Critics Warn GOP Climate Plan ‘Farce’ Is Recipe for Planetary Disaster

Climate campaigners and progressive U.S. lawmakers reacted with disdain and derision Thursday to news that House Republicans would put forth a purported climate strategy that calls for increased fossil fuel production and sets no targets for reducing planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.

“This stunt is a not-even-thinly veiled attempt to bullshit the press and the public. It’s time to stop falling for it.”
Politico reports the “energy, climate, and conservation task force” created last year by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will release a six-point strategy that recommends increasing all types of energy production with the goal of reducing record-high fuel and other energy costs, and with an eye on the 2022 midterm elections.

The plan—which would also boost gas exports while easing the permitting process for fossil fuel infrastructure—contains six elements: “Unlock America’s Resources,” “Beat China and Russia,” “Let America Build,” “Build Resilient Communities,” “American Innovation,” and “Conservation with a Purpose.”

While the U.S. Chamber of Commerce welcomed the proposal, Jamal Raad, executive director at the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action, blasted it as “little more than a how-to guide for accelerating the climate crisis.”

Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that “this climate plan sounds like it was concocted by a comic book supervillain.”

“Republicans have managed to devise a scheme that would make climate change even more destructive,” Hartl added. “It’s an oil industry wish list that would throw future generations under the bus to make a buck.”

The advocacy group Food & Water Action called the plan a “climate farce” and a “pro-fossil fuels road map to climate chaos.”

“Over a dozen years ago, no one would have mistaken ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ for serious climate policy,” the group’s managing director of policy Mitch Jones said in a statement referring to 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s infamous campaign slogan.

“The fact that Republicans have not changed course in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence and cascading climate-fueled disasters speaks volumes,” Jones continued. “What’s needed now are serious plans that meet the monumental scale of the crisis, and also deliver the economic benefits and job opportunities that are so desperately needed.”

“We need to elect climate champions this year who will prioritize shifting off of dirty fossil fuels that poison communities and enrich corporate polluters,” he added.

Those corporate polluters contribute tremendous amounts of campaign cash to congressional lawmakers and candidates. The House Oversight Committee noted last October that just four fossil fuel giants—BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell—plus the industry group American Petroleum Institute spent a combined $452.6 million lobbying the federal government since 2011.

According to the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, McCarthy has received nearly $2.1 in career oil and gas industry contributions. GOP task force chair Rep. Garret Graves—whose Louisiana district is one of the most fossil fuel infrastructure-intense in the nation and is experiencing climate-driven sea level rise and increased illness—has taken nearly $700,000 in Big Oil donations.

“We need to elect climate champions this year who will prioritize shifting off of dirty fossil fuels that poison communities and enrich corporate polluters.”
With $414,824 in campaign contributions during the 2022 election cycle alone, McCarthy is the House’s leading beneficiary of oil and gas contributions, according to data from the watchdog group OpenSecrets.

In return, the government lavishes the fossil fuel industry with around $20 billion in annual subsidies, which Joe Biden promised to end while campaigning for president.

However, doing so would require congressional approval, and even members of his own party—notably Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Congress’ number one recipient of fossil fuel contributions during the 2022 election cycle and the seven-figure beneficiary of a family coal business—are fighting to protect subsidies.

“Lining the pockets of fossil fuel companies is not a long-term fix; it puts American families’ health and the future of the planet at risk,” tweeted Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). “The cost of climate-fueled extreme weather events in the most recent year for which we have data was $100 billion.”

The Ukraine War: a Colloquy

Russia’s invasion (illegal) of Ukraine has generated debate regarding how to end the war. It comes as no surprise that arguably the United States’ leading ant-war activist, Professor Noam Chomsky, has given extensive comment on this conflict. Committed already as a boy to opposing state aggression, now at age 93, Noam Chomsky likely is the world’s oldest living person active in anti-war struggles who is on record in print (school newspaper) at the time in opposing the 1938 Munich Agreement, which has become synonymous with appeasement of states engaging in military adventures.

In May of this year, four economists from Ukraine (Bohdan Kukharskyy, Anastassia Fedyk, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, and Ilona Sologoub) working in the United States took umbrage with Chomsky’s comments on the war, or at least what they assumed were the ideas (and “patterns”) he expressed. They held some of his statements to be either inaccurate, or even when true, irrelevant to the conflict and/or giving succor to Russia’s war effort. The Ukrainian economists invited Dr. Chomsky to respond. What follows at bottom are Noam’s responses to their assertions, their rejoinders to his answers, and his following comments.

In the ensuing exchange Professor Chomsky demonstrates several of the positions he was purported to hold by the economists, simply were never articulated by him. Provided with two chances to substantiate remarks attributed to Chomsky, the four economists often could not. Moreover, some points which the four economists asserted were either false or contested, Dr. Chomsky demonstrated were true, with any “contestation” of them chiefly evasions of inconvenient facts. Parts of their debate comes down to points of language and meaning, which the four economists at one point concede that Dr. Chomsky is more precise in his use of.

This then leaves another point: whether referencing contextual, or “background,” information, is relevant to discussion of the war? This point is more complicated, as Russia (or most any other state engaged in aggression) clearly will use such information, or anything else they can, in the service of propaganda. Yet, censorship is also dangerous as it removes capacities to critically engage arguments states use to justify aggression. In short, we can debate the merits of context and to what degree, if any, it plays in understanding a conflict. But, taking the next step to either dismiss out of hand as false, statements that are demonstrably true, or asserting that one is not allowed to provide context out of concern that it somehow supports Putin, goes too far. In short, what defines totalitarianism is the idea that some truths are inadmissible, given threats they pose to some larger cause. A cautionary note must be tendered against those, well intentioned or not, that would take us down this road. Our economists do not go this far in their exchange, fortunately, but others, as we know, will cross that line, as has been done before.

What seems at core in this debate is whether Ukraine is best positioned to continue fighting in order to achieve military victory, or at least improve their negotiating position, against Russia? Or, is this conflict in part a proxy war (with ghastly human costs for Ukrainians) in which the US seeks to fight Russia “to the last Ukrainian”? The last quote characterizing this war is from retired US Diplomat Chas Freeman (former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs), but has been wrongly attributed to Dr. Chomsky. Of course, the messy reality is that there are elements of both positions in play. Thus, the differences in perspectives on the war and the resulting debate.

But, here is the text of the exchange between Noam Chomsky and our four economists. Complaints surely will be registered regarding “readability” of the file. There is a somewhat complicated organizational scheme of the text done by the authors themselves with different colors, italics, bold font etc., with a “key” at the outset of the document indicating author attribution of each comment done by them (Chomsky and Economists). Re-organizing and re-formatting for readability would have created extra rounds of approval from the authors. Therefore, it is submitted here as they themselves created it.

Readers can assess for themselves the veracity of claims and quality of arguments made by Bohdan Kukharskyy, Anastassia Fedyk, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, and Ilona Sologoub against Chomsky on both points of objective fact and on whether points of context (“background) are appropriate in discussion of this war. My own view is that all of them wish this war to end as quickly as possible. However, I also fear that a quick stop to this aggression is not a goal shared by all.

The exchange of rebuttals is here.

Biden, who ran on competency and experience, is struggling to manage multiple crises

President Biden’s virtual meeting Wednesday with industry executives in the South Court Auditorium, a soundstage in the hulking office building adjacent to the White House, was held to highlight the administration’s response to the ongoing infant formula shortage.
But it backfired. The scripted event ended up highlighting just how slow the White House was to recognize the problem and underscoring persistent questions about how such a veteran administration has mismanaged major crises, not to mention the president’s public appearances.

Whether it is the last-minute scramble to avoid a diplomatically embarrassing boycott at next week’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles or its faulty projections about inflation and struggles to control rising costs, the administration’s rocky responses to various challenges have given rise to new doubts about Biden’s promise to restore competency and stability to government.

The White House has been working to rebuild its credibility for nearly a year, ever since the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan shattered the public’s confidence in Biden. But a relentless pandemic, the influx of migrants at the southern border and the president’s stalled legislative agenda have served to further calcify the public’s negative perceptions.

The trouble on Wednesday started when Biden said he didn’t “think anyone anticipated the impact of the shutdown of one facility.” He was then forced to concede that the company executives had just said they realized the potential for supply issues in February when Abbott shuttered its Michigan plant.

“They did, but I didn’t,” Biden said, betraying his frustration that the crisis, which the Food and Drug Administration reacted to immediately, wasn’t escalated to him until April — a glaring communication breakdown.

The administration’s effort to address the shortage, “Operation Fly Formula,” involves transporting millions of bottles of formula from other countries to the U.S., although the shipments won’t be on store shelves for another few weeks.

“You can’t control the hand you’re dealt, and this is one of the worst hands any president has ever been dealt,” said Chris Whipple, the author of a book on White House chiefs of staff and another on the Biden administration to be published later this year. The formula shortage, he continued, “is really a political problem because he took a real hit with the Afghanistan withdrawal, and this is not helping.

“Only the toughest decisions get to the Oval Office, and they don’t always get there that quickly,” Whipple said. “I don’t blame Biden for not knowing sooner. Somebody should have told him sooner. But he owns it, because it’s happening on his watch.”

The president’s approval rating still hasn’t recovered from the rough exit from Afghanistan. And nearly 10 months later, with Democrats’ slim congressional majorities in jeopardy this November, questions of competency persist as the White House is working strenuously to address domestic concerns about inflation and public health while managing a plethora of foreign policy complications, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Voters expected the world would calm down when Biden became president, that the chaos would be replaced with competence. If you look at the last year and a half, the world is still upside down,” said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster in Washington. “Trump’s chaos was personal chaos. This is mostly world chaos. But [Biden’s] ratings are low, and there’s not a sense that this is an administration in command. They’re a reactive administration instead of a proactive administration.”

With Russia’s war in Ukraine, last month’s Asia trip and the upcoming Group of 7 and NATO summits this month eating up much of the administration’s national security bandwidth, the administration has struggled to finalize its agenda and even the invite list for next week’s Summit of the Americas, a gathering of leaders from around the hemisphere the U.S. will host beginning Monday in Los Angeles. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, a top U.S. trading partner and one of Washington’s biggest allies on curbing migration, has yet to say whether he will attend.

Asked Wednesday about the “eleventh hour” nature of plans for the summit, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre laughed off the question, suggesting that last-minute decision-making was standard procedure in the West Wing — even amid a briefing dominated by tough questions about the administration’s response to the infant formula shortage.

“If you’ve been following this administration for the past year and a half, one week is not the eleventh hour when it comes to … how things move,” she said. “That is a lifetime away for us.”

The administration in recent weeks has begun an effort to demonstrate a clear focus on what is likely the top issue for voters ahead of November’s midterm elections: months of runaway inflation and the exorbitant cost of gasoline and other consumer goods.

But the administration’s messaging blitz has already been complicated by the fact that not everyone is on the same page. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen offered a mea culpa Tuesday during a CNN interview, acknowledging that she had failed to anticipate how long inflation would affect consumers.

“I think I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take,” Yellen said when asked about her 2021 comments — reflective of the administration’s overarching view — that inflation posed only a “small risk.”

Just hours earlier, Brian Deese, the president’s top economic advisor, refused to make a similar concession. Speaking to reporters at the White House, he ducked a question about whether he had been wrong to have predicted that inflation would be “transitory.” Instead, he parried, pointing out that inflation, by the persistent supply chain issues arising from the coronavirus pandemic, was being exacerbated by Russia’s war in Ukraine, which roiled global energy markets.

The White House struggle over inflation messaging dates to last fall and winter, a consequential period that reshaped the public mood about the direction of the country and Biden’s performance as president. Doug Sosnik, former longtime senior advisor to President Clinton, said decisions made during that period may have set the stage for a Democratic drubbing at the polls in November.

“There were a confluence of events that hit at the same time and changed the zeitgeist of how it’s going, and it’s settled in for half a year now,” Sosnik said.

During those six months, Biden declared victory over the COVID-19 pandemic in July, only for the globe to be clobbered by waves of new virus variants as the country endured shortages of essential at-home test kits. Thirteen U.S. troops and scores of Afghans were killed during August’s hasty and messy withdrawal from Kabul. His domestic agenda and signature piece of legislation — a sweeping social spending plan — died in December.

Topping off matters, as Americans got ready for the holidays, they were battered by a sting of pandemic-fueled supply chain bottlenecks and inventory shortages that sent the inflation rate soaring to over 6% by October and to a 40-year high, reaching 8% in April.

“From a policy standpoint and certainly from a messaging standpoint, the White House was behind the curve on dealing with inflation and talking about inflation,” Sosnik said. “And that was really a point when people began to take a turn of a more negative view.”

As the White House begins a month of ramped-up messaging aimed at emphasizing the overall strength of the economy and framing inflation as a “global problem,” voters’ minds may already be made up.

In the last four midterm elections, voters had decided by June how they were going to vote in November, Sosnik said. President Trump’s 39% percent job approval in February 2018, for example, stayed steady through November. The same went for President Obama in his two midterm campaigns.

A senior White House official acknowledged Thursday that the Biden administration’s ability to mitigate inflation in a globalized economy is limited, while insisting that the administration isn’t frustrated, even as it braces for a difficult election cycle.

“I wouldn’t say it’s frustration,” the official said. “Being president is hard, and you have to deal with a lot of difficult stuff.”

Ah yes CNN’s “progressive commentary”.. pic.twitter.com/KXKqUqCFdP

— David Doel (@daviddoel) June 2, 2022

Hassan’s chief of staff (and fundraising consultant) argued privately that pushing back against Big Tech is bad politics. The opposite appears to be the case and gets attacked by her GOP opponent, becoming it's own political liability, story by @ryangrimhttps://t.co/wEnxpoHRRn

— Halalflow (@halalflow) June 3, 2022

If this is true – and nobody on Capitol Hill is even talking about it – it's just completely sad. A sign of a failed state whose government won't even discuss the things that we know have reduced mass shootings in the past. pic.twitter.com/JO7xpwNlsz

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) June 3, 2022

Here’s the text. These provisions were reportedly slipped in just prior to its passage. https://t.co/iERv0n9fLv

— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) June 2, 2022

Rick Steves Dedicates $100K to Midterm Cannabis Legalization Efforts

Rick Steves, travel writer, television host, and cannabis activist, has pledged to spend up to $100,000 to support cannabis legalization efforts around the country in the upcoming mid-term elections, the Regina Leader-Post reports. Steves, who serves as board chair of NORML, announced in a fundraising email he will match donations up to $100,000; he also said he is devoting eight days of campaigning to the legalization cause this election season.

“I’ve spent the last five election seasons campaigning around the country for legalization ballot initiatives[ …] So far, we’ve won in nearly every state we’ve contested. The majority of the American public is with us. We just need to smartly make our point to win at the ballot box. And that takes hard work and money.”

–

Steves, in the email, via the Leader-Post

Steves, who has campaigned for cannabis legalization in Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Maine, and New Jersey, will give away a copy of his book “On the Hippy Trail,” which documents his travels from Istanbul to Kathmandu in 1978 and includes an account of his first time consuming cannabis in Afghanistan, for those who donate over $100.

In the email, Steves reminds readers anti-cannabis groups are “fundraising and spending money in an effort to defeat pro-marijuana ballot initiatives” this fall. He says, “regressive and reactionary forces are working to roll back civil liberties across our country. And I can’t just stand by.”

Maryland, Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Oklahoma all have adult-use questions on the November ballot, the report says.