With help from Anthony Adragna and Alex Guillén
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— The historically white environmental movement is grappling with how best to support the protests prompted by the killing of George Floyd while in police custody.
— The Democratic National Committee’s climate panel is calling on former Vice President Joe Biden to back an aggressive proposal to transition away from fossil fuels.
— House Republicans on the Transportation Committee say they were left out of the process for Democrats’ new surface transportation bill that is loaded with climate mitigation funding.
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Tim Peckinpaugh of K&L Gates gets the win for correctly naming Shirley Chisholm as the first black woman to serve on the powerful House Rules Committee, joining the panel in 1977. For today: How many different names has the House Energy and Commerce Committee had since its inception in 1795? Send your tips and comments to [email protected].
Calling all China watchers: The trajectory of the U.S.-China relationship will determine whether this century is judged a bright or a dismal one. POLITICO’s David Wertime is launching a new China newsletter that will be worth the read. Sign up.
GREEN GROUPS GRAPPLE WITH PROTESTS: The connection between environmental justice and the police brutality protests unfolding across the U.S. is especially salient for activists in some emerging environmental groups that have gained attention over the past few years, Pro’s Zack Colman, Gavin Bade and Ben Lefebvre report this morning.
“Seeing massive health inequalities in the black community — that’s the same mass death we want to fight against with climate change, and we should be showing up for black lives,” said Mattias Lehman, the digital director for Sunrise Movement, who got his start in the Black Lives Matter movement.
But for large environmental groups that are largely white addressing the unrest from the death of Floyd and others has underscored the challenges facing the green movement as it broadens its core mission to include racial justice and equality. That focus emerged after complaints from local and minority activists that big, politically connected organizations overlooked them while also sometimes taking credit for their work.
“I think there’s been a deafening amount of silence from the traditional environment organizations,” said Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, North America director for the climate-focused group 350.org. “The amount of solidarity that has been shown to date is not enough.”
Many of the most powerful green groups in Washington, D.C., are still assessing what kind of role they can play beyond issuing supportive statements and giving staff time to attend protests, the trio reports. The NRDC is “exploring ways for staff to increase all kinds of civic engagement activities,” spokeswoman Jenny Powers said in an email. The League of Conservation Voters is “still figuring it out,” said Jen Allen Aroz, senior vice president of community and civic engagement, admitting that “we have got a long ways to go.”
That’s still progress compared with the past, said Peggy Shepard, executive director of the group WE ACT for Environmental Justice. Shepard said she was on a call Monday with six green group presidents to set strategies to try to influence presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on environmental justice.
“A few years ago there wouldn’t have been any statements by green groups. So now there are some. But there also are smaller groups that are actually doing something,” she said.
Related: Sunrise Movement Co-founder Varshini Prakash said the group is holding online mass training today on why the climate movement should “show up” for protesters. “Anyone sitting this one out because it’s not ‘their issue’ is fooling themselves — if Trump and the forces behind him prevail in this moment, our chances of taking the kind of action we need on climate are essentially zero,” she said in a statement.
THE DNC’s CLIMATE PUSH: The new 12-person DNC panel stacked with progressive climate activists is calling on Biden to back a plan to spend up to $16 trillion to speed the country away from fossil fuels, Zack reports for Pros.
The plan from the DNC Council on the Environment and Climate Crisis and provided to POLITICO ahead of its release today calls for the U.S. to spend $10 trillion to $16 trillion over the next decade to tackle climate change; ban fracking; deny new federal permits for fossil fuel infrastructure projects like pipelines; eliminate gas-fired heat and other fossil fuels in new buildings by 2025; and set vehicle fuel standards at levels so stringent they would halt the sale of new gasoline- or diesel-powered cars by 2030.
The proposal is designed to pressure the party and its presumptive presidential nominee to take an aggressive stance on climate change. But it would also offer President Donald Trump multiple openings to link Biden, whose own climate platform calls for spending $2 trillion, to the Democrats’ progressive and environmental wings.
“Trump’s going to call Biden a lefty no matter what, right?” said Michelle Deatrick, who led the panel and was a surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders during the primaries. “So let’s energize our base, let’s energize the middle. Let’s do what’s right because the planet is at stake.”
EPA TO FLOAT COST-BENEFIT REFORMS FOR AIR RULES: EPA as soon as today will release its proposed changes to how the agency calculates the costs and benefits of regulations under the Clean Air Act (Reg. 2060-AU51), sources told ME. Administrator Andrew Wheeler last year declared it time to reform the agency’s long-time analytical practices to provide “greater clarity, transparency and consistency.” Industry groups cheered, but environmentalists immediately dashed the move as an effort to make it more difficult to justify future regulations.
Industry suggestions submitted to EPA last year almost uniformly argued that EPA has long overestimated benefits and underestimated compliance costs. If past is prologue, expect the Trump administration to formalize the tweaks it has made during individual regulatory rollbacks, including changes like counting only domestic greenhouse gas reduction benefits, reductions in the social cost of carbon, and ignoring co-benefit pollution reductions. ME is also keeping its eye on whether the rule advances the contentious “implicit opportunity cost” EPA considered during the SAFE Vehicles rulemaking a couple months ago.
FORMER INTERIOR CHIEFS HOPE FOR CLEAN LWCF BILL: Six former Interior secretaries urged congressional leaders against allowing any amendments to the public lands bill, S. 3422 (116), set for the Senate floor, fearful that opening the process will imperil the bill’s chance at passage. The letter was signed by Ryan Zinke, Sally Jewell, Ken Salazar, Dirk Kempthorne, Gale Norton and Bruce Babbitt.
Not alone: Congressional backers of the bill echoed concerns that opening the amendment process could result in controversial provisions that may tank the entire effort, Pro’s Anthony Adragna reports. “We all have to make some sacrifices,” Energy ranking member Joe Manchin, one of the bill’s lead sponsors, told POLITICO. “There’s no surprises. … And we’re hoping it stays the way it is and that there will not be an amendment process on this.”
At least one Democratic senator, however, expressed concerns about the bill. “[The Land and Water Conservation Fund] has long favored inland states and upland projects,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told ME. “Sadly there is no program for coasts and saltwater to balance the dominance of upland and freshwater in LWCF. Our coastal features, populations and economies deserve a fairer shake, so I’d love to balance this bill with more coastal support.”
Politics aside: Manchin said he’s not bothered if passage of the bill helps Republican Sens. Cory Gardner and Steve Daines, who face competitive reelection bids this year — and said Minority Leader Chuck Schumer deserves credit for not thwarting the effort. “We can’t let politics trump good policy,” he told ME. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. And if people want to use that for their politics — and if they’ve never been there before but all of a sudden, they’ve come to light and they come to Jesus, if you will, and then saw the handwriting on the wall — then God bless them. We’re going to take you any time we can get you.”
HOUSE DEMOCRATS UNVEIL CLIMATE-FRIENDLY TRANSPORTATION BILL: Democrats on the House Transportation Committee released their $494 billion, five-year surface transportation bill on Wednesday, prompting scorn from their Republican colleagues who say they were shut out of the process, Pro’s Tanya Snyder reports. That might ultimately mean the bill’s climate provisions will be watered down once it hits conference.
Ranking members Sam Graves (R-Mo.), Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) and Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) said in a statement they “stood at the ready to work all year” since releasing their infrastructure principles in January, but “were not given the opportunity to address any of our priorities in this legislation,” which they said contained “numerous new green mandates and extreme progressive goals.”
Under Democrats’ bill, the Transportation Department would be required to establish a new greenhouse gas emissions performance measure. It also includes $8.35 billion for fiscal years 2022-25 for a new apportioned program to support carbon pollution reduction, and creates another program ($6.25 billion for the same period) to fund resilience and emergency evacuation needs. Another $350 million per year would go toward discretionary grants for electric vehicle charging and hydrogen fueling infrastructure.
But as Tanya reports for Pros, Republicans trounced the bill’s “extreme” climate focus. The Senate’s bill, S. 2302 (116), led by Environment and Public Works Chair John Barrasso and which the EPW panel approved unanimously, contains a climate title that includes money for EV charging infrastructure and several climate resiliency provisions, but the House bill goes much further. “House Democrats’ love affair with red tape and the Green New Deal is getting in the way of getting America back to work,” Barrasso said.
On a call with reporters Wednesday, House Transportation Chair Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) defended his work, saying there was “very little room to work with the Republican staff” on the bill’s climate elements, which he said were “crucial.” He also hinted that since Democrats are aligned on the importance of combating climate change, GOP support probably won’t be needed for the bill to pass the House, which he said plans to vote on the bill July 1.
GRAVES: PRODUCERS NEED MORE: Rep. Garret Graves told ME more is needed from the Trump administration to help the ravaged oil and gas sector. “Things are coming back up, but look, reality is the damage was done,” he said. “There’s still some additional moves that are needed to help to sustain that [recovery].” He spoke with Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette on Wednesday and plans to speak with Interior Secretary David Bernhardt as well.
Graves suggested “temporary royalty reductions that would be based on price thresholds to where you’re certainly not giving away the farm” and royalty-in-kind transfers to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in particular. “I think things along those lines would be some of the things that could be done and I think should have been done, in some cases,” he said. “I think some of the royalty reductions have been going too slow and just too much too much bureaucracy built in there.” BLM has slashed some royalty payments on public lands to as low as 0.5 percent but Interior has not provided similar relief for offshore producers, despite the pleas of many Republican lawmakers. Oil briefly rose above $40 per barrel on Wednesday before falling again.
DOUBLE IT: Close to 800 businesses and contractors in the energy efficiency sector urged lawmakers to expand the homeowner energy efficiency tax credit, known as 25C, as a way of supporting the industry that has lost some 400,000 jobs lost since the start of the pandemic. Specifically, they call for expanding upon changes outlined in the bipartisan Home Energy Savings Act of 2019, S. 2588 (116), which calls for increasing the lifetime single-use cap on the credit and raising the credit amount from 10 percent to 15 percent of eligible expenditures. The groups call on lawmakers to double the amount of the credit for the next two years from $1,200 to $2,400, and double the percentage of eligible expenditures from 15 percent to 30 percent.
— The California Water Data Consortium will announce today Tara Moran has been appointed president and CEO. Moran previously led Stanford Water in the West’s Sustainable Groundwater program.
— “Ex-Enron CEO Skilling launching new digital marketplace for oil investors – sources,” via Reuters.
— “Dead zone prediction: Larger than average; not near record,” via Associated Press.
— “Why we can’t count on carbon-sucking farms to slow climate change,” via MIT Technology Review.
— “Air pollution in China back to pre-Covid levels and Europe may follow,” via The Guardian.
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
