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Dr. Genevieve Guenther
@doctorvive.bsky.social
Founding Director, End Climate Silence Author, *The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It* genevieveguenther.com
7.3k followers662 following1.6k posts
DGdoctorvive.bsky.social

Re PERMITTING REFORM: it's enormously instructive that in his Heatmap convo with @robinsonmeyer.bsky.socialheatmap.news/podcast/shif... 1/n

Talking Permitting Reform, Trade, and More With Biden’s Top Climate Advisor
Talking Permitting Reform, Trade, and More With Biden’s Top Climate Advisor

Rob interviews Ali Zaidi at Yale.

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DGdoctorvive.bsky.social

I also heard Zaidi say that the problem with this bill is not that it "makes the fossil fuel industry happy" (the industry could be happy doing clean energy, he noted). The problem, he implied, is that the bill expands fossil fuels, which is not "directionally consistent" with 1.5C. 2/n

Ali Zaidi: The conversation in Congress right now makes it seem like transmission is a Democratic policy priority when it boosts reliability and lowers rates. I thought Republicans and Democrats both agreed we need to boost reliability and lower rates. So I don't know why that needs to be offset by any measure. That's thing number one. Thing number two is ... Robinson Meyer: This is the challenge of talking about things, is that if Democrats say, oh, we really value this, then suddenly it's a Democratic priority. Zaidi: Yeah. And then the second is, how do we accelerate the siting and permitting of things and then there is a how do we shift more power to the oil and gas industry. The conversation around leasing, happening against a backdrop where the industry itself is moving away from long-cycle investment to short-cycle investment, it's tough. So I would hope that more of the permitting conversation were a permitting conversation.
Meyer: Well, one way this sometimes gets reflected is that you'll hear environmentalists say, any policy that makes the oil and gas industry happy or bigger, we should not take. And that makes making a compromise ... Zaidi: And I reject that. Yeah, look, if ExxonMobil wants to pay for a pipeline that will help us deliver what was once solar and wind, as a fuel, to help us decarbonize a steel plant, they can be for it and I can be for it. If there is a — Blackstone, for example, has a Project Tallgrass that has converted a pipeline that used to pull hydrocarbons out of the ground. It's now flipped the pipeline around, and is putting CO2 into the ground. They can be for that. I can be for that — not speaking to the specific project, but conceptually. So I don't think. It's not the actor. It's the question of whether this is directionally consistent with trying to chase down a 1.5 degree future or not. We are behind as a world, and we need to run faster in that direction. If it's not directionally consistent, that's a problem.
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DG
Dr. Genevieve Guenther
@doctorvive.bsky.social
Founding Director, End Climate Silence Author, *The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It* genevieveguenther.com
7.3k followers662 following1.6k posts
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