This commentary is by Deborah Messing, a resident of Montpelier.
Shoehorned into the federal Fiscal Responsibility Act (the debt ceiling bill) signed into law on June 3, 2023, was the statement that federal agencies must approve any outstanding permits for the pipeline Mountain Valley Pipeline within 21 days and exempt them from judicial review.
President Biden explained to the country that the idea of compromise and consensus is “the only way democracy can function” and that “no one gets everything they want in negotiation.”
Sounds reasonable, right?
However, pulling back the curtain on the history of the pipeline while following the money trail that begins with the fossil fuel behemoths and extends into webs of influence — including the judiciary, Congress and the media — reveals that this was a big win for the fossil fuel giants and another loss for the climate.
Mountain Valley Pipeline would transport fracked gas more than 300 miles from the Marcellus shale fields in northern West Virginia to southern Virginia. Since 2018, after billions in cost overruns, the pipeline has faced court challenges based on how the project could affect conservation issues such as soil erosion, wildlife, waterways, and other fragile ecosystems.
As far as its effect on climate, the emissions generated from this project are equivalent to those from 26 coal plants and would release about 40 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, equivalent to the annual emissions from 9 million cars.
Hundreds of affected communities as well as environmental, environmental justice, and other organizations representing millions of members and supporters nationwide had petitioned members of Congress to resist pressures to allow this pipeline to cross the finish line.
The owners of the pipeline, on the other hand, have donated millions of dollars worth of campaign contributions to lawmakers in both parties, according to a Sludge article published by perfectunion.us.
Who owns this pipeline and would profit from its completion? The three top owners are EQT, the largest producer of natural gas in the United States (45%); NextEra Energy, the largest electric utility holding company by market capitalization with revenues of over $18 billion in 2020 (31%); and Con Edison (12.5%).
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the two individuals in Congress with the most control of what gets passed into law, have been showered with donations from the owners, according to the Sludge report. Schumer has received at least $371,000 in campaign contributions from the PACs and employees of Equitrans, NextEra Energy, and Con Edison, three of the five companies behind the pipeline. McCarthy’s campaign, joint fundraising committee, and leadership PAC received a combined at least $305,500 from the PACs and employees of the MVP owners NextEra Energy and Equitrans.
In addition, West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who has taken credit for getting Mountain Valley Pipeline across the finish line, was the top recipient of oil and gas industry donations among all federal lawmakers, raking in nearly $769,000 during the 2022 election cycle,
This kind of influence, far from resulting in that compromise and consensus that Biden referred to as “the only way democracy can function,” is rather an example of the privileged access accorded to major donors.
Since the passage of Citizens United in 2001 — which unleashed unlimited political spending and stopped requiring public accounting of political spending — campaign spending by corporations and other outside groups increased tremendously; for example, by nearly 900% between 2008 and 2016. In 2020, total election spending was $14.4 billion, up from $5.7 billion in 2018.
Fossil fuel companies have increased by an order of magnitude their lobbying efforts, campaigns to revive the issue of climate denial, the influencing of federal support of oil drilling and, in this case, unneeded and environmentally harmful gas pipelines.
It’s too late to compromise away protections to the climate. It makes no sense to pass bills favorable for renewable energy and then fast-track this pipeline. Bill McKibben calls this the “on-the-one-hand approach” and calls it “almost comically insufficient,” given that, for the first time ever, global temperatures are now, more likely than not, to breach 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming, the Paris agreement goal, within the next five years, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
Opponents of the decision to fast-track the pipeline and suspend any judicial review — including Sierra Club, Appalachian Voices, 350.org and Friends of the Earth, to name a few — are mobilizing to have this decision withdrawn.
This, too, is democracy functioning.
