Climate and Environment

Amid a crisis for homeowners, Democrats have done little while Republicans pursue an agenda of bailouts and deregulation.

Biden erred with his renomination of Powell, but if he gets another chance, he must choose a central bank leader dedicated to properly tackling the myriad challenges facing the Fed, which range from price stability and full employment to financial stability and climate-related financial risk.

We focus on the under the radar impacts of corporate control of the Fifth Circuit and Congressional Republicans.

The Biden Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the process of finalizing its Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles. The standard is a little known, but massively important, part of the process necessary to push industrial progression toward a cleaner future. 

If meteorologists could gauge the pressure of climate denial with their barometers, they’d surely have picked up on a remarkable atmospheric phenomenon over Houston, Texas. The annual confab of oil and gas industry executives known as CERAWeek—a safe place for fossil fuel aficionados guarded by exorbitant ticket prices and a no-entry policy for environmentalists—has just wrapped.

The corporate polluters are at it again with a new push for “clean energy”—and against government safeguards to ensure that it’s clean. 

Montana’s top legal officer is flying under the national radar, but his scandals and policy agenda mirror his more infamous peers.

The letter released by several Republican Attorneys General, in response to Biden’s LNG pause, is deeply problematic and entirely baseless.

In response to Thursday’s reporting from E&E News on the Energy Department pushing the Treasury Department to align its clean hydrogen tax credit guidance with industrial polluters’ wishlist, the Revolving Door Project released the following statement: 

Larry Summers’ latest departure raises questions new and old. And we wish Politico had buried this lede, preferably at least six feet deep.

In 2022, Biden’s EPA opened an investigation into Louisiana’s Departments of Health (LDH) and Environmental Quality (LDQ) for failing to sufficiently protect residents of “Cancer Alley”—a strip of predominantly poor, Black communities suffering the dire effects of pollutants spewed from nearby petrochemical plants. To their credit, LDH and LDQ cooperated with the investigation and worked to craft more stringent standards and oversight protocols. Former Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, however, had other ideas. His office filed a lawsuit challenging the EPA’s (clear) authority to pursue its investigation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which allows the government to terminate federal funding for an agency found to have engaged in discrimination. Liz Murrill, Landry’s successor, is picking up the torch to carry on his malevolent agenda. 

Soon after Biden renominated Powell, the ostensibly dovish Fed chair embarked on the most intense and sustained series of rate hikes in decades. We were told that this wouldn’t happen!

Inflation is falling, but Jerome Powell has nothing to do with it. Our democracy and climate face mounting instability—and he has everything to do with that.