got a job and made a life for us. I saw the writing on the wall and did something, as many of us did. Oh and I didn't have a college degree, I just graduated from public school, the ones that all these profiteers are trying to destroy. If they would quit trying to make money by selling our kids off to the highest bidder, then teachers could once again teach things needed to succeed in life, like math, science, and critical thinking. Parents should come out against this constant testing and see it for what it is...teaching kids to put the square peg in the square hole (learning to be on the assembly line) and never questioning why (not asking about working conditions or low wages). Parents or Grandparents if need be, need to remember the wonderful things about teachers and public schools and take the schools back from the Martinez and Skanders of this country. Take that money spent on those useless tests and spend it on what matters...the children!
Beautiful comment
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