API response to COVID demands protecting polluters over people

“During a public health crisis, it’s obscene for the oil and gas industry’s trade association to suggest that its members shouldn’t have to comply with oversight intended to protect the public. But that’s what the American Petroleum Institute requested of the Trump Administration.

“Although the COVID crisis is new, there’s nothing new about the oil and gas industry’s desire for weak oversight. API lobbied hard against climate and health safeguards before this global pandemic and economic downturn, and they will do so after.

“A nation of the people, by the people, for the people should protect the people, not the polluters.”

Background

On March 20th, the American Petroleum Institute sent a letter to the White House requesting exemptions from regulatory oversight during the COVID crisis.

• Background on Community Empowerment Project and OGI FLIR camera used by Earthworks’ certified Thermographers.
• The federal government should provide substantial support — to people, not corporations. And especially not to the oil and gas industry. To the extent that government resources are spent to support any industry, they should be invested in a just transition toward a more resilient and sustainable clean energy economy. Any dollar we spend propping up the oil and gas industry doesn’t just reward its investment in climate change denial that led us into our (still ongoing) climate crisis, it is a dollar we steal from a sustainable future.