Energy Affordability+, Not Energy Dominance
Two of the most significant dates in my life as a progressive activist and organizer are April 4, 1968 and August of 2003. The 1968 date is the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. His killing pushed me to finally do something about racial injustice and the Vietnam War rather than just reading and thinking about them.
August of 2023 was when there was a brutal heat wave in western Europe which led to 70,000 deaths, primarily of elders. This was my wakeup call as far as the climate crisis, leading to several months of book-reading to understand how bad things were, which led to a decision later that year to begin working on this issue. Ever since it has been at the top of my list as far as where I put my energies and time as an organizer: locally, statewide, regionally and nationally.
My primary focus on all those levels, since 2013, has been working and taking action to obstruct the buildout of fracked gas pipelines, gas compressor stations and Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) export terminals. That work quickly led me to learn about FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the most important federal agency that most US Americans have never heard of.
FERC is primarily the regulator of the US electrical grid. In 1977 when it was created by Congress, replacing the Federal Power Commission, it was also given the responsibility of regulating the methane gas industry, which in the 21st century has become primarily a fracked gas industry.
How have they “regulated” it? By giving the gas industry over 99% of the permits that they apply for to build new pipelines, compressor stations to push the gas along and import (in the past) and export (now) LNG terminals along US coastlines, primarily in Texas and Louisiana.
In 2020, a study done by the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, chaired by Representative Jamie Raskin, looked at FERC’s record between 2000 and 2020 and found that of the 1,027 applications to them by industry for permits, only six were denied. This is why the movement which has been fighting FERC and calling for it to be reformed, or replaced by a Federal Renewable Energy Commission, describes it as a rubber stamp agency.
For over 11 years a national organization, Beyond Extreme Energy, has been refusing to quit in its efforts to change this outrageous situation. For a while, from 2021 to 2023, under the leadership of then-FERC chairperson Richard Glick (no relation), actions were taken to make this happen. But when dirty-coal owner and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairperson Joe Manchin ratcheted up his support for coal, oil and gas in March of 2022 and, in collaboration with Republicans and a few other Democratic Senators, attacked Glick very openly, these efforts were seriously undercut.
Now comes Trump. On his first day as President, January 20, he issued two Executive Orders to “streamline the permitting process for [fossil fuel] infrastructure projects” and declare a “national energy emergency.” The purpose: to set back the shift to solar and wind and accelerate new coal, oil and methane gas projects. FERC is central to this destructive plan.
Last month, on October 7, FERC issued a “final rule” to severely reduce the ability of affected landowners, communities and environmental organizations to legally challenge methane gas infrastructure projects FERC approves. The reason given for doing so was to “encourage the orderly development of plentiful supplies of natural gas. . . particularly the development of data centers to advance artificial intelligence.”
But there’s more. Three weeks ago former Republican Senator Rick Santorum called for the DC Circuit Federal Court of Appeals to be removed as the place where court challenges to FERC permits are heard and decided. The headline blared, “DC Circuit Court is blocking America’s energy dominance.”
Why this extreme call to action?
Over the last five years this court has made a number of decisions upholding the need for FERC to take seriously the rights of landowners fighting eminent domain for corporate gain, environmental justice (ej) and other communities opposing proposed new polluting gas pipelines and infrastructure projects, and those groups defending the earth’s ecosystems challenged by global heating.
Over the last 11 years climate justice activists have demonstrated at a big majority of the monthly meetings of the five FERC commissioners who are the decision-makers. 200 or more people have been physically removed from the meetings for speaking out—there is no public comment period—and permanently banned from ever going to this meeting again. For the last year and a half, led by Beyond Extreme Energy, every single meeting has been met with action outside and some kind of inside action.
The latest was this past week when a small group of us dressed up in black judges robes to underline the importance of continuing court oversight of this now-Trump-dominated agency. We will do so again at their next meeting on December 18 and keep taking action to shine as bright a spotlight as we can on this increasingly more well known but still dangerous, extremely dangerous, threat to ej communities and the world’s ecosystems. It is one important front of the battle to prevent climate catastrophe and shift rapidly off fossil fuels to the wind, solar, battery storage and energy conservation that our children and grandchildren desperately need.
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