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Photo: Jacquelyn Martin, Associated Press via The New York Times
The Secretary of Energy stunningly accused the major financial institutions that refuse to now invest in Arctic oil and gas exploration of discrimination against the oil and gas industry and likened the decision to the banks’ refusal in the past to make loans to minorities. In an interview with Axios, here is exactly what he said:
“For years and years and years, banks would not lend money, insurance companies would not write policies in minority areas in the country. Redlining is the term used all throughout those debates. We didn’t want banks redlining certain parts of the country. We don’t want that here. I do not think banks should be redlining our oil and gas investment across the country.”
Why This Matters: Arctic drilling has been fought due to its environmental toll since the 1960s,The Administration can raise false flags (as if oil and gas companies at all resemble minorities subjected to systemic racism) and twist the facts, but in the end, drilling won’t happen without financial backers and the prospect that it would be profitable. It’s absurd to feel bad for either the unfairly maligned big banks or those “poor” oil and gas companies. It’s an outrageous and deeply insensitive comparison.
Senator Bernie Sanders said: “Racist redlining denied wealth to generations of Black Americans. Today, the fossil fuel industry dumps its pollution on communities of color. This comment from Trump’s Energy Secretary is disgusting.”
Bill McKibben of 350.org said: “The Secretary of Energy thinks that banks deciding not to invest in oil and gas because of climate change is the same as banks redlining minority communities for decades. This is some combination of gross and pathetic.”
Cleaning Up The Mess
After the comment, the Energy Department spokesperson put out this statement: “Secretary Brouillette has zero tolerance for discrimination of any type, and he was not in any way equating the plight of minority communities to that of energy companies,” Department of Energy spokesperson Shaylyn Hynes said of the redlining analogy. “Accusing him of doing so in order to manufacture a dramatic headline is both disingenuous and not based in any truth.”
This week, we sat down with Jason Bordoff, who served on the National Security Council staff in the Obama Administration and then founded the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
by Amy Lupica, ODP Staff Writer On Tuesday, a group of six scientists and mothers teamed up with the Potential Energy Coalition to launch Science Moms, a nonpartisan group of scientists that aims to empower moms to get involved in the fight against climate change. The group hopes to demystify the conversation surrounding climate change […]
Judge Merrick Garland is expected to “respect science and the rule of law” if confirmed as Attorney General. Plus he has deep experience, having heard many environmental cases over his twenty-plus years on the bench in Washington, D.C.
Why This Matters: I (Monica) can’t think of an Attorney General who has spent this much time digging into the details of challenging environmental cases.
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