The fossil fuel demand-reducing portions of the bill work at cross purposes with the fossil fuel leasing provisions. It’s an odd way to write legislation, but if that’s what it takes to pass the most important climate bill ever, so be it. As I’ve
written before, ending U.S. oil and gas production is not the way to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The world has plenty of oil and gas (even though it doesn’t feel that way right now) and the United States will import whatever it doesn’t produce, perhaps from countries with lower environmental standards and higher greenhouse gas emissions profiles than our own. Fighting fossil fuel demand is the way to lower emissions, and this bill does just that.