Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock belongs to a coalition that has openly called for the U.S. to “end all financing of fossil fuel production,” newly unearthed documents from last year show.
Warnock — who is gearing up for a runoff election against Republican challenger Herschel Walker on Dec. 6 — is pastor to the Atlanta-based Ebenezer Baptist Church, which is a member of the Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC). As recently as 2018, he served as the chair of the convention’s Social Justice Commission.
PNBC is a left-leaning, predominately black denomination that is preoccupied with racial “social justice” issues. While the denomination is allegedly Christian, its focus appears to be entirely on advancing policy prescriptions that are indistinguishable from those of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. This includes advocating for reparations, critical race theory, open borders, ending all military aid to Israel in favor of Palestine, and denouncing the “white supremacy and racism” of Donald Trump.
In 2021, PNBC issued a resolution urging the U.S. to “end all financing of fossil fuel production” due to climate change’s “disproportionate impact on Black Lives.” The resolution further states that the U.S. must invest in a “green new deal” for Africa, “leading to a complete phase-out of oil, gas, and coal financing.”
The resolution describes climate change as a “bi-product of an economic system based on extraction, exploitation, accumulation through dispossession, and systemic racism,” and insists “a Green New Deal … is needed to create equitable solutions for Black communities.”
Warnock himself has also called for the U.S. to move away from fossil fuels. In a 2020 interview with Georgia Conservation Voters, Warnock said “we need to be moving away from an economy that’s based on fossil fuels, that’s the way of the past and we need to be moving toward the future.”
While gas prices and other costs have skyrocketed in the two years since Warnock took office, Warnock — besides limply calling for a gas tax holiday — has done nothing to help bring costs down. In fact, he’s only made it worse, voting against lifting the Biden administration’s ban on domestic oil and gas production on federal lands and voting against moving forward on the Keystone XL pipeline multiple times.
Whether or not Georgians want a senator who inflicts rising energy prices on them to usher in his utopian vision (and who is also part of an explicitly racial denomination that projects more loyalty to Africa than to the United States) is yet to be seen.
