The Inflation Reduction Act: Climate Change Farce

Renewable Energy is Being Held Hostage by Big Oil

After two years of inaction on climate change caused by the recalcitrance of Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and a seditious Republican party, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 has been signed into law by Joe Biden.

The bill is a shadow of Build Back Better, which when originally proposed was a $2.2 trillion plan to expand education, fight poverty, lower healthcare costs and tackle climate change. The House passed a $1.75 trillion version of that plan which was defeated in the Senate in 2021. What’s left as in investment in the country is a $490 billion bill signed into law August 16. My primary interest is in the bill’s impact on climate change and domestic energy production.

Around the world we are witnessing ever more frequent and devastating events from climate change. India experienced temperatures as high as 122 degrees this summer and water has run dry at the tap forcing people to depend on government supplied water. In Mexico, water desperation is so high, water truck drivers are literally kidnapped in competition between communities. Europe has experienced record setting heat waves, drying up the Loire River in France, the Rhine River in Germany and the Po River in Italy. Spain has been burning. Here’s a video. The western U.S. is burning. France, reliant on nuclear energy has been forced to reduce plant output because there isn’t enough water to cool the reactors and 100 communities are without tap water. Britain is brown with horrific drought punctuated by previously unimaginable floods. Costs for critical shipping on the Rhine have increased five-fold, because cargo ships can only carry 25 percent capacity for fear of grounding. Seoul South Korea was hit by its heaviest rain in a century. The water crisis in the American West is forcing austerity measures to preserve drinking water and threatening electricity generation to seven states and Mexico as water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell drop perilously low; farm land will have to be fallowed, which will reduce produce at grocery stores across the nation and further drive inflation. Food scarcity is the future. Drought in China has dried up 66 rivers and caused a shutdown of industry in the Sichaun region, to preserve irrigation water for crops and drinking water for citizens. It’s burning, too (video). Trees are smoking, roads are buckling and bridges catch on fire spontaneously. Crop harvests around the world are failing or greatly reduced. Almost ironically, these droughts are punctuated by torrential rains that run off the parched, hard ground, causing land and mudslides that wipe out communities. That was Kentucky just a month ago, where 37 people died after receiving 14 to 16 inches of rain in just five days. Most of south Pakistan is submerged (video), with 33 million affected and over 1000 dead and counting.

These are not natural disasters. They are man-made disasters caused by climate change. If we could eliminate all CO2 emissions today, global warming would still continue for decades. Equally disturbing, the rate of warming and extreme weather we’re experiencing is fifteen years ahead of climate model predictions. The Greenland ice sheet, the second biggest in the world and the largest contributor to sea level rise, is melting far faster than anticipated, recently releasing enough to cover West Virginia in a foot of water. The Arctic is warming four times as fast as the rest of the planet, starting the release of massive, previously unknown methane deposits, unaccounted for in current climate models, and an even more potent, if shorter term, greenhouse gas. Scientists are now studying the increasing probability of a Blue Ocean Event (BOE), when the Arctic becomes ice free in as little as fifteen years.

The Biden administration, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Manchin are predictably crowing about the victory this bill represents. However, it’s loaded with concessions for the fossil fuel industry that encourage more warming. It contains language that will halt development of wind and solar projects on both federal land and in federal waters for ten years. That sounds completely crazy, but it’s true. These political sellouts come at a time, when as reported by CBS News Money Watch on July 29, Exxon Mobil booked an unprecedented $17.85 billion profit for the second quarter and Chevron made a record $11.62 billion...one day after the U.K.'s Shell shattered its own profit record.

If you want to look for the primary culprit for rising interest rates, look no further than big oil. The government’s solution; let the Federal Reserve hike interest rates on the average struggling citizen.

The fossil fuel industry has contributed handsomely to the war chests of both Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer who pounded out this bill. Manchin’s grubby ties to coal are well known. Manchin has received $331,000 from natural gas pipelines this election cycle as evidenced in this article that describes the desire to ram the Mountain Valley Pipeline through the Appalachian Mountains. NextEra Energy, a utility giant and stakeholder in the pipeline, is a top donor to both Manchin and Schumer. Schumer has taken $283,200 from NextEra in this election cycle.

The information for the dirty sellout I’m describing come from a number of sources, but the one most interesting to me is the ultra-conservative Forbes, since it’s hardly known for leftist, tree hugging journalism. Consider the following from their article published on August 3, by Allan Marks, regarding the Inflation Reduction Act:

“...some unfortunate surprises are buried deep in the 725-page bill now in front of Congress. These provisions would support expanded investment in domestic oil and gas exploration and production, especially on federal lands and in offshore federal waters. Those provisions run counter to the Biden-Harris Administration’s goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030.”

“Just over two pages long, Section 50265 jeopardizes the development of billions of dollars of planned offshore wind projects and renewable power projects on federal land. And it adds to the complexity and uncertainty of obtaining federal environmental permits even as both Democrats and Republicans proclaim the need to streamline the entitlement process.”

“Under this provision, for the next decade after the new law takes effect, no right of way could be granted for wind or solar energy development on federal lands unless a quarterly lease sale is held that results in issuance of an oil and gas lease.”

Edited for brevity, the article details how renewables are blocked unless new oil development is sought and approved on federal land:

• For the next decade after the new law takes effect, no right of can be granted for wind or solar energy development on federal lands unless a quarterly lease sale is held that results in issuance of an oil and gas lease.

• Every time a wind or solar right of way is to be issued by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a separate determination would be required about the status of oil and gas leases sold under BLM’s lease program.

• At least 20 million acres of federal lands must be offered in total for new oil and gas leases over ten years on a quarterly basis before each proposed wind or solar right of way is issued.

• Any interruption or suspension of oil and gas lease sales over the next decade for inability to obtain environmental approvals, court issued blocks, failure to bid, or future administration suspension of oil and gas lease programs, halts development of new solar and wind power projects on federal lands.

The same restrictions on renewables apply in federal waters:

• No lease for offshore wind development can be issued by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in federal waters any time in the next ten years unless, BOEM has within the prior twelve months also offered to sell a new oil and gas lease. No less than 60 million acres of federal waters on the outer continental shelf must have been offered for oil and gas leases in the prior year, or no new offshore wind leases can be issued. Over 600 million acres of federal waters must be offered for new oil and gas exploration and production. Failure to maintain the required offshore oil and gas leases will block all subsequent offshore wind leases.

It’s no wonder the fossil fuel industry reacted favorably to this bill. Renewable energy projects are effectively halted for ten years, unless oil interests choose to bid for leases, gain legal approval and actually drill on federal lands, all questionable propositions.

Allan Marks also comments:
“To put these numbers in perspective, the public lands required to be opened to new oil and gas drilling leases would total 20 million acres over a decade, an area bigger that [sic] the land area of the State of Maine. The new ocean areas to be opened to offshore drilling would equal 60 million acres (an area nearly as large as the State of Wyoming), each year for ten years.”

“Additionally, companies interested in obtaining and using new permits is highly questionable. Currently, the oil and gas industry holds more than 9,600 approved permits, available to drill. If they don’t purchase new permits, renewable projects are blocked and recent BOEM lease sales have drawn little interest. Assuming interest in 20 million acres of land 60 million acres offshore a year is questionable at best. No interest, no wind or solar projects. This is crazy, an obvious structure to give the oil industry complete control.”

“Now, for the first time, if these fossil fuel provisions remain in the bill, the development of renewables like solar power and onshore and offshore wind energy is being held hostage to the granting of millions of acres of new oil and gas leases on federal land and the continental shelf for at least the next decade.”

Why are most environmental groups supporting this bill?

So far environmentalists generally support the bill, based on its claimed net climate benefits and economic stimulus for innovative technologies and renewables. The thought is that reductions in carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases outweigh the impact of the fossil fuel provisions. It’s claimed the IRA would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 42%. However, that model relies on questionable assumptions requiring a massive increase in clean energy (for which I’ve already described the hurdles for the next ten years), and the deployment of so-called carbon capture and storage (CCS).

This unproven technology would require laying thousands of miles of potentially leaky pipe (already shown to fail in the coal industry), land easements and eminent domain through private property such as farms, and felling trees in wilderness areas, to transfer CO2 to theoretically secure, underground storage to be sequestered forever. Proponents of CCS predictably are fossil fuel corporations, that have been lying about CO2, global warming and spilling oil for decades. Government funded CCS test sites have been failures. In fact, between 2005 and 2012, the Department of Energy (DOE) spent $6.9 billion attempting to demonstrate the feasibility of CCS, unsuccessfully. FutureGen is one such instructive example, which cost $1.65 billion. Building CCS infrastructure would require massive fossil fuel burning. Putting CO2 in the ground would require huge, new power plants to capture and pump the carbon hundreds of miles to geological formations. Furthermore, this insanity would steal funds from more effective strategies, that just don’t happen to fatten the bottom line of the fossil fuel industry.

Humanity is in an unprecedented crisis. When we were hunter-gatherers we had no impact on the earth. When we discovered agriculture we organized into settled communities. There were more calories available, so our population grew. The advent of agri-societies brought stability, longer life spans, specialized trades and the arts. It also brought the need for political systems and standing armies. No longer was our world a cooperative; it was a hierarchal structure that paved the way for corruption and institutional violence. Our population grew from approximately 10,000 to 30,000 to around one billion by 1800. By 1900 that number was 1.65 billion, an amazing explosion of growth, but still sustainable.

It was with the industrial revolution that sustainability began to fall apart. Powered by fossil fuel which threatens our existence now and has wiped millions of species off the planet, our population grew to 3.7 billion by 1970. Just 50 years later, that figure has doubled to 7.7 billion. This is simply not sustainable in a closed system of finite resources. Technology is not going to save us.

There is a word that has been going around in environmental circles for a while now that isn’t popular with rich industrialists and may not be known as well to much of the public. That word is “degrowth.” It’s self explanatory, we need to scale down, that’s the only real solution we have. Yes, renewables and conservation need to happen, but fossil fuel absolutely has to be eliminated. Degrowth is coming, because the planet is breaking and with it every system we depend on is breaking, too. We can either fight to control that degrowth, or allow it to do what it wants with us.

Contact Chuck Schumer, Joe Manchin and President Biden today to express your displeasure (thoughtfully) over this bill that in current form guarantees untold suffering now and for generations to come.

Chuck Schumer: https://www.schumer.senate.gov/contact/email-chuck

Joe Manchin: https://www.manchin.senate.gov/contact-joe/email-joe

The White House: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/