Outgoing fossil fuel booster Sen. Joe Manchin’s latest effort at passing “permitting reform,” characterized as a “Dirty Deal” because it would grease the wheels for expanded oil and gas drilling on public lands and mandate liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports as called for by Project 2025, has failed.
“A just transition demands we center people and place in all climate action,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. “Unfortunately, this bill was a Trojan horse for fossil fuels that would have wreaked havoc in the West, harming public lands and encouraging new fossil fuels development in communities already overburdened by a legacy of ill-considered U.S. energy policy.”
Fossil fuel interests, from the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, strongly supported the Energy Permitting Reform Act. Unfortunately, so did renewables interests, who had lobbied for the bill’s electricity transmission reforms.
“It is an imperative that we build out renewable energy and transmission infrastructure,” Schlenker-Goodrich emphasized. “But a senseless ‘build, baby, build’ mentality that provides ever more concessions to the very fossil fuel interests causing the climate crisis and prioritizes the interests of developers over people and place would undermine, not accelerate, a just transition.”
While EPRA has failed, Washington insiders have warned that Congress could mine the bill and other parts of anti-environmental legislation pending in the House Committee on Natural Resources, bootstrapping those provisions onto other, must-pass legislation.
“Vigilance is needed. We urge climate champions in Congress to stand tall for love of the land, waters, wildlife, and people of the West and fight any attempts to roll back bedrock environmental and community protections,” said Schlenker-Goodrich. “The path ahead is rough, but we must traverse it together with the long-sighted wisdom that a just transition must be rooted in people and place, not the demands of energy developers.”
Contacto:
Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, Centro de Derecho Ambiental Occidental, 575-751-0351, crecer1734547105alnre1734547105tsew@1734547105gskir1734547105mi1734547105
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