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For Immediate Release
October, 28 2008, 02:24pm EDT
Contact:
Martha Roberts, 303-447-7214, mroberts@edf.org
Tony Kreindler, 202-210-5791, tkreindler@edf.org
Vickie Patton, 720-837-6239, vpatton@edf.org
EDF Calls for Federal Agencies to Value the Benefits of Greenhouse Gas Reductions
New Report Finds Agencies Neglect Economic Upside of Global Warming Pollution Cuts
WASHINGTON
Environmental
Defense Fund (EDF) called on the federal government today to value the
benefits of global warming pollution cuts under significant new
regulations, finding in a study that agencies consistently neglect
the benefits of greenhouse gas reductions when they assess the
economics of new rules.
"It's common sense that federal agencies should evaluate the potential climate benefits of major new regulations," said Martha Roberts, an EDF economic policy analyst.
"By neglecting the economic benefits of global warming pollution
reductions, we're missing important and efficient opportunities to
achieve climate security."
When
significant new rules are developed, government-wide policy
administered by the White House calls for federal agencies, in many
cases, to assess the benefits and costs of the new rules. The results
of these economic analyses can determine the design of the final rule.
A new EDF report, Carbon Counts (https://edf.org/article.cfm?contentID=8722), reviews
the economic assessments performed for the Department of
Transportation's fuel economy standards, the Department of Energy's
furnace efficiency standard, and the Environmental Protection Agency's
small engine emission standards. The selection among the different
regulatory options considered for these rules has significant
implications for global warming pollution. Yet across the board, these
standards neglected the value of reducing greenhouse gas emissions,
overlooking cost-effective opportunities to cut pollution.
"The
Department of Energy heralded the greenhouse gas reductions from its
furnace efficiency standards, yet omitted the value of climate
protection in actually developing the foundation of the rule," Roberts
said. "By relegating the benefit of a stable
climate to window dressing, the Agency may have missed important and
efficient opportunities to reduce global warming pollution."
The
Department of Transportation conducts an analysis of benefits and costs
to determine the appropriate fuel efficiency standard. If
the Agency fundamentally discounts the value of greenhouse gas
reductions in its analysis, it will again fail to secure the full
societal benefits of stronger fuel efficiency standards for energy
security and climate security.
Environmental Defense Fund's mission is to preserve the natural systems on which all life depends. Guided by science and economics, we find practical and lasting solutions to the most serious environmental problems. We work to solve the most critical environmental problems facing the planet. This has drawn us to areas that span the biosphere: climate, oceans, ecosystems and health. Since these topics are intertwined, our solutions take a multidisciplinary approach. We work in concert with other organizations -- as well as with business, government and communities -- and avoid duplicating work already being done effectively by others.
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Election Day Sweep for Dems Just Predictable Blue State Wins? Local, State Races Tell Different Story
In addition to high-profile victories in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, Democrats came away with upset wins in Georgia and Mississippi.
Nov 05, 2025
Leading Republicans such as US House Speaker Mike Johnson and right-wing media outlets like Fox News are trying to downplay Democrats' sweeping victories in key elections held on Tuesday, even though many of the party's victories came in areas that are not traditional Democratic strongholds.
Speaking in Washington, DC on Wednesday morning, Johnson dismissed the Democratic wins as entirely predictable given the recent voting histories of New York, New Jersey, and Virginia.
"There's no surprises," Johnson said. "What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming. And no one should read too much into last night's election results. Off-year elections are not indicative of what's to come, that's what history teaches us."
Mike Johnson: "What happened last night is blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming. And no one should read too much into last night's election results." pic.twitter.com/AO72p71Zsj
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 5, 2025
But despite Johnson's claims, Democrats on Tuesday also won major victories in two southern states that supported President Donald Trump in the 2024 general election.
As reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson ousted incumbent Republicans serving on Georgia's Public Service Commission, which is responsible for regulating utility prices in the state.
According to The New York Times, this will mark the first time that any Democrat has served on the commission since 2007, and it came after the commission signed off on six rate increases for the state's largest electricity provider over the past two years.
The Times also reported that Georgia Republicans are worried that the twin losses in Public Service Commission are an ill omen for next year's elections, when the GOP will seek to oust Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and maintain its hold on the governor's mansion.
In an interview with Politico, one Republican strategist said that the Democrats' wins in Georgia showed the challenges facing the GOP in getting low-propensity Trump voters to the polls in elections where he is not on the ballot.
"The one thing that would worry me, besides making sure you hold the House, is looking at how Democrats were able to fire up their base in some of these local elections in Georgia," they said.
In Mississippi, meanwhile, Democrats broke the GOP's supermajority in the state Senate for the first time in over a decade by flipping three seats. According to Mississippi Free Press, losing the Senate supermajority will make it significantly harder for the Mississippi Republicans to "override a governor’s veto, propose constitutional amendments, and execute certain procedural actions."
While Democrats in the state celebrated the wins, Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Cheikh Taylor warned that it could be undone if the US Supreme Court strikes down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that has historically been used to create of majority-minority districts to ensure Black voters in southern states have proper representation.
"Last night's victory proves that Mississippi is no longer a foregone conclusion—we are a battleground state," Taylor said. "But this win was only possible because the Voting Rights Act ensures fair representation. If the Supreme Court dismantles these protections, we risk silencing the very voices that made last night’s historic outcome possible. As voters continue to reject Trump's agenda in 2026 and 2027, we must protect the fundamental right that makes change possible: The right to vote."
While the wins in Georgia and Mississippi were impressive on their own, data analyst G. Elliott Morris found that shifts toward Democrats weren't confined to any individual state or city, but were incredibly broad.
Writing on his Substack page, Morris revealed that "almost every single county" in Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Georgia in this week's elections moved toward Democrats compared to how they voted in 2024.
"What we saw last night was a directional shift toward Democrats in 99.8% of counties that held partisan elections," Morris explained. "With few exceptions, voters everywhere moved to the left from 2024 to 2025."
What's more, Morris found that the shift toward Democrats wasn't simply the result of having lower turnout elections, which typically are beneficial to the party out of power.
"Average turnout in [New Jersey and Virginia] was close to 80% of 2024 levels, which is impressive for an off-off-year election—and the swing to Democrats there was still 7-8 points," he explained. "So I wouldn’t dismiss the results of last night just because low-turnout-propensity voters stayed home. There's evidence of both persuasion and turnout effects in last night’s contests."
David Smith, the Guardian Washington, DC bureau chief, writes in his analysis of election day that "the results were in part a referendum on Trump, whose approval rating has never been lower," and he added that the president was displaying stark political vulnerabilities just one year into his second term.
"His authoritarian grandstanding is a show of weakness rather than strength," he wrote. "From ICE raids and tariffs to his $300 million White House ballroom, his presidency is deeply unpopular. Are you better off than you were a year ago? Voters said no."
Even still, warned Smith, it's important that Democratic leaders don't mistake anger at Trump for glowing enthusiasm for their work atop the party, which remains at historic lows.The results on Tuesday were "never going to solve the riddle" of which direction the Democrats should head, he wrote, with both "progressives and moderates" provided "fodder to make a case" for their respective approach to politics.
For progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who spoke to MSNBC from New York at Mamdani's victory party, the Democrats need to understand that the party "does not have one face," but that everyone who wants to defeat Trump and the fascist Republicans "all understand the assignment" before them.
“Our assignment everywhere is to send the strongest fighters for the working class wherever possible," she said. "In some places, like Virginia, for the gubernatorial seat, that’s going to look like Abigail Spanberger. In New York City, unequivocally it is Zohran Mamdani.”
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California Voters Pass Prop 50, Punching Back at Trump in Gerrymandering Fight
"The blowout showed how showing up to fight is the most important thing in Democratic politics right now," wrote David Dayen at The American Prospect.
Nov 05, 2025
The people of California dealt a huge counterpunch to Republican efforts to gerrymander their way to a 2026 midterm victory, voting overwhelmingly on Tuesday for new congressional maps that are expected to net Democrats an additional five seats in the next US House elections.
Republicans have appeared on track to cling to power after President Donald Trump pushed red states to carry out largely unprecedented mid-decade redistricting efforts. New maps enacted or approved in Texas, Ohio, Missouri, and North Carolina were expected to net the GOP an extra nine seats that may have proven decisive in holding off a blue wave next November.
But on Tuesday, as Democrats romped up and down the ballot nationwide, more than 5.1 million California voters almost singlehandedly stymied the Republican advance in its tracks, passing Proposition 50 with nearly 64% of the vote, and approving new maps drawn up by Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Democrats with a more aggressive partisan gerrymander.
David Dayen, the executive editor of The American Prospect, wrote on social media that in one fell swoop, the Democrats "have largely neutralized Trump's gerrymandering push."
However, he noted that the GOP could grab a possibly insurmountable advantage if the US Supreme Court votes to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, effectively legalizing racial gerrymandering and, in the process, potentially netting Republicans at least 19 more seats.
Notably, California's maps only needed to be approved by voters in the first place to override those drawn up by the state's independent redistricting commission, which was also created by a ballot measure in 2008. Meanwhile, the new maps drawn in red states have been enacted by state legislatures without voter approval.
As the champion of Prop 50, Newsom argued that desperate times called for desperate measures, saying it was a necessary counter to Trump's "attempt to rig the 2026 election and redistrict his way out of accountability in states like Texas.”
On Tuesday night, after Prop 50's resounding passage, Newsom told a gathering of California Democrats in Sacramento that the party was "on its toes, no longer on its heels."
The passage of Prop 50 may give other blue states a shot in the arm to pursue their own mid-decade gerrymanders and further chip away at the GOP advantage.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has signaled her support for the state pursuing its own redistricting, and a constitutional amendment has been proposed to override the state's independent, bipartisan redistricting commission.
In Virginia, Democratic leaders have passed the first round of a constitutional amendment to give the legislature emergency powers to redraw maps, an effort that remained viable after Democrats held onto the state’s House of Delegates in Tuesday’s elections.
Earlier this week, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore also announced the creation of a new bipartisan commission to target the state's one remaining GOP district, though some Democrats have criticized the effort as a risky gambit that could backfire and benefit Republicans.
Regardless, Dayen believes that the result in California is a decisive indication of the more confrontational approach Democratic voters are looking for in the second Trump era.
"Prop 50 was called the moment polls closed in California," he wrote. "The blowout showed how showing up to fight is the most important thing in Democratic politics right now."
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'No, Not This Time': Combat Veteran Graham Platner Doesn't Mourn for Dick Cheney
"The only legacy we have to remember," said the Maine candidate for US Senate about the former vice president, "is that he wasted thousands of young American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and trillions of dollars for absolutely nothing."
Nov 05, 2025
Graham Platner, the US combat veteran and oyster farmer running for the Democratic nomination to defeat Republican US Senator Susan Collins of Maine in next year's election, is not interested in mourning the life and legacy of reviled war criminal Dick Cheney, though he does have "some thoughts" on the subject.
While Democratic leaders of the old guard such as Barack Obama and Kamala Harris issued statements Tuesday fawning over Cheney's service to country, contributing to the familiar hagiography that typically follows the demise of even the worst American leaders the nation has inflicted on the world, Platner stuck a distinctly different tone.
"Usually, when a former vice president passes, we all take some time to mourn," Platner says in a video posted to social media Tuesday. "As a veteran of the Iraq war, I’m going to say: No, not this time."
Platner, who served in the US Marines and in the US Army during multiple combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed back against the pattern of whitewashing the misdeeds of the dead, especially for elected leaders never held to account.
"Over the next couple days, I'm sure there are going to be thousands of think pieces about his legacy," said Platner, "but the only legacy we have to remember is that he wasted thousands of young American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and trillions of dollars for absolutely nothing."
Some thoughts on Dick Cheney and his legacy. pic.twitter.com/vY7S3nu2nt
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) November 4, 2025
"If we take anything" from Cheney's death, continued Platner, "it should be that we need to build a politics that keeps the politicians, like Susan Collins, who support illegal foreign wars like the one in Iraq, accountable and get them out of office."
Platner has spoken at length about his time on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and how, after multiple tours, he became not only disillusioned with the wars but also incredibly angry over the foreign policy decisions that started them.
Cheney, who served as VP under former President George W. Bush, has long been seen as the chief architect and driving force behind the effort to manipulate the US public into backing the invasion of Iraq in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, despite Iraq having nothing to do with the plot.
Cheney infamously said after 9/11 it would be time to "take off the gloves," which resulted in a torture regime operated by the CIA and war crimes across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond at the direction of the Bush administration.
Bob Brigham, a self-identified progressive from Montana, was among those who applauded Platner for his statement.
"Dick Cheney was a war criminal who cost my buddy his life in Iraq," said Brigham in a social media post. "Platner has a pitch-perfect remembrance of the a-hole. May Dick Cheney roast in hell!"
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