An estimated 137 plant, animal & insect species are lost EVERY DAY due to deforestation. That's 50,000 species a year. We are watching extinction in real time. Source: Rainforest Alliance / UN estimates
#News: #Trees are even cooler than we thought! 🌳🦠 #Research reveals #microbes in tree bark EAT greenhouse gases like #methane and #carbon monoxide. #Forests are giant air filters 🌍💚 #ClimateActionNow #NatureIsAmazing #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect.bsky.social www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01...
Blue tit singing on a cold early morning. You can even see its song in the air. [📷 Mikhail Kalinin] Original post
At Risk? They HAVE all of Our Data. It's Not Risk, It's Reality. ...and they Gave peter thiel access to all of Our Passport Data.
I created an email account specifically for Social Security. I get spam email from trump pac on that email. When does the class action suit begin? 
Trump wants you to know: #BAAJA means dirty pipelines, mines, power plants, and data centers everywhere. Tell Congress: nodirtydatacenterdeal.com
@savetheboundarywaters.org @bwca.bsky.social URGENT Call/text/write yr senators to vote NO on BAAJA (S. 5653) Monday Nov 9 BAAJA guts all US environmental law, locks in mining & data center projects ON PUBLIC LANDS, disallows public comment. No judge, no future administration can undo it.
Contact your elected officials today! Thank you for everything you do 💚 bsky.app/profile/doct...
Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they)@doctorvive.bsky.social · 3d agoContact your Senators and your House Representative and tell them to vote NO on BAAJA! You can do so here👇 It's quick and easy! Our climate and public lands will thank you. 💚 actionnetwork.org/letters/stop...
But BAAJA apparently makes that future illegal. It takes us in the opposite direction to where we need to go on climate and energy. Everyone who cares about the human future should fight this bill whole heartedly.
And this means that one day, alongside systematic legislative action in Congress, we will need our President and executive agencies like the EPA to display “disparate treatment” against fossil energy.
Here is the thing. We actually do need to phase out fossil fuels in order to halt global heating — at whatever temperature. One day — and that day cannot come soon enough — the U.S. might get started on that epochal project.
David Bookbinder — a lawyer at the Federalist Society for god’s sake! — really lights his hair on fire over this:
![Bookbinder is less circumspect. He states flat out that "This effectively insulates not only the construction, but "the operation at full capacity" of all existing fossil fuel infrastructure from any future regulatory action of any sort. That means, for example, no increased stringency in federal environmental regulatory requirements under any statute — the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, etc. can ever be applied to such projects. But it goes well beyond that — the clause barring the federal government from 'tak[ing] any other action to interfere with or prevent' construction or operation means these facilities are immune from enforcement of any federal law that would
'interfere with' the construction or 'operation at full capacity' of any such infrastructure. (Nor is this provision limited to fossil fuel infrastructure; it applies just as well to steel mills, highways, etc.) In other words, a single federal permit or authorization under any one federal law effectively immunizes that project from adverse effects from changes in (1) that federal law; (2) any other federal
environmental law; and (3) any federal law at all."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:xalxqffcayyidntafmptzhta/bafkreiekctb5hph3ebdxuqshphj3td5g4npumrhf45vpvnkjhrixid7xsi)
Just as bad, or perhaps even worse, the bill makes it illegal for agencies to take climate action — or, as Harvard’s Jody Freeman puts it: “The permitting shield provisions appear to restrict agencies from updating rules & permits to protect public health, as existing laws require them to do.”
![This is the language at issue: "[A] Federal department or agency shall not take any new action that would revoke, rescind, withdraw, terminate, suspend, amend, or alter a Federal authorization or permit in effect on or after September 16, 2026, or take any other action to interfere with or prevent the construction or operation at full capacity of a project that has secured all necessary Federal authorizations and permits[.J" Professor Gerrard asks about this passage: "Would 'action to interfere with or prevent the construction or operation at full capacity of a project' include generally-applicable restrictions, such as those for air pollution, methane leakage, noise, or worker safety? Would it block future efforts to control emissions from coal-burning power plants, petroleum refineries, and cement kilns?"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:xalxqffcayyidntafmptzhta/bafkreihdxnthd3fldfdtwmanueqelgc4y7tdcf7lihx7wd5tnpkgokzyc4)
So, in short, BAAJA establishs a standard of “disparate treatment” that is irrevocably biased towards fossil energy.
Conversely BAAJA allows Trump’s climate denying EPA to issue permits to super-polluting behind-the-meter methane gas power plants — which they are already doing — and then it locks those permits forever into place. Matthew Littleton, Dep Asst AG at the Justice Department under Biden notes 👇
!["Portable turbines (mini power plants on trailers) are in the news because data centers use them as behind-the-meter power sources ...
Under current law, porta-turbines are
'stationary sources' that cannot operate without an EPA permit that limits the air pollution turbines can emit ... EPA can mail letters to porta-turbine owners 'determining' that they don't need a stationary-source permit to operate. EPA can also mail letters to data centers
'determining' that porta-turbine emissions won't count as pollution from their facilities.
The bill defines negative 'determinations' like these as Federal authorizations or permits.
[BAAJA] Section 1401 stops EPA from reversing them except in narrow circumstances."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:xalxqffcayyidntafmptzhta/bafkreifefuxf6po2o3kdnzjbhe2qqvvdkc3f7scvpuuoipvhup4bkdk6dy)
With Trump continuing his blockade, the standard of "disparate treatment" will be forever biased by his suppression of clean energy moving forward.
Do we think that would make Trump hesitate for one second to block clean energy projects for fear that taxpayers would bear the costs? We do not.
If BAAJA passes, and if Trump keeps on blocking clean energy projects, and if clean energy companies sue and win their suits, all that would happen is that taxpayers would pay them back for up to the entire cost of the construction of their project — potentially hundreds of millions of dollars.
And look at what happens if a developer is able to prove disparate treatment: they got full costs *from taxpayers – from us!
The “disparate treatment” standard will be implemented in 2027, by which time the baseline will be dominated by Trump's and the Republicans’ suppression of clean energy. 😱
Any new information that was brought to light during a NEPA lawsuit would be inadmissible in the very suit at issue.
![It gets worse. Any new information that was brought to light during remand would be inadmissible in the very NEPA suit at issue. Justin Pidot, General Counsel for Biden's White House Council on Environmental Quality, explains: "Section 111 [of BAAJA] provides that an authorization [a permit] remains 'in effect' during a remand, and a provision in another title of BAAJA addressing project certainty prohibits an agency from revoking or modifying any authorization that is 'in effect.' [There is yet another provision that] allows an agency to modify an authorization to prevent 'specific, urgent, substantial, and proximate harm or damage to life, property, national security, or defense, but because it can only be invoked based on 'new information' that was 'not considered in the underlying environmental review process, it could never justify amending an authorization based on additional analysis performed on remand in the environmental review." In other words, any information discovered during remand would be
inadmissible because it would always already be considered part of the completed environmental review. Twisty!](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:xalxqffcayyidntafmptzhta/bafkreiftlye5lxves42a3bjrf56mnpqs5juun5nejo42lgh3di5jebvhfy)
And even if new fossil-fuel infrastructure or a new data center would be subject to environmental review under BAAJA, NEPA would be so thoroughly dismantled that the outcome of the review would most often no longer stop a polluting project from being built.
![citizens who could seek relief. And then, even if they brought a suit, the court would not put the disputed project on hold; it would simply
"remand" the project back to the agency that issued the permit while allowing the construction to continue — potentially razing a stand of trees or filling in a wetland or doing some other irreversible damage while the suit is being decided. Professor Sivas notes that "this language, if enacted, effectively guts the core purpose and effect of NEPA [which is] to compel agency decisionmakers to consider and potentially mitigate a project's environmental effects before activity goes forward."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:xalxqffcayyidntafmptzhta/bafkreidwc3wr2iglzere7ee3tjd2qihqfk4abzptiaxpajbnmyescghqgq)
A 🧵 about why #BAAJA is dangerous. First of all, BAAJA exempts the expansion of existing fossil-fuel infrastructure from environmental review.
![Indeed, scholars at Columbia's Center on Global Energy Policy point out that "the pipeline provisions" in the bill "could matter most." The exemptions for work on existing pipelines could, they say, "allow considerably more expansion of existing pipelines to proceed without either individual FERC approval or environmental review." Furthermore, they suggest that one particular provision in the bill
- "Section 1102's exclusion for actions
'associated with' that [expansion] work -
"omits Section 2102(b)'s geographic limits and could extend beyond existing corridors" What this means is that BAAJA could allow Big Tech, say, to extend methane-gas pipelines from existing corridors directly to behind-the-meter power plants at their data centers without being subjected to any environmental review or community input.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:xalxqffcayyidntafmptzhta/bafkreihedt3qodk7tw7i6ahkjulnetnox3fcvxh2dde2jjfsxjj4fvhhu4)
I wrote a long newsletter post compiling expert assessments of all the ways that #BAAJA biases fossil fuels and locks that bias in place. There are links to email and call your reps in Congress to TELL THEM TO VOTE AGAINST THIS BILL. 😉 Have a read 👇 mailchi.mp/endclimatesi...
