Three activists with Beyond Extreme Energy disrupted Thursday’s Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on the nominations of the final two members to join Trump’s FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Committee). One of the arrestees was a 25-year veteran of the agency.
FERC is the agency that approved the expansion of the fracked gas pipeline and the compressor station, the site of the proposed gigawatt Invenergy power plant in Burrillville. Approval by FERC is also required for the National Grid liquefaction facility planned at Fields Point in the Port of Providence.
At Thursday’s committee hearing, when Chairwoman Senator Murkowski asked the nominees, Richard Glick and Kevin McIntyre, to stand, Andrew Hinz also stood and shouted:
Have a conscience! FERC is destroying the atmosphere!
In a prepared statement, Hinz wrote:
“Because I spent 25 years working at FERC, I am compelled to speak out. It is abundantly clear now that natural gas is not a safe bridge fuel. We must divert any proposed investment in fossil fuel infrastructure not required for safety to a rapid transition to sustainable energy. FERC is broken and in dire need of a reset. It must take into account solid, overwhelming evidence of climate impacts and, instead of permitting fossil fuel expansion projects, it must support and aggressively promote incorporation of sustainable energy into our grid. Until FERC is reset, we are witnessing an undemocratic, non-representative process that is merely an extension of the fossil fuel industry and is destroying our atmosphere and poisoning our water. My message to our legislators: find your conscience before it is too late–while there is still time to keep our planet habitable.
Ted Glick, a New Jersey-based activist who was arrested at a similar hearing for Trump’s first two nominees to FERC, stood and repeatedly asked Congress to investigate FERC. The agency’s abuses of law and power have been exhaustively documented by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, which hosted a speak-out at the National Press Club last year.
Fossil Free Rhode Island – 09.08.2017
Posted by Nelson Bailey
0 Comments