Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here to subscribe.November 16, 2021
Biden Signs Trillion Dollar Bipartisan Infrastructure Package
President Joe Biden signed the roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill into law on Monday, marking the biggest public infrastructure investment in over a decade.
The legislation provides ✔ $110 billion for roads and bridges,
֍ nearly $50 billion to protect communities from the impacts of climate change,
✔ $55 billion for water infrastructure including
✔ $15 billion for replacing lead pipes,
✔ $65 billion to improve the electrical grid,
✔ $39 billion for public transit,
✔ $25 billion for airports,
֍ $7.5 billion for EV charging stations, and
֍ $5 billion for hybrid and electric school buses. Nearly all school buses currently
run on diesel, exposing children whose lungs are particularly susceptible to
air pollution to
exhaust fumes, likely the most polluted air they’ll breathe all day, and d
umping more than 5 million tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere every year.
The law also includes nearly $5 billion
to begin to plug, cap, and clean up
orphaned oil and gas wells that
leak planet-heating methane and other pollutants.
The law aims to end the use of infrastructure projects like highways and bridges as instruments of racism, but some worry the law gives states unconcerned with equity considerations too much control. “A fundamental part of this program has always been to have the feds raise money, hand it over to the states and cross our fingers,” Beth Osborne, who was an acting assistant secretary in the Transportation Department during the Obama administration, told the New York Times.
The law contains just a small fraction of the spending to cut American climate pollution included in the Build Back Better Act, which Democrats are hoping to pass before Thanksgiving. (Infrastructure law: AP, NPR, Reuters, Thomson Reuters Foundation, New York Times $, Wall Street Journal $; School buses: TIME; Orphaned Wells: High Country News,
Grist, New Mexico Political Report, Bradford Era, Centre Daily Times; Environmental justice: New York Times $;
Build Back Better: E&E News, The Hill)
Agelbert NOTE: Only in the good old United States of Petroleum can a pollution contaminated site, irresponsibly abandonded without plugging and cleanup by profit over planet oil loving greedballs, be affectionately called an "Orphaned" Oil and Gas Well. Friends, if YOU made that kind of a mess in your yard, the authorities would have a hazmat team sent there quickly, followed by the police charging you with unlawful contamination. The wells spewing
methane and
other (
even MORE toxic - i.e. Cancer causing) contaminants were
🦕 IRRESPONSIBLY 😈 ABANDONED, not "orphaned" by an "unfortunate" bit of Hydrocarbon Business "bad luck". It is absolutely breathtaking how the Hydrocarbon Hellspawn keep getting a free pass from the media for in-our-faces toxic pollution dumping on we-the-people.
"Orphaned " Oil and Gas Well❓❓❓As to "ending the use of infrastructure projects like highways and bridges as instruments of racism" AFTER handing Federal Highways and Bridge Money over to the states and crossing Federal fingers epecting States do their part to end worker and contract infrastructure building racism...
Now let us discuss the Money in the Legislation. There is a problem with trying to make sense of any of the above numbers, which to the average person seem like a lot of money. People tend to say, yeah, billions of dollars for a lot of needed projects is good, so it is all good. Not really. In order to begin to understand the numbers, you need to look at the amounts in proportion to each other. It will then be obvious what got the most "bipartisan" support AND what is mostly happy talk. But that is not the full story. When you learn the number of YEARS the given amounts are spread out over by LAW, then you realize how woefully inadequate this Legislation actually is.
This is piecemeal Legislation, the result of corruption by the forces of Predatory Delay. Incremental steps to solve our Climate Crisis, never mind the increasingly misery producing inequity AND Oligarchic destruction of democracy, will not be enough to avert Catastrophic Climate Change Disaster. May God have mercy on us all.