Trump’s fossil fuel–loving nominee gets top job at FERC

The U.S. Senate just confirmed Bernard McNamee to the empty seat on the Federal Energy and Regulatory Commission, which oversees the transportation and sale of energy between states. Since President Trump nominated McNamee in October, videos have surfaced showing McNamee calling fossil fuels “key to our way of life” and falsely claiming renewables “screw up the whole physics of the grid.” (Reminder: Renewables are key to save our planet from cataclysmic climate change—and nearly all scientists agree.) Such clear bias would be enough to warrant concern, but McNamee also worked as head of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Policy, which spearheaded consideration of the federal coal and nuclear bailout plan. McNamee’s new role as FERC commissioner may sound boring and bureaucratic, but the stakes are high: Just five commissioners are responsible for greenlighting interstate natural gas pipelines—a backlog of which Republicans have been pushing to get approved.