Letter Back from the ‘Clean Energy Future,’ Part C

A Love Letter From the Clean Energy Future, Part C

From an Article by Mary Anne Hitt, Sierra Magazine, January – February, 2021

Third, we stopped attempts to expand drilling while we reclaimed abandoned wells, mines, and drilling sites. The oil and gas industry was in a precarious place as 2020 came to a close. It was struggling to compete with renewable energy, facing the wrath of communities angry about drilling and pipelines, and grappling with dwindling returns from fracking, which made the industry’s finances look more like a pyramid scheme.

Through on-the-ground organizing, we prevented the fossil fuel industry’s last-gasp attempt to establish new markets for its products. We blocked the construction of more than a dozen proposed fracked-gas export terminals and halted the creation of a new “Cancer Alley” of chemical and plastics plants in the Ohio River valley.

We forced the industry to stop drilling next to homes, schools, and communities. And we secured protection from drilling on Indigenous lands, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Bears Ears National Monument.

Meanwhile, we created jobs for thousands of oil, gas, and coal workers. We put 120,000 people to work plugging over 2 million abandoned oil and gas wells and addressing methane leaks that were roasting our planet.

Congress also passed the RECLAIM (Revitalizing the Economy of Coal Communities by Leveraging Local Activities and Investing More) Act to fund reclamation projects and community-led economic development in Appalachia.

## Part D is scheduled for tomorrow on FrackCheckWV.net.

This Article appeared in the January/February edition of SIERRA with the headline “A Love Letter From the Clean Energy Future.”

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See also: Bipartisan RECLAIM Act passes House as part of infrastructure bill | Steve Valk, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, July 8, 2020

The bill was reintroduced in the 116th Congress in April of 2019 by Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA) and accumulated 65 cosponsors, including 14 Republicans. A Senate version of the bill was introduced by Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-WV) and had 6 Democrat cosponsors, but has died in Committee.

Tagged as: clean air, clean energy, climate change, Electric power, energy future, fracking, public health, water pollution