Before we compromise further on planet earth, the question Really? is often a good place to start. Let’s be sure our revered journalists and the publications they work for call apples as apples, and oranges as oranges, says Bill McKibben:

A pipeline is not a windmill

Rally Thursday Against Manchin’s Dirty Deal–and Do Some Lobbying in the Meantime!

The Washington Post, which has done remarkable climate reporting in recent years, had a less successful story in this morning’s paper. Headlined (in oddly editorial fashion) “To fight climate change, environmentalists may have to give up a core belief,” it argues (citing a selection of “center-left” and “center-right” environmental policy people that I’ve never encountered in years of doing climate work) that:

Right now, many roadblocks stand in the way of building wind, solar, and the transmission lines that can carry their power to city centers. And while Democrats have a bill in the works to speed that sort of permitting, most environmentalists oppose it

The “bill” the reporter is touting is actually an undisclosed “side deal” that Joe Manchin tried to jam through as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. No one has seen it yet, but the draft that circulated through Capitol Hill last month literally bore the watermark of the American Petroleum Institute. The only specific provisions that anyone knows about concern a pet project of Manchin’s—the MVP, or Mountain Valley Pipeline, an egregiously dumb relic of the late fossil fuel era that his industry buddies are likely to lose, just as they lost Keystone XL, because of fierce opposition from environmentalists in the region and across the country. Who are opposed to it because it is the literal opposite of building “wind, solar, and the transmission lines that carry their power.”…

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