In the 2021-2022 election cycle, he was the top recipient in Congress of donations from the coal, mining, natural gas, and oil industries. Over the past decade, he’s earned $4.5 million from his stakes in two coal companies, the Intercept reports. Manchin’s pockets are lined with fossil fuel money - both from political donations and personal investments. Politico reported on Wednesday that it may have been Toomey who convinced Manchin to promise to vote nay.īut Manchin’s decision is not unexpected. Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania shared that opinion, accusing Raskin of wanting to “choke off credit to traditional energy companies.” Toomey led a revolt on the Banking Committee in which he and other Republicans repeatedly boycotted a vote on all five of Biden’s Fed nominees due to their disapproval of Raskin. They accused her of having an “agenda at odds with the President’s goal of providing Americans with reliable, affordable energy,” and of scheming to “reshape the entire financial system in ways Congress never intended.” Raskin has suggested that financial regulators could help incentivize the shift away from carbon-intensive assets.Īfter her nomination was announced, 41 oil and gas trade associations wrote a letter to the Senate Banking Committee opposing Raskin.
Climate change poses not only physical threats to the economy via the damage wrought by drought, wildfires, and storms, but also what’s called “transition risk.” The shift to a low-carbon world is already underway, and banks that continue to fund fossil fuels risk ending up with assets that have no value. Raskin has advocated for federal regulators to assess and mitigate climate risks to the U.S. “Her previous public statements have failed to satisfactorily address my concerns about the critical importance of financing an all-of-the-above energy policy to meet our nation’s critical energy needs,” Manchin said in a statement. The reason? Manchin was worried Raskin had it in for the fossil fuel industry. With Raskin receiving zero support from Republicans, and Manchin representing the crucial 50th Democratic vote in the Senate, the announcement torpedoed her nomination. On Monday, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced that he would not vote in favor of confirming Raskin as the Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision. And now, Sarah Bloom Raskin, a nominee to the Federal Reserve Board who aimed to prevent a climate change–fueled financial crisis, has been forced to withdraw. The Supreme Court is expected to curtail the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The president’s signature climate legislation to fund clean energy, the Build Back Better Act, has been held up in the Senate for months. The remaining paths for the Biden administration to usher in a new era of federal climate action are crumbling.
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