Infohub Call To Action

 

Climate Hawks Vote

Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are rushing through a vote this afternoon to install a highly politicized climate denier, Bernard McNamee, at Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Trump’s nominee, Bernard McNamee, thinks that renewable energy screws up the nation’s electricity grid. He doesn’t think carbon is a “real pollutant.”

Call your Senator to stop Bernard McNamee!

The FERC was a historically nonpartisan, “fuel neutral” agency regulating the transmission and sale of electricity and natural gas in interstate commerce along with the transportation of oil between states. But, as a climate hawk, you know that the kind of electricity moving on the grid, and whether oil pipelines get built at all, is now hyper-partisan.

And McNamee is a hyper-partisan coal hack.

At a February 2018 event, McNamee claimed that renewable energy “screws up the whole physics of the grid.” As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, McNamee went on to say that “fossil fuels are not something dirty, something we have to move and get away from, but understand that they are key to our prosperity, our way of life and also to a clean environment.” On Earth Day (not April Fool’s Day) of this year, he published an op-ed extolling America’s abundant fossil fuels.

He’s got a long history of providing energy advice to fossil fueled hacks, from Ken Cuccinelli to Ted Cruz.

Now, FERC is just one appointee away from becoming a partisan arm of the GOP’s war on clean renewable energy. Bernard McNamee is Trump’s ideal man for the job.

Last week the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee cleared McNamee to advance to the full Senate, on a mostly party line vote. Now McConnell is trying to rush the nomination through before the Senate leaves for the holidays.

Remember when Republicans used to believe in the free market? Renewables like solar and wind compete with dirty fossil fuels when the playing field is level. McNamee would side with fossil fuels even when it makes no economic sense.

Take one minute — call your Senator today to stop McNamee.