Pelosi a problem for Dems
Furious at their loss in yet another Trump-era special election, Democrats are calling for the head of … House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
It’s understandable: Republican ads in Georgia painted the Democrat, Jon Ossoff, as sure to be a Pelosi pawn — a charge that has scored for the GOP in race after race over the last decade.
New York’s own Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-Nassau) is far from alone in saying, “It’s time for Nancy Pelosi to go, and the entire leadership team.”
And Rice backed Pelosi in last year’s leadership fight. The challenger, Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, is even more brutal, warning, “Our brand is worse than Trump’s.”
Thing is, Ryan’s got more of an eye on the real problem: the Democratic brand, which Pelosi in fact embodies perfectly.
She is, after all, a millionaire San Francisco party-line liberal incapable of understanding what most of America wants and needs. (Indeed, seeing eyeto-eye with the Democratic-voting elite is what makes her one of the party’s best fund-raisers.)
It’s come to this: For leadership that doesn’t repel a majority of Americans, Democrats need to recruit someone who doesn’t represent the truth about their party. n energy policy, political polarization often gets in the way of common-sense solutions to problems. General Electric recently announced a technological advance that would allow pipeline companies to use drone-mounted cameras to inspect their lines for corrosion and leaks. This is the kind of development that could, with the right regulatory support, make huge strides toward preventing costly and harmful spills and solving other important problems afflicting America’s aging pipeline infrastructure.
But it won’t go anywhere if conservatives don’t acknowledge those problems and liberals can’t find a way to accept pipelines.
The agency charged with overseeing pipeline safety, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, is chronically underfunded and weak. For many years, Republican opposition has prevented Congress from giving the agency the resources it needs to do its job better, and from mandating the kind of inspection regime made easier by technological innovations in remote sensing, like the GE drone system.
Meanwhile, pipeline spills have galvanized anti-pipeline activism of the kind faced by the Keystone and Dakota Access pipeline projects. If activists are concerned mainly about spills and leaks, regulation aimed at better leak detection and prevention ought to offer a solution. But some anti-pipeline activism is part of a larger movement aimed at weaning the American economy off of fossil fuels entirely, and as quickly as possible. By strategically targeting pipelines, activists aim to restrict the ability of sellers to supply customers with natural gas and oil.
The implicit assumption is that shutting down such projects will help boost cleaner sources of energy, which are unfairly disadvantaged by the market’s failure to fully price-in the environmental and public health damages associated with the pollution produced through fossil fuel combustion. That is all true enough. But it’s also true that when pipeline opponents kill a project, there are often unintended consequences, including environmental opportunity costs. Some of the oil that would have been transported through a pipeline will be shipped by rail instead, increasing the risk of a spill. Some of the natural gas that would have been transported through a pipeline will be flared, generating additional greenhouse gas emissions. And, an unbuilt pipeline will make the cost of natural gas more expensive, causing utilities to burn more coal than they otherwise would have.
For their part, industry and congressional Republicans feed the centrifugal forces in pipeline politics by opposing even the most timid and cost-effective efforts to address problems such as methane leakage. In so doing, they cause unnecessary harm to the environment and public health, while undercutting moderates whose views probably mirror a majority of the voting public.
Drones and other remote sensing devices make common-sense solutions easier to implement than ever before, and would undermine activists’ claims that natural gas is no better for the climate than coal. On the other hand, acknowledging the desirability of reducing methane leakage is anathema to climate deniers in the GOP and to companies that would prefer not to be regulated at all.
Perhaps with time Americans will become more sophisticated consumers of information about risk tradeoffs in the energy sector and will learn to regard simple messages like “Fossil Fuels GOOD!” or “Fossil Fuels BAD!” with suspicion. Until then, those messages will continue to dominate (and warp) the energy policy debate.