The Petroleum Industry May Want a Carbon Tax, but Biden and Congressional Republicans are Not Necessarily Fans
The new administration has made clear that its approach to reducing emissions will involve regulation, incentives and other government actions.
March 8, 2021
Gina McCarthy, the White House National Climate Advisor, speaks at the Queen theater on December 19, 2020 in Wilmington, DE. Credit: Joshua Roberts/Getty Images
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The largest U.S. oil industry trade group is considering an endorsement of carbon taxes for the first time. But the biggest news may be how little that is likely to matter, as U.S. climate policy moves decisively in an entirely different direction.
This story was originally published by the Guardian
as part of their two-year series, This Land is Your Land, examining the threats facing America’s public lands, with support from the Society of Environmental Journalists, and is republished by permission.
The Biden administration has put the brakes on a controversial land exchange that would have given a sacred Native American site to a multinational mining company by March 11.
Parts of the handover had been rushed to completion in the waning days of the Trump administration, in an effort to give Resolution Copper control over Arizona’s Oak Flat region before or soon after Trump left office. Oak Flat sits atop one of the largest untapped copper deposits in the world, estimated to be worth more than $1 billion.
Blackjewel’s Bankruptcy Filing Is a Harbinger of Trouble Ahead for the Plummeting Coal Industry
The company wants to walk away from almost 200 mining permits in four states, potentially leaving thousands of acres of environmentally damaged land.
March 3, 2021
Unemployed Blackjewel coal miner David Pratt holds his daughter Willow as he walks across railroad tracks that lead to one of the company s mines near Cumberland, Kentucky in 2019. Blackjewel miners found themselves unemployed when the company declared bankruptcy and the workers final paychecks bounced, leading them to blockade the tracks to prevent the train carrying the mine s final shipment of coal from leaving until they were paid their wages. Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images
Senator “It’s Time to Wake Up” Whitehouse drops his climate change mic
Image courtesy of the office of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)
A few weeks ago, Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) literally dropped the mic, after a nearly eight-year streak of weekly speeches in which he called for action on climate change. Whitehouse explained that with a new administration in the White House, the conditions were in place for what he called a “new dawn… there’s no need for my little candle against the darkness.” It marked the 279th and last time that Whitehouse would carry a “Time to Wake Up” poster to the Senate floor but not the end of his efforts to deal with climate change; his home state is the site of the first offshore windfarm in all of North America a milestone in renewable energy that has been closely followed not only by environmentalists but by Wall Street analysts.