Climate and Environment

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.

Learning about the federal government’s budget process can be daunting. Here are a few key terms to help better understand of the federal budget process as of late.

RDP Senior Researcher Vishal Shankar joins the Ralph Nader Radio Hour to discuss Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s ongoing sabotage of the Postal Service.

This week’s newsletter looks at executive branch attempts to counteract concentrated corporate power across our focus areas – from consumer protection in Big Tech, to housing, to climate regulation. While the FTC and DOJ antitrust division continue to be present in important fights to support consumers and tenants, proactive climate policy continues to be absent, as Biden’s rhetoric regarding challenging climate change rings hollow in areas where the president has considerable discretion.

In efforts to reduce average emissions across the incredibly pollutive transportation sector, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a new tailpipe emissions standard. The new rule functionally mandates automakers to electrify portions of their fleets in order to comply with a reduced average emissions standard for vehicles starting with 2027 new vehicle classes. The proposal, while one of the most significant of the administration’s forays into regulating pollution reductions, has also faced steep criticism from some environmentalists for not going nearly far enough in achieving the 75 percent pollution cut necessary to actually address the climate crisis. On July 11, 2023, however, the American Petroleum Institute (API) led a sign-on letter campaign asking the EPA to roll over to industry on the rule. For far too long corporate feedback has been hugely – and disproportionately – influential for regulators. It shouldn’t be.

TIME released its inaugural TIME100 Climate list last week, which included an eclectic list of business leaders, politicians, artists, and other “leaders” that TIME reporters and editors (and Deloitte, their sponsor) sought to elevate and celebrate for “making significant progress in fighting climate change by creating business value.” 

The Biden Administration announced last month that it had deemed it “necessary” to waive 26 federal laws, including the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, amongst others, in order to move forward with the construction of Trump’s infamous border wall along the US-Mexico border. This decision came after Biden vowed during his 2020 campaign that there would “not be another foot of wall constructed” during his presidency.  

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.