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WASHINGTON – Earth Day is usually an opportunity for politicians to praise their natural wonders and their efforts to preserve them. For Bernard L. McNamee, who today becomes one of the country's leading energy regulators, it was an opportunity to praise oil and coal.
"On this Earth Day, let us accept the crucial role that fossil fuels play in energy needs", read the title of his editorial published in The Hill . McNamee argued that fossil fuels "have dramatically improved the human condition" while suggesting that the "catastrophic prophecies" were exaggerated, as well as the projections on the growth of renewable energies.
A veteran conservative activist, McNamee, was a senior deputy. at the Ministry of Energy when, in October, President Trump appointed him to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the country's leading arbiter in terms of transportation and sales of energy. ;energy. For example, it is the responsibility of FERC to approve or reject projects such as the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. The agency of five commissioners – usually called "ferk" – also monitors the energy markets, thus exerting an indirect influence on the tariffs that consumers pay.
McNamee 's candidacy is hotly contested by critics who consider it a new source of energy. – partner of the gas industry in the Trump administration.
But the appointment was advanced Wednesday after the Senate voted shortly to end the debate and vote in the House. McNamee was confirmed Thursday by all members of the House of Representatives, which a Democratic assistant had predicted in advance as being "the narrowest of margins". In both cases, the margin was 50 to 49.
This margin was reduced Wednesday as a result of Joe Manchin, DW.V .., indicated that he would vote against McNamee. Manchin sometimes caucuses with Republicans, especially when the economic prospects of his state – 12% of the nation's coal comes from West Virginia – are at stake. Manchin said that he had changed his mind after watching a video of an event in which McNamee praised coal in terms similar to those in his Hill editorial. "Fossil fuels are not dirty objects, we have to move away from them," says McNamee in the recording, which has been widely circulated by his critics.
McNamee's remarks were made at a legislators' meeting organized by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a group conservative think tank where McNamee dedicated several months early 2018 to an energy initiative called Life, Powered. The institute, which is opposed to regulation, is heavily funded by corporate concerns . He also received money from billionaire libertarian activists Charles and David Koch.
Before and after his brief stint at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, McNamee was working at the Department of Energy, headed by former Texas Governor Rick Perry. McNamee, currently director of the department's policy bureau, was reportedly in charge of the Ministry of Energy's rescue project for coal-fired power plants and nuclear power plants. This plan was eventually rejected by the FERC
Sam Gomberg, senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Yahoo News that McNamee was a "flagrant ideologue" who could not be trusted. Gomberg is concerned that when the Energy Department returns to FERC with another version of the nuclear plant and coal rescue plan, as it is expected to do in the coming months, McNamee will likely use its vote and his influence, to convince the commissioners to vote in favor of the plan.
Ari Peskoe, director of the Harvard Law School's Electricity Law Initiative, told Yahoo News that McNamee should be "excluded" from dealing with issues related to this work with the department. d & # 39; energy. McNamee has made no indication that he would make such a challenge.
He did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo News.
If McNamee joins the FERC, he will have an ideological ally among the current chairman of the committee, Neil Chatterjee. Former advisor to Senate Majority Mitch McConnell, Chatterjee was critical of the Clean Power Plan proposed by President Barack Obama but never put into effect.
The Trump administration posts dealing with energy and the environment is almost entirely dominated in their top ranks by fossil fuel proponents who have denied scientific conclusions about climate change caused by the man. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew P. Wheeler is a former coal lobbyist, while Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has offered energy prospectors millions of acres of public land.
Despite this, it is unclear to what extent McNamee or one of his like-minded Trump administration counterparts can do to improve the prospects for fossil fuels, coal in particular. According to an annual report on coal of the US Energy Information Administration, coal consumption fell by 1.9% in 2017, even as coal production increased by 6.4%. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the country today has 52,000 coal miners, a decline of 25,000 jobs over the last decade.
Gomberg, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, notes that any favoritism McNamee is showing toward fossil fuels is likely to harm the booming wind industry in the Midwestern states, such as Kansas and l & # 39; Iowa. As his colleague Rob Cowin has pointed out wind power generates more than a third of electricity in the two Midwestern states, in addition to creating thousands of dollars. jobs.
Nevertheless, on Thursday, the four senators of Iowa and Kansas voted in favor of McNamee.
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