Climate and Environment

February 15, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter

Hannah Story Brown Emma Marsano

Newsletter

Climate and EnvironmentEthics in GovernmentGovernance

The Value of a Human Life, According to Economists

Last week a shocking story from NPR largely slipped under the radar. The headline: “Why the EPA puts a higher value on rich lives lost to climate change.” Climate Correspondent Rebecca Hersher shared the “twisted tale of math, ethics and climate change” that is the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to decide what’s been called the most important number you’ve never heard of: the social cost of greenhouse gases. 

February 03, 2023

Hannah Story Brown

Blog Post

2020 Election/TransitionAdministrative LawClimate and EnvironmentDepartment of JusticeGovernance

Revolving Door Project Reading List: The Justice Department

The Justice Department was deliberately weaponized under Trump to advance and defend his corrupt agenda. How successfully has Biden’s Justice Department, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, replaced Trump appointees and policies, and charted a new course towards a more just interpretation and application of the law? Below, we’ve compiled a non-comprehensive reading list of some of our work from the past year plus on the Justice Department, and its all-important, uneven progress out of Trump’s long shadow.

February 01, 2023 | Talking Points Memo

Dorothy Slater Hannah Story Brown

Op-Ed Climate and EnvironmentHealth

Biden Should Wed His Cancer Moonshot To The Energy Transition

But succeeding at his Cancer Moonshot’s goals will require more than funding research into cancer treatments. As the first day of February marks the beginning of National Cancer Prevention Month, it’s worth acknowledging that cancer prevention requires different approaches than treatment, and must include a reckoning with the carcinogens that pervade our environment. If Biden really wants to fight cancer in America, he’s going to have to challenge the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries. Among other things, this means confronting an Achilles heel of the Democratic Party: domestic fracking.

January 18, 2023

KJ Boyle

Blog Post Climate and EnvironmentDefenseIndependent Agencies

Good News, Everyone! Space Force Has An Astronomical Budget

Congress passed a $1.7 trillion omnibus bill, ensuring that our government is funded for Fiscal Year 2023. You probably haven’t seen the amount given to the most stellar agency: Space Force. Thankfully, Congress listened to the space advocates and appropriated the Space Force the money we’ve all been begging for – $26.29 billion. Americans can now sleep soundly knowing the Space Force has an overflowing pocketbook to protect us from aliens and whatnot.

January 11, 2023 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter

Hannah Story Brown KJ Boyle

Newsletter 2022 ElectionClimate and EnvironmentExecutive BranchGovernanceGovernment CapacityIndependent Agencies

Government Spending and its Discontents

We spent October highlighting the perpetual underfunding of most federal departments and agencies, and urging Congress and the Biden administration to use December’s omnibus bill to finally provide them with the money and resources they need. Sadly, while appropriations did increase for FY2023, budgets consistently fell short of what agencies requested. The most jarring example may be the Department of Housing and Development (HUD), whose budget is a whopping $16 billion shy of the requested $77.8 billion. Biden recently announced his goal to cut homelessness by 25 percent in the next two years, but it’s hard to see how even this meager goal will be achieved without a fully funded HUD.

December 19, 2022 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter

Emma Marsano

HackwatchNewsletter

Climate and EnvironmentEthics in GovernmentHack WatchRevolving Door

Meet the former Biden Advisor Using “Climate Advocacy” as a Trojan Horse for Corporate Interests

With the Senate’s rejection of Senator Joe Manchin’s permitting reform legislation as a notable exception, last week was a bad one for fossil fuel disasters and corporate accountability. In Kansas, a Keystone pipeline leak caused the largest US crude oil spill in a decade. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, investigators found ongoing gas leaks in Equitrans’ pipeline storage facilities that released massive amounts of methane in November — enough to erase 50% of emission gains from US electric vehicles sales this year. 

December 07, 2022 | Revolving Door Project Newsletter

Hannah Story Brown

Newsletter

Climate and EnvironmentCongressional OversightDefenseDepartment of Justice

Pipeline Permits, Border Walls, and the Nightmare at Red Hill

Simply put, we would ask for more rigor from the wonks who would like a say in how we redesign America’s energy systems. The challenge is massive, yes: to better serve more people with more efficient, less wasteful, less toxic energy infrastructure, while restraining the human footprint on the planet, so that other forms of life can also thrive. But it is also an energizing challenge, and eminently worthy of human effort. Any theory of climate change mitigation that is inflexible and unimaginative enough to involve bulldozing those who stand in its way is just another partial paradise, a green veil thrown over the same extractive relationships that got us here.