By Dave Anderson, Energy and Policy Institute. Originally posted on Energy and Policy Institute.

Major electric utilities and fossil fuel producers that are members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce remained silent when asked whether they supported the lobbying group’s controversial opposition to using the Defense Production Act to address a shortage of medical supplies and equipment crucial to fighting the coronavirus. 

Some of those same energy companies, and their trade associations, have for years lobbied for the use of the Defense Production Act to bail out struggling coal plants.

By Megan Milliken Biven

Imagine a sovereign nation with nearly 29 million citizens and the eleventh largest economy in the world. Now imagine that this nation’s legislature only met to represent its citizens and their interests once every two years. The work of governance, regulation, and oversight are instead shifted to a relatively unknown cadre of boards. Boards whose leadership is a revolving door of the industries the government is supposed to regulate. If this were Venezuela, we Americans would deem it a corrupt Banana Republic and demand international intervention.

The hypothetical nation described here is in fact Texas. One of those state boards is the Railroad Commission of Texas, a little-known agency that oversees oil and gas activities across the state. Ryan Sitton is both current Railroad Texas Commissioner and founder of an oil and gas consulting company. Sitton, who recently lost reelection, regulates the very activities he personally profits from. On March 19, he published an opinion piece in Bloomberg, “The U.S. Must Protect Free Markets in the Oil Price War,” which calls for protecting not free markets, but the oil and gas industry in Texas.

His article asks the federal government to allow oil and gas companies to behave like the OPEC cartel and limit oil production, raise prices on already suffering Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, and continue with a status quo energy policy.

By Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. Reposted with permission from EcoWatch.

Oregon's Republican Congresspeople have once again scuppered attempts to pass a climate change bill, by running away.

In June of 2019, Oregon Republican Senators refused to show up to work in order to deny the Senate a quorum to vote on a cap-and-trade bill that had passed the House. Some even fled the state to avoid being forced to return. That standoff ended when Senate Democrats said they did not have enough votes for the bill.

By Edward Cavanough. This story originally appeared in The Nation and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

The country is paying a deadly price for its conservative politicians’ climate denialism.