A tale of two energy proposals: Only one prioritizes survival 

There are two very different views of the threat we face from climate change on display in Washington lately. One is a sober perspective that challenges us to consider difficult choices to slow the warming before it’s too late. The other outlook pushes outdated and dangerous policies like a literal gas pedal to speed us toward an unlivable planet.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed a sweeping energy package that rolls back both longstanding environmental protections and programs created just a few months ago to slow climate decay and achieve energy security. The bill amounts to a corporate polluters’ wish list — everything from gutting environmental reviews by limiting their length and scope to promoting fossil fuel extraction on our coastlines and disapproving President Biden’s decision to nix a pipeline that would carry the dirtiest crude straight through the middle of the country. 

The bill undermines the National Environmental Policy Act — our first major environmental law passed more than 50 years ago — and kills new programs in the Inflation Reduction Act to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas production and to make fossil fuel companies pay their fair share of profits made on public lands.

Communities, states and tribal nations — those whose lives would be changed immediately and daily by these projects — would lose ground to challenge damaging new projects pushed through on a fast track. Consumers would be shortchanged on everything from support for home renovations aimed at energy efficiency to renewable energy options and clean public transportation.

All this is in spite of a scientific consensus that any new oil and gas production will make it impossible to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 — the key to avoiding the worst effects of climate change. The bill is called the Lower Energy Costs Act despite the reality that this legislation will increase the federal deficit by $2.5 billion over the next 10 years, to say nothing of the incalculable costs to our future. If they succeed we’ll be paying for the harm caused for decades.

In contrast, in its recent annual Economic Report of the President, the White House Council of Economic Advisors included a chapter on “better managing weather risk in the changing climate.” Despite that innocuous title, the chapter details the unmistakable threat to the American economy from both the physical and financial risks created by the deteriorating climate.

The report describes how the federal government promotes risky behavior on the front end with everything from crop and flood insurance to wildfire fighting and then pays for the aftermath, including the cost of health care for the most vulnerable served by Medicaid and Medicare.

“In the coming decades, more intense and frequent weather extremes and the uncertainty of the changing climate will present a range of economic and financial risks to the U.S. economy and will confront the federal government with related fiscal challenges,” the council stated. It goes on to say our country and others “have been and continue to be ordered for a climate that no longer exists; therefore, the projected rapid changes in the climate system will pose major, evolving risks for economic, social, infrastructural, and governance systems in coming decades.”

State and local governments as well will need to play an essential role in adapting to climate change, as they regulate most of the land development in the country. That’s challenging as those governments also gain the most from rising property values. The economic advisers suggest ways that the federal government can nudge them, but we all can be watchdogs in our hometowns.

The council’s report is less a policy proposal and more a mindset — one that the administration should have applied to its ill-considered approval of the Willow drilling project in Alaska.

The Republican bill, on the other hand, is all politics and no thinking. It cloaks itself in a false and misleading name while costing us a steady focus on renewable energy, greater electrification and a cleaner economy. In so many ways, we can’t afford it.

Ben Jealous is the seventh executive director of the Sierra Club. Formerly the national president and CEO of the NAACP, he has led two of the nation’s most influential groups pursuing equity and justice and protecting democracy and the environment. He is a New York Times bestselling author of “Reach: 40 Black Men Speak on Living, Leading, and Succeeding” and his latest book is “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free.”