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Labor Network for Sustainability says workers need environmental protection, not Joe Manchin’s dirty side-deal
By Labor Network for Sustainability - Red, Green, and Blue, September 17, 2022
Right now there is a new threat to environmental protection. A recently leaked draft bill text – bearing the watermark of the American Petroleum Institute – would override the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by accelerating permitting review and timelines for energy development projects. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are now planning to attach these requirements to a “must-pass” federal budget resolution.
The deal would likely undermine the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the fundamental law protecting the US environment, which was passed almost unanimously by Congress half-a-century ago. It is expected to greatly shorten the time available to consider whether projects should be given permits for fossil fuel infrastructure – meaning that our local communities simply won’t have time to make effective arguments to pipelines, wells, and other projects that may damage their environment forever.
And it would likely override any local or community demands for sufficient environmental analysis and adequate protections from environmental harm that have impeded fossil fuel projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline through the center of Appalachia, promising devastation for those who have already suffered the destruction of strip mining and mountaintop removal mining.
A recent letter on behalf of 653 frontline communities and environmental and other organizations to the Senate and House Democratic leadership calls for them to “unequivocally reject any effort to promote fossil fuels, advance unproven technologies, and weaken our core environmental laws” and to “stand with the communities who continue to bear the brunt of harm from fossil fuels and act to prevent wholesale climate disaster.”
LNS calls on unions and other labor organizations to stand with the frontline environmental justice communities whose wellbeing and very existence is threatened by this proposal.
LNS’s new Executive Director Larry Williams stated:
“We call on unions and other labor organizations to stand with their own members who require protection from rapacious corporations who are eager to take advantage of this proposal in order to destroy the communities of which workers are part.”
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author.
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