Search Results for

As Bloomberg reported on Tuesday morning, the Revolving Door Project and 146 other organizations sent a letter today urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to intervene in response to the recent approval of a widely opposed pipeline expansion project in the Pacific Northwest.

All that this administration has done to make renewables easier and cheaper to build in this country is threatened by the administration’s simultaneous willingness to let U.S. fossil fuel companies continue to extract the massive reserves of oil and gas still in the ground, and, increasingly, to export it abroad. We share one global atmosphere. There is no decarbonizing America—no avoiding climate change reshaping the possibilities for life on this planet—without keeping our massive oil and gas reserves in the ground. 

In response to the Energy Department’s announcement Friday that it has selected seven proposed Hydrogen Hubs to allow to enter negotiations for $7 billion in federal funding, the Revolving Door Project released the following statement.

On Thursday the 19th, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is expected to vote on whether to approve Calcasieu Pass 2, a massive long-term natural gas liquefaction and export facility that intends to export 20 million metric tons of planet-warming methane gas a year. Dodging its responsibility so far to consider the full range of consequences of its infrastructure permitting decisions, FERC looks set to greenlight this monstrosity. As this newsletter will explore, not only are the global climate consequences of new gas export infrastructure enormous, but the immediate impacts are keenly felt by the local community inundated with pollution from the original Calcasieu Pass facility.

The White House announced late last week that the Environmental Protection Agency is launching epa.gov/cancer as part of the Biden administration’s Cancer Moonshot efforts, and will share new information about the EPA’s role in leveraging its existing authorities to “accelerate the rate of progress to prevent cancer, including phase-outs of carcinogens, regulatory actions to protect children, workers and overburdened communities, and enforcement actions to ensure pollution is curbed.” 

The Revolving Door Project released a new Industry Agenda report today examining the executive branch influence agenda of the rapidly growing “clean” hydrogen industry, which is poised to receive tens of billions of dollars under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. 

The roughly 35,800 employees of the federal Forest Service, housed within the Department of Agriculture, are responsible for managing 193,000,000 acres of national forests. The mission of the Forest Service is to “sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.” Yet time and time again, the Forest Service has betrayed this mission in order to service the profit-driven ends of the timber industry, prioritizing commercial timber extraction over recreation and conservation, and ignoring the essential role intact forests play in mitigating our ongoing biodiversity and climate crises. 

On July 25, 2023, military leaders in Niger, along with members of the Presidential Guard, enacted a coup against President Mohamed Bazoum. Led by General Abdourahamane Tchiani, a Nigerien military officer and self-appointed President of Niger’s military junta, coup plotters detained the democratically-elected President Bazoum, as well as members of his family, threatened to kill him in the event of any military intervention in the coup, and most recently put him on trial for treason.

Despite widespread rumors of an emergent coup in the country, the United States was reportedly “blindsided” by it, and scrambled to respond. Of course, American intel regarding the actual political atmosphere of the country was hindered in no small way by the lack of State Department personnel staffing embassies in the region.

Companies have been charging customers a premium for “greener” gas since 2018. But certified gas could become even more lucrative as the Biden administration seeks to update its standards for gas production. Scenting advantage, back in July 2022 11 companies—five gas producers, four methane monitoring and certification companies, one emissions trading company, and one consulting firm—came together to form a new lobbying group: the Differentiated Gas Coordinating Council (DGCC).

Extreme weather is the story of this summer so far, the hottest in 120,000 years. But you wouldn’t know it from following Beltway politics.