Opinion: With pipeline deal, Biden tarnishes his climate legacy - The Virginian-Pilot

Opinion: With pipeline deal, Biden tarnishes his climate legacy - The Virginian-Pilot

On June 3, President Joe Biden signed a debt ceiling bill that will forever stain his legacy on climate and environmental justice. Absent any relation to the debt ceiling, the deal greenlit the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 303-mile fracked-gas pipeline through Virginia and West Virginia. If MVP is put into service, it will emit the greenhouse gasses equivalent to 26 coal plants as well as ripping through precious wilderness areas such as the Jefferson National Forest.

This bill is remarkable in that it directs agencies to issue permits on a specific energy project and attempts to exempt those permits from judicial review. The MVP provisions are a clear political favor for Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, who is heavily invested in and lobbied by the fossil fuel industry, in return for his vote on the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

Climate impacts aside, this is a travesty for American democracy. Biden has now set a precedent whereby a vote on one bill may be directly traded for approval for a pet project in a given legislator’s district. Worse still, the deal attempts to supersede the judiciary, upsetting the delicate balance of powers between branches of government. With such transparent political favor-dealing at play, what’s to stop any senator from obstructing future votes in hopes for a handout from the president?

It is also offensive to the principles of environmental justice, which demand that communities impacted by energy projects have — at least — the ability to challenge the parameters of a project if they do not adequately protect the community. MVP, in fact, had already demonstrated the threat it posed to vulnerable communities and ecosystems. It has been cited for more than 500 water-quality-related violations in Virginia and West Virginia since 2018.

Frontline communities have been fighting MVP for eight years. They have chained themselves to construction equipment and placed themselves in trees destined for destruction. At one point, activists sat atop trees along the proposed route for 932 days, suffering through the snow and ice of three winters. They have also faithfully dogged the usual channels, submitting hundreds of thousands of comments during various public comment periods.

Now, those long, cold nights in the trees and days in public hearing rooms may go to waste. Biden’s deal with Manchin spits in the face of the communities most impacted by the pipeline. For a president who frequently touts his commitment to environmental justice, this is hypocrisy at its finest.

When stumping for the Inflation Reduction Act in July 2022, Biden promised to “do everything in [his] power” to tackle climate change, which he called “code red for humanity.” There must be two Joe Bidens. The deal the president made not only greenlights the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which is akin to adding 19 million cars to the road— it also fast tracks fossil fuel development writ large by undermining environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act. Scientists have been clear: If we are to meet pressing climate deadlines, we must stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure.

Biden could have been the president who pushed the United States — and the world — away from the brink of climate disaster. Biden could have ushered in a new, clean economy that brought life to struggling communities and cleaned the air of toxic pollutants. Instead, he is the president who built the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The president who locked in new fossil fuel infrastructure for decades to come at the most pivotal point in our climate journey. The president who stomped on more than half a century of bedrock environmental protections as a political favor.

Six months ago, the American people may have thought their leader would deliver them through the valley of the shadow of catastrophic climate change. Instead, he has led us halfway into the valley and run off in the night.
Victoria Higgins is the Virginia director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.