Energy Bill Replaces Climate Bill for Now
After Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced last week that no climate legislation would be passing any time soon, yesterday the U.S. House and Senate announced energy packages to meet some needs in the meantime.
While the Sierra Club still strongly supports action on global warming, this legislation's focus on cleaning up and regulating the oil and gas industry through Minerals Management Service reform and the House Consolidated Land, Energy, and Aquatic Resources (CLEAR) Act are a good start on important clean energy issues.
These bills will strengthen industry safety standards and prevent future catastrophes like the BP disaster. We also support provisions to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund and use a small portion of drilling revenues to benefit communities, ecosystems, and economies, and aid in the Gulf recovery.
Buying Politicians Who Love Coal and Deny Climate Change
There are several stories out recently on the coal industry spending lots of money on political candidates who would be friendly to them once in office.
First comes the California Senate race, where news just surfaced that the coal industry gave money to Republican candidate Carly Fiorina. More specifically, much of the money came from Murray Energy, a coal company with a climate-change-denying CEO.
Second comes Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who’s now helping finance the Congressional campaign of a West Virginia friend who's friendly to coal and once served as a judge in a case against Massey.
And related to Massey and coal comes news of the coal industry forming a 527 to back some and attack other candidates in Kentucky.
Big Oil and Big Coal needs to stay out of politics and stop blocking action on global warming!