Above photo: From Beyond Extreme Energy.
Beyond Extreme Energy says (slyly) — Welcome to FERC, Bernard McNamee!
President Trump has just nominated Bernard McNamee, Executive Director of the Office of Policy for the U.S. Department of Energy for the open Republican seat on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). This is a man who is clearly in love with fossil fuels, as shown in his Earth Day paeon in The Hill last April – on Earth Day, no less! He rhapsodized about how coal, oil and gas have made the good life possible, by powering everything from our cars to incubators for premature babies. In his current job he created Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s plan to prop up the country’s coal and nuclear plants — a proposal that was rejected unanimously by the five FERC commissioners earlier this year. His appointment would upend the even divide that often exists among current commissioners — two Republicans and two Democrats — when it comes to approving interstate fracked gas pipelines, LNG export terminals and other infrastructure.
Of course we need electricity and other forms of energy, but they don’t have to come from burning fossils, with all the pollution and climate change that results.
McNamee writes, “Some suggest that we can replace fossil fuels with renewable resources to meet our needs, but they never explain how.” Not so. Experts have been describing for years how we can meet our needs with on-shore and off-shore wind, rooftop solar and industrial-scale solar, wave, geothermal and hydro-electric power. And workers have been busy installing just these kinds of renewable energy – and using energy efficiency to reduce our overall use of energy – at an accelerating rate. It’s true that all these renewables are still just a fraction of our overall energy consumption, but it’s also true that solar and wind are the fastest growing forms of energy. Imagine if we had political leaders who made conversion to 100% clean energy the focus of their efforts, as has been true in states like California and countries as diverse as Sweden and Nicaragua.
In his piece, McNamee mentions several pollutants connected to fossil fuels that have been reduced through “human ingenuity.” But they wouldn’t exist at all if we were using renewables. And as for climate change, a recent report from Trump’s own U.S. Department of Transportation assumes a 7F degree rise in temperatures by the end of the century. That would be an unmitigated disaster for all inhabitants on Earth.
On October 16 Beyond Extreme Energy will be visiting senators on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee who will be voting on this nomination. McNamee has shown himself to be a true super villain and we — dressed as super villains ourselves — will be urging members (tongue in cheek) to support him. Or maybe just to think about what it would mean to add another pro-fossil fuel commissioner to FERC, the better to destroy vulnerable communities and the climate.