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The Undead Dirty Deal: How to Fast Track Clean Energy

In 2022, Greenpeace USA joined 750 organizations in a historic effort to block Senator Joe Manchin’s Dirty Deal — a plan that would fast track oil and gas projects across America — not once, not twice, but three times. In 2023, the Dirty Deal wormed its way into the debt ceiling bill and was passed by both the House and the Senate.

Actor and Activist, Jane Fonda, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Anthony Rogers-Wright from New York Lawyers for the Public Interest share what the Dirty Deal means for our health, communities, and democracy; explore what’s next; and discuss how we can re-center true solutions to fast tracking clean energy that are rooted in science and justice.

Since 2009, Jeff Merkley has been one of the Senate’s foremost champions for protecting our environment and taking on climate change. He’s won bipartisan support to boost the Green Climate Fund, has used his seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to promote American climate leadership on the global stage, and has led the fight in the Senate against Arctic drilling. Senator Merkley introduced the Keep It in the Ground Act to completely end new fossil fuel leases on our federal lands and waters, and recently championed Senate letters urging President Biden to declare a National Climate Emergency, and opposing Manchin’s permitting reform bill.

Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright serves as New York Lawyers for the Public Interest’s Director of Environmental Justice. In this capacity, he guides and coordinates the organization’s environmental justice strategy, litigation, organizing, and advocacy initiatives. A veteran of social justice campaigns, Anthony helped lead the effort to make the former Colorado Health Insurance Cooperative the first health insurance provider in the state’s history to remove transgender exclusions from all of their policies in 2012. He has acted as a policy advisor for numerous candidates for elected office including Senator Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign in 2020 and Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns in 2020 and 2016 when he represented the campaign during testimony to the DNC Platform Committee. Anthony was selected as one of the Grist.org “50 Environmentalists You’ll Be Talking About” in 2016 and was recognized as one of New York City’s 100 most influential environmental leaders in 2022 and 2023 by City and State Magazine. He serves on the Board of Directors of Friends of the Earth Action, Backbone Campaign, Climate Critical Earth, and Center for Sustainable Economy. He is a proud, participating member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives Black Hive and is blessed to be the father of his energetic and very loquacious 7-year-old son, Zahir Cielo (aka “Bean”).

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