The Climate Ramifications of the Debt Ceiling Bill

[MUSIC ]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to our climate story of the week. Today, we will look into the climate ramifications of the Debt Ceiling Agreement that President Biden signed into law. The debt limit proposals from Republicans, remember, sought to undo many of the climate and energy provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act measures the White House touted for creating jobs and putting US climate goals within reach.

Remember, the Inflation Reduction Act was the largest climate investment and the biggest climate bill in US history. We'll talk about what Biden gave up and what remains of those climate provisions. We'll also talk about some of the other major concessions in the debt limit bill, especially the $6.6 billion gas pipeline that Senator Joe Manchin helped get into the compromise.

Joining me now is Mark Hertsgaard, Executive Director of the Global Media Collaboration covering Climate Now and environment correspondent for The Nation. Mark, it was good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Mark Hertsgaard: Thanks, Brian. It's good to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Big picture as you see it, what did the Republicans get from the White House here regarding climate?

Mark Hertsgaard: I think that's been actually a very underplayed aspect of this story, Brian, so I'm glad you guys are focusing on it today. What the Republicans got was a lot less than they hoped for initially. Essentially, their opening bid in this standoff with the White House was essentially to undo all of the climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, which, as you mentioned, was the biggest climate legislation in history of the United States and is already producing a lot of investment in jobs around the country.

Ironically, and we can get back to this, ironically, a lot of those investments in new jobs are in red states. However, in the end, the White House held firm on that, and most of those Inflation Reduction Act provisions remain in place.

However, there were some big extractions on the part of the Republicans. They did get the inclusion of the Mountain Valley pipeline. That's a big gas pipeline that goes from West Virginia into Virginia. As you mentioned, that was a big priority of the Democratic Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin. There were also important rollbacks of the National Environmental Protection Act, and other aspects of this. Definitely, a loss for the climate, overall, in that debt relief bill, but not as big of a loss as Republicans were initially gunning for.

Brian Lehrer: The Inflation Reduction Act remains largely in place?

Mark Hertsgaard: The climate provisions of it, yes, remain largely in place. As I say, those are already really leading to enormous numbers of jobs and investments oftentimes in red states. Georgia is one of the leading areas, for example. The Canary Media recently ran an interesting story about Manchin and other politicians in West Virginia applauding how there was going to be moves towards solar and wind and new projects there.

The Secretary of Energy, Granholm, was there with Manchin promoting this stuff. It's really interesting. There's a lot of traditional district politicking in all of this stuff too, but not the way you would've expected it.

Brian Lehrer: The debt ceiling agreement speeds up the Mountain Valley Pipeline, that $6.6 billion gas pipeline that runs approximately 300 miles from Northwestern West Virginia through to Southern Virginia, championed by Joe Manchin. I think this is the biggest negative in climate terms that people are talking about from this compromise. How does this pipeline, and how much does this pipeline undermine broader climate goals as you see it?

Mark Hertsgaard: It's not just the climate goals. It's also what that pipeline is going to do to the waterways in Virginia. If the pipeline is completed as planned and it ends up producing a lot of gas over the years, that will have a major impact. That will be a lot of gas that will eventually end up in the atmosphere.

There's two other aspects of this, Brian, that are really important, I think. One is that the way that this deal essentially violates the separation of powers within the federal government because the deal explicitly directs the judicial process here. It moves any kind of a challenge to this pipeline from one jurisdiction of courts to another in order to provide room for this thing to go through.

This is why the senator from the Democratic Senator from Oregon, Jeff Merkley, one of the reasons that he actually voted against the debt deal. This is what he said, "For Congress, by law, to move a court case from one jurisdiction to another in order to provide a special favor to a powerful corporation is fundamentally corrupt. This is a line we should never cross."

What he's referring to there is this pipeline that will be built and has been challenged in court so many times. The critics of this in Virginia and West Virginia point out that the project has already racked up 500 violations against the law. You've got obviously a very troubled project.

Whatever you think about the arguments in favor of it, supposedly for energy security, or the arguments against it, 500 violations, that's a lot of violations. For a congressional action to then say we are going to essentially immunize that corporation from any legal challenge, we're going to pick the court that is going to hear any future challenges against that, that seems to me to be really an outrageous attack on the rule of law, really.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your calls on what the debt limit negotiation means for White House climate policy and US climate goals by and large. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 for Mark Hertsgaard, environment correspondent for The Nation Magazine and executive director of the Global Media Collaboration covering Climate Now which WNYC is a part of. 212-433-WNYC to take your calls or texts at 212-433-9692.

Is there a reasonableness to a compromise like that in a certain respect? I think the government is- outside of the politics of climate denial by so many Republicans and things like that, they're looking for a balance of ways to get there that don't put too much of a burden on the consumer where the fossil fuels that people are using today don't disappear all at once causing a price shock when renewables aren't ready at the same scale quite yet.

Biden might say, well, we're still going to need fossil fuels for a while, at least, and so making that available to Americans who need energy is a reasonable compromise, even as we take climate change seriously.

Mark Hertsgaard: Yes, you could argue that. That's not actually what the White House was saying. They were pretty adamant all along that this was the wrong approach. They accepted these provisions because they couldn't get the bill passed otherwise. Let's go back and remember the history of the Inflation Reduction Act. That was weakened dramatically from the initial vision that Biden put forward, which was essentially a version of the Green New Deal. It was weakened to take out any kind of restrictions on oil and gas and coal.

Why was that? That was, again, because of Joe Manchin and the fact that Democrats have only 50 votes in the United States Senate, and the White House could not afford to lose even one of those votes, i.e. Joe Manchin's vote if they did anything tougher in the way of rolling back oil and gas and coal.

As a result, the Inflation Reduction Act's whole approach is all carrot and no stick, by which I mean, the carrots are lots of incentives, lots of tax write-offs, and federal support for R&D into clean energy, I'm sorry, solar and wind and all of the other things we've talked about, but no sticks, no restrictions on further development of oil, gas, and coal.

That's because of the political dynamic. I'm sure that the White House would've preferred to not give up any of this. I shouldn't say I'm sure, but I'm confident that the White House also would not have chosen to go ahead with the Willow Project in Alaska if they didn't think they didn't have another choice. What this really illustrates this whole fight is that the United States Congress is still basically a place where the fossil fuel interests have a de facto veto over things that are very injurious to what the industry sees that's its interest.

Brian Lehrer: That's interesting that you put the Willow Project in Alaska in those terms, in the terms of Biden not having a choice, because we've certainly been hearing a lot of criticism of Biden for letting that go forward like, "What? You're allowing that to go forward when you talk so positively about your commitment to climate change." I wonder if you could take a minute and describe to our listeners not familiar what the Willow Project is, and elaborate a little more on why you think Biden got forced into it rather than Biden thought this was a good idea.

Mark Hertsgaard: Yes, I doubt strongly he thinks it's a good idea, but the Willow Project, so that's a big oil extraction project up in Alaska and problematic on at least two grounds from a climate and environmental perspective. One is that it would be very injurious to the ecosystems there, to the wildlife, and to the indigenous peoples who live up there to have all that construction going on in oil production in and out of the place. Then of course, from a global perspective, all of the emissions, the greenhouse gas emissions that would result from burning that oil and gas over time would of course also be very, very negative.

It's hard to know exactly, the numbers on this are a little squishy because its projections out into the future, but it would certainly undo a big portion of what is being achieved on the Inflation Reduction Act.

Why would Biden do that? I think that part of it, and what my own reporting indicates is that he would have lost in court if the government tried to persist in saying, "No, you can't do that." Why? Because the federal government, before Biden took office, the federal government had approved that project and there were basically five areas up there that wanted to be drilled. I think there had been approvals of three or four of them already.

What the energy department was saying is, "Look, we're going to lose that case if we do go to court. Let's cut the best deal we can and cut back-" rather I should say, restrict drilling in, I forget if it was two or three of those different areas. Now, as I say, the climate damages are still going to go forward, but would they have been any different? I'm not so sure.

By the way, it's interesting, this is also what the White House is saying about the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia, that essentially it was already on the way to happening. To include it in this bill is not really a big deal. Now, I need to emphasize here, Brian, that this interpretation is not shared by quite a few environmental critics of the President

Brian Lehrer: Laura in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Laura.

Laura: Hi. There are two things. I recently heard that Senator Schumer received large donations from the same company that is behind the Mountain Valley Pipeline. He has expedited this and worked with Manchin on it and says it's so important. In the meantime, he's receiving large contributions from the company behind it.

Also, I heard Senator Kaine of Virginia say that he wasn't even told about this part of the deal until after it was announced publicly. The pipeline runs through Virginia. It's going to take land away from poor Appalachian people. It's going to, in addition to the environmental effects, it's going to have huge effects immediately on the population that lives there.

Mark Hertsgaard: Yes, Senator Kaine of Virginia did come out strongly against this provision in the bill. He does not like that pipeline. I don't know about the inside stuff about whether he was told in advance or not. As far as Schumer and the campaign contributions, I've heard those same reports. I didn't independently check them, but it would not surprise me.

Also, I wouldn't see that necessarily as the defining aspect of this decision on Schumer's part. Unfortunately, United States Senators get a lot of money from a lot of different corporations and they end up making the decisions that they make. How often those are directly tied to those contributions is hard to parcel out.

At the end of the day, I'm still struck by the fact that Schumer needed those votes. He needed Manchin's vote on this. I suspect that that was the cost of that vote. Again, not just that this debt deal also really restricts the application of the National Environmental Policy Act. In some ways that's more important, or at least as important going forward as one individual pipeline because the restrictions that they've put into the NEPA implementation, that's going to affect not just one pipeline, but potentially lots of other fossil fuel infrastructure projects down the road.

Let's remember that the International Energy Agency and scientists around the world have said, "We, the human race, we can afford no more fossil fuel infrastructure going forward.

None if we're going to keep the temperature rise on this planet to a survivable amount between 1.5 and 2 degrees." I think that really the focus here should be of course, what Manchin did and Biden and so forth in Schumer.

Why are they in this position? It's because the Republican Party and Congress, both in the House and in the Senate, are absolutely determined to undo any kind of sensible climate policy. That's going to remain the same until Republican members of Congress start getting voted out of office over their climate position. We'll see what happens in 2024, but that's the fundamental dynamic I think we need to be paying attention to.

Brian Lehrer: Or when the climate changes start ravaging people in their state to a certain degree, and then there'll be a popular backlash, or you think not so much because look what's going on in Florida already climate-wise.

Mark Hertsgaard: Exactly, Brian. As you know, I've been covering climate for many, many years now, and oftentimes I hear that from people, "Well, it's going to change when we see the damage happening, then politicians are going to change." Well, that's not my experience, and it's not just in Florida. You can see it in Louisiana and in Texas. Those Gulf states, they get hammered over and over and over by [crosstalk] doesn't change how those people vote.

Brian Lehrer: In response to the caller on the Chuck Schumer point, our Eagle Eye producer, Carl Boisrond, pulled this up instantly from the New Republic headline. "A company behind the Mountain Valley Pipeline is showering Schumer with more donations than Manchin." It says, "Majority leader, Chuck Schumer, is the single largest recipient of campaign funds from Next Era Energy, whose pipeline project could get fast-tracked with the deal Schumer recently brokered."

I don't know, Mark, maybe that's every company that showers people in leadership positions like Senate Majority Leader with more donations than anybody else, and it starts to all come out in the wash. He's still going to vote a Democrat on Democrat issues. Then again, there it is. As reported, he got more contributions from that company than Manchin did.

Mark Hertsgaard: Yes. Look, I don't want to be seen here as carrying water for Schumer. That's obviously not good and raises a lot of questions. Again, I don't think that we'd be in that situation if Democrats had even 51 or 52 senators majority. I think that those kinds of donations probably wouldn't have been given in the first place because there wouldn't have been that leverage. Look, corporations, look, can I get some leverage here? Yes, I'll get some leverage. It's a very cheap investment for a corporation to give campaign money to a member of Congress, especially the majority leader.

Brian Lehrer: Let me follow up on something you said a minute ago that I don't want to get lost because also tucked into the debt ceiling agreement is not just this particular pipeline, but changes to the permitting process in general that might affect future such fossil fuel projects. Reading from The New York Times here "changes to how the government approves new projects that bear on the country's climate goals, including rules under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA," which you mentioned, "that govern how and how quickly federal agencies authorize big projects." Can you unpack that language a little bit in terms of climate?

Mark Hertsgaard: Sure. Permitting reform is one of those phrases that comes out of Washington, DC and it sounds good. Who wouldn't want to reform how we give government permits, which are supposedly this morass of red tape? In fact, as you dig down into it, permitting is the process during which the citizenry can intervene in a project that otherwise would go forward, and it's when the scientists and other specialists inside of the federal government, usually at the EPA, can look and see, "Okay, is this pipeline going to be constructed in a way that that doesn't harm ecosystems, that doesn't pollute wetlands and waterways, that doesn't harm and drive species into extinction and so forth?" That's where permitting comes through.

Now, the irony here is that permitting reform, in that context is always pushed by Republicans and other fossil fuel friends who say, "Look, we're being held up by this red tape. We need the new energy," et cetera, et cetera. Permitting reform has in recent years emerged as a huge concern also for people on the environmental side, who say, "Look, we've got to build a lot of solar and wind and other green energy really fast in order to deal with the climate crisis here."

Oftentimes, you see that those kinds of projects are stopped by local opposition. For example, the very first big wind power project in the United States was planned off the coast of Massachusetts, off Cape Cod, and guess who opposed it? Robert Kennedy, Jr., and others, a guy who claimed to be a big environmentalist until they wanted to put the wind turbines in his view off of Cape Cod. There's permitting reform, and then there's permitting reform, I guess.

Brian Lehrer: Right. On those wind turbines off the coast, yes, view for people who live near the coast is one issue. We did a segment in Our Climate Story of the Week, a couple of weeks ago, on how Republicans are suddenly interested in saving species. The Republicans now claimed to be the Save the Whales Party, because they're saying construction of windmills is causing whale deaths. They're really trying to save the fossil fuel industry, by all appearances, but they're doing it with the language of Save the Whales, even though the evidence from the scientists that we had on the show, and others who I've read, are that wind turbine construction has nothing to do with whale deaths.

Mark Hertsgaard: Well, I'm so glad you did that show, Brian. That's, I think, a reminder to all of us, that when you're trying to, as a citizen, trying to evaluate these various claims, it helps to know the history. In a case like that the Republican Party has never really cared that much about Wales, and suddenly they're saying, "Oh, we care about the whales, that kind of tells you that you should look pretty skeptically at that kind of an argument.

Now, I commend to everybody though, my colleague, Bill McKibben on this permitting issue. Read the piece that Bill did in the New Yorker about a month ago, where he talked about how, "Look, we in the environmental community, we've got to realize that we need to build, build, build a lot of green stuff, and that's going to mean that we can't try and say, 'not in my backyard every time.' We can't try and slow down every one of these processes." There is something to be said for permitting reform, but of course, the devil is in the details.

Brian Lehrer: Bill in West Orange, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Bill: Hi. Thank you, Brian. Mark, I really enjoy your columns in The Nation. I wanted to go back to your comment about the legislation changing the jurisdiction of any challenge that would be brought to the pipeline in West Virginia. Is it being changed from federal court to state court? What does it say about that court if all the parties involved know that there would be a certain outcome if it went to that court, and it raises this larger constitutional question about Congress directing which court cases should go to?

Mark Hertsgaard: Yes, I can't answer that specific question. I didn't do the reporting on that part of the story, but I know that, as I say, it was something that Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon really saw as an unconstitutional matter. I don't know which of the particular cases or courts, rather, that he's talking about. It is worth noting, though, that court shopping, Judge shopping, as it's sometimes called, that's fairly common when parties are going to court. Certain judges have certain reputations, you want to be in front of that judge, as opposed to another judge.

That's totally normal for different lawyers to do, but where we get into trouble is when one part of the federal government, the Congressional branch, is literally intervening into the other branch, the judicial branch, and saying, you must go to this court. I think that's where the problem comes with that particular bill. That's why Merkley and others opposed it.

Again, as I said, look at the history, the very fact that that is being done in this bill and was shoehorned into this bill indicates that this is probably not a good idea, this pipeline. If you've got to push something through like that, and you've had 500 violations to date in the building of the pipeline, that's pretty strong evidence that that's a bad idea.

Brian Lehrer: Fred in Maplewood, you're on WNYC with Mark Hertsgaard. Hi, Fred.

Fred: Hi, Brian. Hi, Mark. Yes, thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to push back a little bit on the notion that the Biden administration's approach with the Inflation Reduction Act was ultimately just a matter of carrots and no sticks. That may be largely true of the legislation. I'm not sure, but I think that we have to take cognizance of the fact that Biden's programs and policies are larger than that.

They involve, for example, a slew of EPA regulations that are coming out, or being prepared, which will regulate emissions at the point of emissions, with power plants, et cetera. There are a lot of sticks in those regulations. If they go into effect, they can make a major difference. No matter how much oil is pumped, it can't be burned in a clean manner. These regulations will have a lot to do with it.

Brian Lehrer: That's a really interesting thing to bring up. Certainly, Mark, we've heard it on this show before the criticism that he's referring to that the Inflation Reduction Act is chock full of incentives, but not enough sticks, carrots but no sticks, and you need sticks in order to really bring down fossil fuel emissions. What do you say?

Mark Hertsgaard: The caller is 110% correct on that. That was what was so interesting about those EPA regulations that got rolled out separately, but that's the point that the legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act legislation, that was all carrots and no sticks because that had to be passed by Congress. There were only the 50 votes for the [unintelligible 00:27:30] in the United States Senate, plus Vice President Harris, making the majority.

Whereas the EPA, when they make regulations, they do not have to ask Congress's permission. They have their own statutory authority, and that is where indeed, as the caller points out, that was where the sticks came. There is overall in Biden's climate policy carrots and sticks. The carrots, only in the legislative side because he only had 50 votes, and the sticks coming on the executive side, the administrative side where the EPA does have the freedom and the authority to set the law the way that that needs to be set in order to limit the greenhouse gas emissions is necessary.

Brian Lehrer: Vulnerable to core challenges, though, because we've already seen Biden and Obama climate policy, I think as set through the EPA, struck down in court. We just saw the Supreme Court ruling the other week on wetlands, which is not directly like a power plant emissions rule, but still has climate implications that, "No, you can't go that far in regulating the protection of wetlands. They keep getting struck down in court on these things, no?

Mark Hertsgaard: Absolutely. There will certainly be challenges to it in court. That's been the case for decades. No matter who's president, the industry will always challenge in order to just delay and obstruct. That's [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: The premise is if you want to change policy, you have to go through Congress, you can't just have the EPA do things that aren't in the original Clean Water Act and things like that.

Mark Hertsgaard: That's the premise, but it's a very, very thin read to say that because the Environmental Policy Act passed, by the way under a Republican President Richard Nixon in 1970, gives great latitude to the Environmental Protection Agency to decide this stuff. It's not Congress's role to get in the middle of all that. They're not scientists in Congress. Yes, there is that kind of challenging always in the legal side.

To try and come back to Congress, that's why it's always said to be best to get this stuff passed in legislation so that it becomes law. As opposed to the EPA putting out its own regulations, those are regulations. Once something is law in order to undo it, if you're the fossil fuel industry, you actually have to undo that law, you have to repeal that law.

Brian Lehrer: By the way on the earlier caller's question about Judge shopping in this realm, from an NPR story last Thursday, when Manchin brokered the 2022 deal with the White House, his office said it planned to give the DC Circuit Court jurisdiction over any further litigation, rather than the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, where judges have repeatedly ruled against that pipeline, the debt ceiling deal would fulfill that plan.

One more quote from that article, "In an extraordinary move, the Federal measure would also quash lawsuits against the pipeline project and send any new appeals to the DC Circuit, rather than the Fourth Circuit, which has regional jurisdiction and which has blocked numerous permits."

That's a lot of words, Mark. It's, I guess, another extraordinary thing from the debt ceiling agreement that I wasn't aware of, which is that Congress and the President agreed the challenges to this particular gas pipeline will go to a friendlier to the pipeline Court of Appeals than the one that would normally go to.

Mark Hertsgaard: Right. This is Judge shopping, plain and simple. It's obviously the cost that the White House felt it had to pay in order to get this stuff through. I repeat, this is why ultimately, what really matters here is who has the votes in Congress. All the other stuff in terms of what's good for the planet, what's good for the public, that doesn't matter very much when you actually have to count the votes. If you don't have the votes, you don't have the votes. Remember that folks, when you're looking to 2024, who you vote for, make sure you vote for people who care about the climate.

Brian Lehrer: Last question, kind of to that point, here comes 2024. No matter who the Republican nominee is, chances are they're going to run against aggressive climate goals and climate policies. Biden, presumably running for re-election is going to run on his record and whatever new climate goals he wants to add on. It's going to be pretty stark, isn't it?

Mark Hertsgaard: I think it will be pretty stark. It's ironic, as I said earlier, Brian, that at the state and the local level, there are a lot of Republican elected officials who are very happy to have these green jobs and green investments in their district. Yet, at the national level, the GOP is purely a fossil fuel party and a climate denier party. That's going to be interesting to see if they trim their sails a little bit, because in the last three elections, the Congressional midterms of 2018 and 2022, and the National Election of 2020, we saw a surge in young climate voters. Those activist groups that were behind that surge, they make the case that without their efforts, Joe Biden would not have won the presidency in 2020. In 2022, the midterms, the Republicans' supposedly inevitable Republican takeover of both houses of Congress, that was stopped.

Young climate voters clearly played an important role in that. One of the big questions for 2024 is will young climate activists still turn out and turn out other people to vote for Biden and Democrats the way they did in 2020 and 2022? A lot of young climate activists are very very angry at the White House over the Willow Project in Alaska, over the Mountain Valley Pipeline and what they see as an insufficient record on this front.

That's going to be a big story and covering climate now, we are urging all of our colleagues throughout the media to cover the 2024 election as a climate story. It's obviously a lot of other stories, too, but the climate is going to be fundamentally shaped. Future climate politics will be fundamentally shaped by what you just said, Brian. Is it going to be a Democrat in the White House who believes in climate science, who understands that we face an emergency and that we have to get off fossil fuels absolutely as fast as possible, or is it going to be a Republican who maybe says they care about this stuff but puts energy production first?

That is a huge, huge choice with a lot of ramifications, not just for the climate, but for our economy and our public health and so forth. We are hoping that our colleagues throughout the media will follow frankly, your lead there, Brian, at WNYC, and really pay attention to this stuff.

Again, it's been striking in this debt deal, how few of the commentators and other coverage in the news media has even talked about the climate aspect of this debt deal. You look at Paul Krugman, The New York Times columnist, Robert Reich Guardian columnist, they talk about how Biden basically won this battle. He didn't have to give up very much. That's true on some of the other aspects of the debt relief bill. It's not true on climate.

If the damage was not anywhere near as bad as Republicans hoped on climate, but this Mountain Valley Pipeline, that is not a small thing. To say that that doesn't amount to a loss, I've been struck by that and disappointed, frankly, that so many, even liberal colonists are not seeing the importance of that.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, that's our climate story of the week. As we have taken a magnifying glass to the climate implications of the debt limit agreement, maybe the deepest dive anywhere in the media as we've spent the last 40 minutes on it. We thank our guest, Mark Hertsgaard, executive director of the global media collaboration Covering Climate Now, which WNYC in the show parts of, and he's the environment correspondent for The Nation magazine. Mark, thank you so much.

Mark Hertsgaard: Thank you, Brian.

 

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.