The climate change culture war is about to get even nastier.
Ohio's GOP-led Senate passes legislation to kill wind and solar projects before they can get off the ground.
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Climate change has been a hot-button issue in the culture wars for a long time—at least, since the Great Al Gore Flannel Shirt Scandal of 2000 when Al almost became president but later wound up being a pioneering face of the climate change revolution instead. Gore’s 2006 documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, which popularized the scientific consensus that the earth is getting warmer because of human activities touched off a tsunami of passion on both sides that still divides voters. Believers (mostly Democrats and liberals) and doubters (mostly Republicans) have been at war ever since.
Despite the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords and its deliberate gutting of the Environmental Protection Agency, (both now undone by Joe Biden), believers have been steadily winning the war for social consensus. The vast majority of Democrats (90%) now believe the U.S. should prioritize alternative energy development over expanded oil, coal, and natural gas exploration and production, according to Pew Research. Only 49% of older, conservative Republicans believe that.
As has become all too common these days, the GOP has decided that the cure for losing is to change the rules. Last week, the Ohio Senate passed legislation that gives sweeping new powers to county commissioners to kill wind and solar development projects before they are even submitted to the proper state agency for approval.
Senate Bill 52 would require green energy developers to hold a public hearing with advance notice to local officials before filing a separate application with the Ohio Power Siting Board as required by existing law. That would allow a handful of commissioners to pass resolutions to ban wind and solar projects outright or to limit them to “energy development districts” in the county, which we all know is code for where the poor and minority folks live. Fossil fuel energy developers will not be required to go through this extra layer of bureaucracy for new developments.
The bill passed on a 20-13 vote, with five Republicans joining all eight members of the Democratic caucus in opposition.
Jake Zuckerman writes in the Ohio Capital Journal:
The bill's lead sponsor, Sen. Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, said fossil fuels like natural gas and coal are more necessary for the reliability of the grid than wind and solar. He said the legislation is about giving the localities a voice.
He said criticisms regarding parity between renewables and fossil fuel energy sources is an apples-and-oranges comparison.
"I think when you're looking at, for example, a natural gas plant: a natural gas plant is going to be confined within one area, a natural gas plant is not going to affect nearly as many acres in most places as these solar and wind projects are. They're not as transformative, and they're not being put primarily in residential areas in rural parts of the state," he said.
There are several other bills working through the Ohio legislature that favor fossil fuel developers, including a bill passed by the House and under Senate review, to prevent local governments from banning or limiting natural gas development; or another that allows gas drillers to sell their fracking waste for de-icing or portable restroom use. There is also an ongoing, Ohio ratepayer-funded bailout of two coal plants in Ohio and Indiana that is estimated to cost $700 million over ten years.
The moves represent a complete abandonment of climate change initiatives by Ohio, which adopted a renewable energy standard in 2008 by an overwhelming majority but has spent much of the last decade pissing it away.
I suspect there are other similar anti-renewables bills now moving through Republican-led statehouses across the country. Biden’s embrace of an ambitious climate agenda and the upcoming COP26 summit guarantee that climate change, and its malcontents, are going to be top of mind for the next several months. Unless, of course, Donald Trump is reinstated in the White House and Al Gore is outed as a Chinese Communist spy.
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Dig Deeper
Senate passes bill creating new hurdles for wind, solar development (Ohio Capital Journal)
Senate Bill 52 (Ohio Senate)
U.S. Public Views on Climate and Energy (Pew Research)
Analysis suggests climate policy in Ohio could save the world as much as $1 trillion (Energy News Network)