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environmental defense fund
Critics Warn Trump Plan for 'Zombie' Coal Plants Will Make Energy Dirtier and Costlier
"The Trump administration is once again putting its thumb on the scale to help old, dirty power sources at the expense of air quality, public health, and higher energy bills," said one opponent.
Jul 08, 2025
Green groups warned Tuesday that the Trump administration's plan to invoke a bogus "energy emergency" in order to keep old, polluting coal-fired plants running will make electricity generation dirtier and more expensive while failing to produce enough power to keep up with surging demand.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Energy published a resource adequacy analysis that includes plans for boosting fossil-fueled electricity generation, including at coal-fired plants. The report cites President Donald Trump's executive orders declaring a national energy emergency and strengthening the reliability and security of the nation's electric grid, and highlights the DOE's plan to classify aging fossil fuel plants as critical to system reliability. The administration is also likely to continue invoking Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act and the Defense Production Act in order to extend the lifespans of older fossil fuel plants.
Although the analysis acknowledges that "old tools won't solve new problems," its methodology supports keeping expensive and polluting coal plants in operation. Dirty coal plants that continue to operate despite economic inefficiencies are sometimes called "zombie" plants.
"More clean energy will make the U.S. grid stronger, more reliable, and more resilient."
Not only does the report fail to state that the burning of fossil fuels is the leading driver of the climate emergency, it does not even mention the word "climate" once in its 73 pages. This tracks with the Trump administration's long-standing proscription of the term "climate change."
"The methodology released today is another attempt to push the false narrative that our country's energy future depends upon decades-old coal and gas plants, rather than clean renewables," said Sierra Club senior attorney Greg Wannier. "The only energy crisis faced by the American public is the catastrophic increase in costs that the Trump administration is forcing on the country's ratepayers."
Wannier noted that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and states "are already well equipped to meet any projected resource needs through the existing regulatory process, which ensures that electricity demand is reliably met at the least public cost."
"Any effort by DOE to override this process to forcibly keep coal plants online past their planned retirements would be an extraordinary and unlawful overreach of its regulatory authority," Wannier added. "It would be particularly harmful and costly to the communities living near these power plants who face the possibility of continued exposure to toxic levels of air and water pollution."
Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for U.S. clean energy at the Environmental Defense Fund, said Tuesday:
The Trump administration is once again putting its thumb on the scale to help old, dirty power sources at the expense of air quality, public health, and higher energy bills for American families and businesses. This time it has issued a methodology that uses dodgy accounting to ignore all the clean energy we have at our disposal—including solar, wind, and battery technologies that are helping meet our nation's energy needs and support the reliability of our electric grid—in order to make a bogus case that these old, dirty power plants are needed. The administration's deeply flawed approach can't hide the fact that clean energy resources are helping keep lights on and lower electricity bills across the country, while keeping old, dirty power plants on life support will mean higher power bills for families and more toxic, cancer-causing pollution in the air we breathe.
The Trump administration has already used the nonexistent energy emergency in a push to fast-track fossil fuel permitting, keep fossil-fueled plants operating, and to wage lawfare against Democrat-controlled states trying to hold Big Oil financially accountable for its role in causing the climate emergency. In 2017, the first Trump administration also moved to bail out financially floundering coal and nuclear plants.
"No matter how they try to gussy it up, bailing out coal or other fossil fuels when low-cost solar and wind power is growing so quickly makes even less sense today than it did in 2017 when the previous Trump administration tried it before," Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in response to the DOE plan.
"It's ironic that the Energy Department is warning about reliability just days after Republicans in Congress repealed the clean energy tax credits," Kennedy added, referring to a provision in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by Trump on Friday.
NRDC cites analysts' predictions that the legislation will reduce additions of the electricity needed to meet rapidly growing demand and raise wholesale electricity prices as much as 25% by 2030 and up to 74% by 2035.
"More clean energy will make the U.S. grid stronger, more reliable, and more resilient—all while saving consumers money on their electricity bills," Kennedy said. "Bailing out old, dirty coal, gas, and oil plants would mean higher costs and a less reliable grid."
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EPA Praised for Boost to 'Lifesaving' Protections From Chemical Incidents
One campaigner called it "a foundational step toward protecting the health and safety of communities and workers on the fenceline of the petrochemical industry."
Mar 01, 2024
Hazardous chemical incidents such as explosions, fires, and toxic releases happen almost daily in the United States, often at fossil fuel facilities, and the Biden administration won praise on Friday for stepping up safeguards for impacted communities.
Dionne Delli-Gatti, associate vice president of community engagement at Environmental Defense Fund, was among the public health and environmental justice advocates applauding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for what she called "a foundational step toward protecting the health and safety of communities and workers on the fenceline of the petrochemical industry."
The agency finalized changes to a Risk Management Program (RMP) that covers 11,740 facilities across the country. Noting that many communities "vulnerable to chemical accidents are in overburdened and underserved areas," EPA Administrator Michael Regan framed the rule as a key piece of the administration's "commitment to advancing environmental justice."
"The new rule, while not perfect, will go a long way to protect people's health."
Accidental releases from RMP facilities cost over $540 million annually and highly impact approximately 131 million people who live within three miles of such sites—including 44 million earning less than or equal to twice the poverty level, 32 million who identify as Hispanic or Latino, and 20 million who identify as Black or African American, according to EPA estimates.
"Over 1 in every 3 schoolchildren in the U.S. attends a school within the danger zone of these facilities. Children are uniquely vulnerable to the health impacts caused by toxic chemical exposures such as respiratory illnesses and cancers," said Moms Clean Air Force vice president Dominique Browning. "Moms—and all caregivers—support EPA's important step in the strengthening of the Risk Management Program. We urge EPA to swiftly implement and enforce the new rules to help protect the health and safety of all children."
As the EPA summarized, the amendments include:
- Requiring a safer technologies and alternatives analysis, and in some cases, implementation of reliable safeguard measures for certain facilities in industry sectors with high accident rates;
- Advancing employee participation, training, and opportunities for employee decision-making in facility accident prevention;
- Reiterating the allowance of a partial or complete process shutdown in the event of a potential catastrophic release;
- Implementing a process to allow employees and their representatives to anonymously report specific unaddressed hazards;
- Requiring third-party compliance audits and root cause analysis incident investigation for facilities that have had a prior accident;
- Enhancing facility planning and preparedness efforts to strengthen emergency response by ensuring chemical release information is timely shared with local responders and a community notification system is in place to warn the community of any impending release;
- Emphasizing the requirement for regulated facilities to evaluate risks of natural hazards and climate change, including any associated loss of power; and
- Increasing transparency by providing access to RMP facility information for communities nearby.
"While there is certainly more that must be done to prevent chemical disasters, EPA's rule is a major step forward for ensuring that the most hazardous facilities implement safer technologies and provide greater public access to information," said Earthjustice attorney Kathleen Riley. "We urge industry to implement these lifesaving measures without delay."
Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which brings together labor unions and environmental groups, also welcomed the update, stressing that "a strong RMP rule empowers workers and saves lives. It protects workers and emergency responders and safeguards communities in the shadow of these chemical facilities."
Jennifer Jones, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Center for Science and Democracy, pointed out that "the previous administration severely weakened those rules, depriving communities of information about what hazardous chemicals they might be exposed to and rolling back critical safety requirements intended to protect workers at facilities covered by the RMP."
"In recent years, hundreds of chemical incidents have occurred at facilities covered by the RMP—imposing a serious cost to workers and people living in harm's way, as well as to first responders and local governments that have to deal with the aftermath," Jones continued. "The new rule, while not perfect, will go a long way to protect people's health."
The Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters, which has tracked incidents involving hazardous chemicals since January 2021, documented at least 323 events last year, at least 81 of which occurred at RMP facilities.
"We're glad that EPA stood its ground despite strong industry pressure and required more RMP facilities to report on safer chemicals and processes that could be implemented to prevent chemical disasters," Maya Nye, federal policy director at coalition member Coming Clean, said Friday. "This establishes an important precedent."
"We will continue urging EPA to require all RMP facilities to identify and transition to safer chemicals and processes in accordance with the principles laid out in the Louisville Charter for Safer Chemicals, as part of our ongoing work to transform the chemical industry so that it's no longer a source of harm," Nye added.
Michele Roberts, co-coordinator of another coalition member, the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform, celebrated the EPA's new online database for RMP facilities, and highlighted that "communities have been asking for this information for decades."
"We have a right to know whether our houses, schools, and places of worship are threatened by a potential chemical disaster," she said. "We look forward to a time when a database on RMP facility and hazard information will no longer be needed because every facility will have transitioned to safe chemicals and processes, but in the meantime EPA making this critical information more accessible to communities is a huge step."
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Petition Demands EPA Take Action on 'Under-the-Radar' Methane Emissions From Landfills
"Protective landfill standards are an urgently needed addition to other significant actions EPA has recently taken to reduce climate-destabilizing and health-harming pollution," said one advocate.
Jun 22, 2023
Joined by two residents of a community where emissions from landfills have forced them to live in the "center of a toxic wasteland," more than a dozen environmental and community advocacy groups on Thursday filed a petition with the Biden administration calling for a number of specific regulations to address the United States' third-largest source of methane pollution.
A month after the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) published a report detailing how the nation's roughly 1,100 city and county landfills emitted at least 3.7 million metric tons of methane in 2021, the group was joined by the Sierra Club, Black Warrior Riverkeeper, Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), and several other organizations to demand the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) take action.
Javian Baker and Gilda Hagan-Brown, residents of Waggaman, Louisiana, which is adjacent to a landfill, also joined the petition. The emissions coming from the landfill mean that residents' "right to a healthy, safe and clean environment [is] jeopardized," said Hagan-Brown in a statement, and that their "aspirations have been destroyed."
"The foul gassy smell lurking in our neighborhood inhibits me from bringing my fifteen-month-old outside to play," said Baker. "This petition offers a glimpse of hope when politicians in Jefferson Parish and landfill officials have yet to get to the root of the problem impacting our predominately Black community."
Only livestock and natural gas cause more methane emissions than landfills in the U.S., the petitioners noted. Methane has been identified by international climate experts as a key driver of planetary heating. It is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in its first two decades in the atmosphere and 28 times more potent over a 100-year period. Nearly 12% of the United States' contribution to climate change comes from methane emissions, The Hill reported Thursday.
The yearly methane emissions from landfills are equivalent to 295 million metric tons of greenhouse gases over 20-year period, or 66 million gasoline-powered vehicles over a year.
Edwin LaMair, attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund, noted that technological advances in recent years, including the ability to conduct aerial surveys of methane emissions at landfills, offer the EPA "an enormous opportunity to update and strengthen its standards for landfill pollution."
"Landfill pollution poses serious public health threats, and protective landfill standards are an urgently needed addition to other significant actions EPA has recently taken to reduce climate-destabilizing and health-harming pollution," said LaMair.
In its report, Trashing the Climate, last month, EIP noted that landfills contribute to methane emissions mainly due to rotting food waste. Americans throw away roughly 40% of their food and food waste has soared in the last three decades.
The petition calls on the EPA to encourage composting and waste reduction to reduce landfill methane emissions.
The Rocky Mountain Institute explained on social media earlier this week how diverting waste from landfills not only reduces emissions, but also allows the waste to be converted into valuable resources for communities.
The groups on Wednesday also called on the EPA to:
- Require more landfills to install gas collection and control systems, including pipes that collect methane from garbage and covering materials, such as soil, that help absorb and destroy methane;
- Require flares that burn methane at landfills to have at least a 99% destruction efficiency, meaning they burn up almost all of the pollution;
- Require landfills to install gas capture systems within one year after the dumping of waste; and
- Impose better requirements for direct measurement of methane and support the development of equipment that can continuously monitor landfill emissions.
The petition also pointed out that many of the country's landfills are situated in predominantly low-income towns and communities of color.
"Virginia is home to eight 'mega-landfills,' many of which are sited in low-income communities of color," said Anne Havemann, general counsel for CCAN. "These landfills emit huge amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, but have not received the attention they deserve for all the pollution they release. We look forward to EPA taking action on this under-the-radar issue."
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Permian Basin Leaking 14 Times More Methane Than EPA Estimates: Study
"Applying this estimate to all gas gathering pipelines nationwide for illustrative purposes would increase the EPA inventory estimate for the entire natural gas system by 27%," noted co-authors of a new study.
Oct 05, 2022
Pipelines transporting natural gas in the Permian Basin oil field are leaking at least 14 times more methane than the Environmental Protection Agency previously estimated, according to a study published Tuesday.
Scientists at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Stanford University, and the University of Arizona analyzed more than 10,000 miles of gathering pipelines--which transport unprocessed gas from wells to processing facilities--using aircraft with sensors equipped to detect plumes of methane.
Pipelines across the basin--which is located in western Texas and New Mexico and is the largest oil and gas field in the U.S.--are emitting at least 213,000 metric tons of methane per year, meaning 2.7 metric tons per year per kilometer of pipeline. That amount is 14 times greater than the EPA's national inventory has estimated.
"Applying this estimate to all gas gathering pipelines nationwide for illustrative purposes would increase the EPA inventory estimate for the entire natural gas system by 27%," wrote study co-authors Erin Murphy of the EDF and Jevan Yu of Stanford, in a blog post.
"We wouldn't accept these kinds of leaks from hazardous liquids lines and we shouldn't accept them from natural gas pipelines either."
The authors noted that about 50% of the emissions of methane--the potent greenhouse gas which has more than 80 times the heating potential of carbon dioxide in its first two decades in the atmosphere--come from just 15% of the pipelines' largest leaks.
"Finding and fixing a relatively small number of leaks could have significant climate benefits," wrote Murphy and Yu.
The methane emissions leaking from Permian Basin pipelines have a climate impact equal to 3.7 million passenger vehicles and represent enough natural gas to meet the energy needs of 2.1 million homes, noted the scientists, who said the research should push policymakers to strictly regulate gathering pipelines.
While a new rule issued in November 2021 by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) established safety standards for 90,000 miles of gathering lines--a major improvement over the 10,000 miles that had previously been regulated, said Murphy and Yu, "the overwhelming majority of gathering lines remain unregulated, which is inadequate to protect people and the environment."
The analysis was released days after researchers at the University of Michigan published a report showing that the practice of flaring, in which natural gas escaping from fossil fuel wells is burned, releases five times more methane than previously known.
A separate recent study from the University of Reims in France found that methane emissions in the Permian Basin were two to three times higher than companies reported to the EPA.
"It's somehow fitting that our largest oil and gas field shares its name with a major extinction event," said one observer of the latter study.
The United Nations said in a report last year that reducing methane emissions must play a larger role in the fight against the climate crisis. Methane emissions are currently projected to rise through at least 2040, but they could plummet by 45% by 2030 with a major effort to reduce leaks from infrastructure. That reduction could help stop the planet from heating by nearly 0.3degC by the 2040s, according to the United Nations.
"We wouldn't accept these kinds of leaks from hazardous liquids lines and we shouldn't accept them from natural gas pipelines either," said Bill Caram of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a watchdog organization.
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Climate Groups Say Canadian Government 'Bowed to Big Oil' With New Budget
"By relying on future unproven techno-fixes to cut emissions, the government is gambling with our lives."
Apr 08, 2022
Climate campaigners are charging that the federal budget unveiled Thursday by Canada's Liberal government fails to deliver on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's three-year-old promise to bring about a "just transition" from fossil fuels and instead caters to polluters.
"This federal budget is stuck in the mindset of more highways and fossil fuel subsidies."
New Democratic Party (NDP) Leader Jagmeet Singh pledged his caucus will support the 2022 budget, presented by Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland just days after the latest alarming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Meanwhile, activists pointed to the report as evidence that Canada's new budget falls dangerously short of the actions needed by rich governments to avert the most catastrophic impacts of the climate emergency.
"Earlier this week, the world's best scientists put out another IPCC report making it clear that we need to get off of fossil fuels to tackle the climate crisis," 350.org's Katie Perfitt said Thursday. "But, today, Justin Trudeau, backed by the NDP, tabled a budget giving billions of dollars to expensive, ineffective carbon capture technology that does little more than ensure Big Oil will continue to expand fossil fuel production."
"This after he presented a climate plan that would increase tar sands production and gave the green light to the massive Bay du Nord offshore oil project," she noted.
"If this government was serious about climate change, we wouldn't still be waiting for the Just Transition Act that Justin Trudeau promised three years and two elections ago," Perfitt added. "This budget would include billions of dollars funding that transition but instead, we're getting more handouts to Big Oil and more promises to do more on climate change at some other time."
Specifically--as Atiya Jaffar, 350 Canada's digital campaigns manager, wrote in a blog post--under the new budget, "fossil fuel companies investing in carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) would receive over $2.6 billion over the next five years and $1.5 billion annually until 2030."
"This is irresponsible and the opposite of what we need during a climate emergency," Jaffar warned, arguing that "these funds should go towards introducing a bold, ambitious Just Transition Act that retrains fossil fuel workers, creates millions of green jobs, and accelerates community-led climate solutions."
Other campaigners who have been organizing against the CCUS plan were similarly critical following Thursday's announcement.
"Minister Freeland has bowed to Big Oil lobbyists and implemented their carbon capture tax subsidy," declared Julia Levin, senior Climate and Energy Program manager at Environmental Defense. "Carbon capture is not a climate solution--it's a greenwashing strategy used to justify more fossil fuel production and get more taxpayer money into the pockets of executives and shareholders."
"By relying on future unproven techno-fixes to cut emissions, the government is gambling with our lives," Levin added. "Instead of creating yet another fossil fuel subsidy, the government should have invested in proven climate solutions, including renewable energy, efficient affordable housing, and electrification of transportation."
Others also highlighted the need for more transportation funding while noting that the budget recognizes the government's recent $750 million commitment to the Keep Transit Moving coalition.
"It's clear that public transit systems in Canada need long-term support. While the $750 million is welcome and needed, it covers less than two months' worth of what our struggling public transit systems need this year alone," said John Di Nino, president of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Canada.
Dylan Penner, climate and social justice campaigner with the Council of Canadians, emphasized that "Trudeau has been promising a just transition for three years" without following through.
"It's time to deliver," Penner said. "Public transit is a core part of the solution to the climate crisis and can drive much of the systemic transformation that's needed. We need sustained funding and expansion for green municipal public transit and intercity public bus service, but instead, this federal budget is stuck in the mindset of more highways and fossil fuel subsidies."
Canada's 2022 budget features some investments in zero-emission vehicles, renewable electricity, and initiatives to protect oceans and freshwater.
Environmental Defense executive director Tim Gray said that it "contained some hopeful measures, but above all, the federal government should be prioritizing the needs of people over oil and gas corporations. Yet this budget continues Canada's pattern of giving huge windfalls to industrial polluters with limited investment in creating the cleaner future we need and the prosperity that could flow from it."
"The world is facing mounting ecological and humanitarian crises," said Gray. "The time is now for bold, ambitious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, protect our health from chemical pollution in our water and communities, and get rid of single-use plastics."
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Doctor Who Revealed Flint Lead Crisis Calls Benton Harbor Emergency More 'Environmental Injustice'
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha says the Michigan city's water crisis is another example of "how a predominantly poor and minority population disproportionately suffers the burden of environmental contamination."
Oct 12, 2021
As the people of Benton Harbor, Michigan are being advised to drink only bottled water due to lead contamination in the city's pipes, the doctor whose research revealed Flint's lead crisis described similarities between the two emergencies, which she called examples of "environmental injustice" in an interview published Monday.
"There is lead in the water, and there's been lead in the water for too long... and it is absolutely not safe for anyone to be drinking at this time."
The 9,700 residents of Benton Harbor--85% of whom are Black and nearly half of whom are poor--were told last week to not use tap water for drinking, cooking, or bathing after lead concentrations up to 60 times the federal limit were first detected three years ago. That's a higher level of contamination than Flint suffered during its five-year crisis.
"The water is not safe to drink and especially not for children," Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha--the pediatrician whose 2015 study revealed that Flint's children had high levels of lead in their blood after an unelected city manager switched water sources to save money--told Great Lakes Now.
"There is lead in the water, and there's been lead in the water for too long," she added. "We know what lead does, and it is absolutely not safe for anyone to be drinking at this time."
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "Exposure to lead can seriously harm a child's health, including damage to the brain and nervous system, slowed growth and development, learning and behavior problems, and hearing and speech problems. No safe blood lead level in children has been identified."
For three years, community activists have been asking the state to replace Benton Harbor's century-old lead pipes. According to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and other groups, state, county, and local officials have failed to take sufficient action.
"It's baffling how we could be in this situation in Michigan in a majority Black community this soon after the Flint incident started," NRDC senior policy advocate Cyndi Roper told Michigan Live last week.
Last month, Hanna-Attisha joined 19 Michigan and national organizations in filing an NRDC-led emergency petiton with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seeking an immediate source of safe drinking water for Benton Harbor's residents, who the document said "are not only subjected to a disproportionately high level of lead exposure from a variety of sources beyond their drinking water but also often lack access to high-quality healthcare and are exposed to a wide array of other threats that can exacerbate the negative health effects associated with lead exposure."
Asked if she saw similarities between the crises in Benton Harbor and Flint, Hanna-Attisha said that "the most striking similarity is the demographics of the population. Flint was this emblematic example of what environmental injustice is. Of how a predominantly poor and minority population disproportionately suffers the burden of environmental contamination."
"That's what we see in Benton Harbor as well," she continued. "It's a predominantly poor and minority city."
In neighboring St. Joseph, which is 85% white, the water is clean.
"As we take it a step further, it's also a city that was under emergency management," Hanna-Attisha said of Benton Harbor. "It's also a city that lost democracy and has been under-resourced. It has really been a victim of long-standing austerity and racism over time."
In what some critics called an "unconstitutional power grab," then-Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, signed a 2011 law authorizing the appointment of unelected emergency financial managers for some of the state's insolvent cities and towns. Flint's cost-cutting emergency manager was widely blamed for the city's lead crisis.
According to EPA figures cited by the Environmental Defense Fund, 9.3 million U.S. homes receive their drinking water via pipes containing lead, with low-income and communities of color disproportionately affected. Residents of these communities are often ignored when they speak out and seek help. Hanna-Attisha said this is "another example of environmental injustice with the demographics of the population contributing to the disaster."
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Eco 'Sabotage': Trump EPA Issues Last-Minute Rule to Make Action on Climate and Pollution Harder for Biden
"This is an egregious 11th-hour attempt to handcuff the incoming administration and undercut the benefits of clean air—in the worst days of a global health crisis."
Dec 08, 2020
With President Donald Trump's first term soon coming to an end, the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday finalized a rule that critics are calling a last-minute attempt to "sabotage" future efforts by President-elect Joe Biden's incoming administration to tackle the intertwined climate and pollution crises.
Capping off nearly four years of Trump and members of his administration working to roll back over 100 environmental and public health protections in the service of corporate polluters, the new rule changes how the EPA calculates the costs and benefits of new policies on air pollution under the Clean Air Act.
The new requirements, as the Washington Post reports, "instruct the agency to weigh all the economic costs of curbing an air pollutant but disregard many of the incidental benefits that arise, such as illnesses and deaths avoided by a potential regulation. In other words, if reducing emissions from power plants also saves tens of thousands of lives each year by cutting soot, those 'co-benefits' should be not be counted."
Former coal lobbyist and current EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced the finalization during a virtual event with the Heritage Foundation, saying, "thanks to President Trump's leadership, we are ensuring that future rulemakings under the Clean Air Act are transparent, fair, and consistent with EPA governing statutes."
Environmental and public health advocates pushed back against Wheeler's framing, blasting the rule as not only yet another piece of the outgoing administration's deregulatory agenda but also a blatant attempt to hamstring Biden, who ran on a promise to deliver environmental and climate justice.
"For four years, this administration has waged war on public health by kowtowing to polluters," Environmental Working Group president Ken Cook said of Trump's first term. "Now, on the way out the door, this amounts to sabotaging the efforts of the incoming administration to protect Americans from dirty air."
"It will literally be a breath of fresh air to soon have a president and an EPA working each day to make Americans and the planet healthier and safe," he added of Biden's planned January 20 inauguration. "But Administrator Wheeler and President Trump are hellbent on making that job as difficult as possible."
Proposed in June, the final rule comes in the midst of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, noted Chris Saeger, a spokesperson for Accountable.US. Early research has tied air pollution to a heightened risk of dying from Covid-19, which had killed over 288,700 people in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University's tracker.
" Donald Trump must be held accountable for selling out Americans' air quality to big oil companies and fossil fuel lobbyists during a public health emergency," Saeger said. "To restore our nation, the Biden administration must raise standards for the air we breath by rejecting these irresponsible policies that reward the special interests the Trump administration used to work for."
Emily Davis, senior attorney in the Natural Resources Defense Council's Climate & Clean Energy Program, also called on the next administration to forge a new path on pollution policy.
"This is an egregious 11th-hour attempt to handcuff the incoming administration and undercut the benefits of clean air--in the worst days of a global health crisis," she said of the new rule. "Our country is struggling to address racial injustice and a deadly pandemic magnified by pollution, which all heavily impact Black, Latino, and low-income people."
"The Biden administration should deep-six this dishonest and dangerous rule--and allow EPA to re-embrace its core mission, which is to protect public health and our environment," Davis added. "We'll use every tool, and look forward to working with the Biden team, to ensure that healthier future for all."
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As Polls Shows Climate Action Winning Issue, Green Campaigners Mobilize for Democrats in Key Senate and House Races
"The politics of climate change have changed, and voters from coast to coast back bold action on climate."
Oct 02, 2020
Determined to elect candidates who will fight for the climate action that an increasing majority of the American public demands, five national organizations on Friday launched the "Green Wave 2020" initiative, a multimillion-dollar effort to elect Democratic candidates in competitive House and Senate races.
As new polling revealed the extent to which a majority of voters are demanding bold action to address the climate emergency, the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) Action, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Action Fund, and the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) Action Fund announced the campaign.
"Arizona, Iowa, Maine, and South Carolina could hardly be more different, but solid majorities of voters in each state support building a clean energy economy."
--Lori Lodes, Climate Power 2020
"The stakes for the environment, for our climate, and for communities suffering the worst consequences of toxic pollution across the nation have never been more stark than in 2020," said Sierra Club President Ramon Cruz in a statement. "This unprecedented mobilization of our collective membership, including millions of members nationwide, will also help build lasting infrastructure in key states and districts that environmental champions running for office can rely upon for future election cycles."
Data for Progress released new surveys of voters in Maine, Arizona, South Carolina, and Iowa showing that majorities of voters in the key states want the federal government to invest in climate policies that would allow the U.S. to fully transition to a renewable energy economy by 2035.
Maine voters were the most enthusiastic about bold climate action, with 65% of respondents saying they support investments in clean electricity. In each of the states, independent voters said they want the federal government to invest in bold reforms; 54% of Arizona independents agreed, while 53% of Iowa independents, 61% of Maine independents, and 57% of South Carolina independent voters said they want the government to prioritize a shift to clean electricity.
The poll numbers confirm that climate action is far from being an issue that's favored only in blue states or by Democratic voters, said Climate Power 2020, a coalition formed by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the LCV, and the Sierra Club.
"The politics of climate change have changed, and voters from coast to coast back bold action on climate," said Lori Lodes, executive director of Climate Power 2020. "Arizona, Iowa, Maine, and South Carolina could hardly be more different, but solid majorities of voters in each state support building a clean energy economy."
In addition to backing "environmental champions" running in four Senate races and more than 30 House elections, including Sara Gideon in Maine and Rep. Cindy Axne in Iowa, Green Wave 2020 is boosting Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's campaign efforts in swing states.
The proposal that Data for Progress's survey focused on "is a cornerstone of Joe Biden's transformational plan to invest in clean energy infrastructure and combat climate change," said Lodes.
The Green Wave campaign is sending 70 professional organizers into 15 states to oversee remote phone and text banking supporting the candidates. Organizers will also promote early and mail-in voting.
Margie Alt, a climate campaigner and former executive director of Environment America, boosted recruitment efforts on social media.
"The organizers will work to mobilize environmental group members to volunteer on elections to help the environmental community build a Green Wave that is big and strong enough to turn the tide in Washington D.C.," a press release announcing Green Wave 2020 stated.
Climate Power 2020 urged Biden to pay close attention to Data for Progress's poll--just the latest survey to indicate how important bold climate action is to voters.
"Climate is a top issue among the voters who will determine this election--Republican-leaning suburban women, youth voters, and voters of color," said the group. "Biden needs to appeal to independent voters--chiefly women--who swung from Obama to Trump in 2016 to win...Voters from across the political spectrum and across the country have increasingly noted that climate is influencing their enthusiasm to vote and is playing a factor in who they will support up-and-down the ballot next month."
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To Stave Off 'Climate Disaster,' 29 States and Major Cities Sue Trump EPA Over 'Dirty Power' Rule
"President Trump's attempt to gut our nation's Clean Power Plan is foolish. It's also unlawful."
Aug 13, 2019
A coalition of 22 states and seven major American cities sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its repeal of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan and a replacement that critics have dubbed the "Dirty Power" rule.
"My office, and this groundbreaking coalition of states and cities from across the nation, will fight back against this unlawful, do-nothing rule in order to protect our future from catastrophic climate change."
--New York Attorney General Letitia James
The lawsuit (pdf), filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, targets the administration's so-called Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, which eases restrictions on coal plants imposed by the Obama plan, the first national policy to limit power plants' carbon emissions.
Shortly before Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, signed the ACE rule in June, the administration attempted to bolster the case for its plan by, as Common Dreams reported, "effectively rescinding the EPA's own estimate that it could lead to 1,400 premature deaths per year."
Critics of the Trump plan warn of its anticipated effects not only on people but also the planet, which is rapidly warming as a result of human activity.
"The science is indisputable; our climate is changing. Ice caps are melting. Sea levels are rising. Weather is becoming more and more extreme," New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is spearheading the suit, said in a statement Tuesday. "Without significant course correction, we are careening towards a climate disaster."
"Rather than staying the course with policies aimed at fixing the problem and protecting people's health, safety, and the environment, the Trump administration repealed the Clean Power Plan and replaced it with this 'Dirty Power' rule," said James. "My office, and this groundbreaking coalition of states and cities from across the nation, will fight back against this unlawful, do-nothing rule in order to protect our future from catastrophic climate change."
James was joined by the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia as well as the chief legal officers of Boulder, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, and South Miami.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, in a statement Tuesday, specifically called out President Donald Trump for his administration's coal-friendly plan.
"[Trump's] fossil fuel protection plan fails everyone who stands for cleaner air. And it fails our economy, which depends on clean energy now more than ever."
--California Attorney General Xavier Becerra
"President Trump's attempt to gut our nation's Clean Power Plan is foolish. It's also unlawful," Becerra said. "His fossil fuel protection plan fails everyone who stands for cleaner air. And it fails our economy, which depends on clean energy now more than ever."
"We know what our energy future must look like, and we won't get there by following President Trump's misguided proposal," he added. "Because we're prepared to confront the climate crisis head-on, we're prepared to confront President Trump head-on in court."
The states and cities aren't alone in legally challenging the Trump rule, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
A coalition of environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, and the Environmental Defense Fund are expected to file their own legal challenge this week.
Two leading public health groups, the American Public Health Association and the American Lung Association, have already filed suit to block the Trump administration plan.
The cases could ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court--which, if the justices ruled in favor of Trump's EPA, could have sweeping implications for future efforts to implement federal restrictions on the energy industry.
"It would have a devastating effect on the ability of future administrations to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act," Richard L. Revesz, a professor at New York University who specializes in environmental law, told the Times. "It would essentially make it extremely difficult to regulate greenhouse gases effectively."
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Jobs, the Environment, and a Planet in Crisis
Unions vs. Environmentalists or Unions and Environmentalists?
Aug 06, 2019
When it comes to heat, extreme weather, wildfires, and melting glaciers, the planet is now in what the media increasingly refers to as "record" territory, as climate change's momentum outpaces predictions. In such a situation, in a country whose president and administration seem hell-bent on doing everything they conceivably can to make matters worse, the Green New Deal (GND) seems to offer at least a modest opening to a path forward.
You know, the resolution introduced this February in the House of Representatives by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Edward Markey (D-MA). Unsurprisingly, the proposal has been roundly attacked by the right. But it's stirred up some controversy on the left as well. You might imagine that labor unions and environmental organizations would be wholeheartedly for a massive federal investment in good jobs and a just transition away from fossil fuels. But does organized labor actually support or oppose the Green New Deal? What about environmental organizations? If you're not even sure how to answer such questions, you're not alone.
That 14-page resolution calls for "a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era." Its purpose: to reduce U.S. carbon emissions to net zero within a decade, while guaranteeing significant numbers of new jobs and social welfare to American workers. Read it and you'll find that it actually attempts to overcome historical divisions between the American labor and environmental movements by linking a call for good jobs and worker protection to obvious and much-needed environmental goals.
In the process, the GND proposal goes impressively far beyond the modest goals of the Paris Climate Accords and other international agreements. It supports specific, enforceable targets for bringing climate change under control, while drawing clear connections between social, labor, and environmental rights. Acknowledging in blunt terms the urgency of making systemic change on a rapidly warming planet, it calls for the kind of national mobilization Americans haven't experienced since the end of the Second World War. Described that way, it sounds like something both the labor and environmental movements would naturally support without a second thought. There is, however, both a history of mistrust and real disagreement over issues, which both movements are now grappling with. And the media is doing its part by exaggerating labor's opposition to the proposal, while ignoring what environmental organizations have to say.
One Green New Deal controversy focuses on the future role of fossil fuels in that plan. A number of environmental organizations believe that such energy sources have no place in our future, that they need to stay in the ground, period. They cite climate science and the urgent need to move rapidly and drastically to eliminate carbon emissions as the basis for such a conclusion. As it happens, the Green New Deal avoids directly challenging the fossil-fuel industry. In fact, it doesn't even use the term "fossil fuels."
From another perspective, some unions hope that new technologies like carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) will make those fuels more efficient and far cleaner. If the addition of carbon to the atmosphere could be reduced significantly or offset in some fashion, while humanity still burned natural gas, oil, or even coal, they say, jobs in those sectors could be preserved. And the unions have other concerns as well. They tend, for instance, to look skeptically on the GND's promises of a "just transition" for displaced fossil-fuel workers like coal miners, given the devastation that has fallen on workers and their communities when industries have shut down in the past. They also fear that, without accompanying trade protections, polluting industries will simply export their emissions rather than reduce them.
Being more of a statement of purpose than an elaborated plan, the Green New Deal is short on both detail and answers when it comes to such issues. The actual roadmap to achieving its goals, the proposal states, "must be developed through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses." Both unions and environmental organizations are already mobilizing to make sure their voices are part of the process.
The right wing was quick to mockingly publicize the Green New Deal not just as thoroughly unrealistic but as utterly un-American. Under the circumstances, perhaps it's not surprising that a recent poll found 69% of Republicans but only 36% of Democrats had heard "a lot" about it. Similarly, 80% of Republicans already "strongly opposed" it, while only 46% of Democrats strongly supported it. And 40% of those polled said that they had heard "mostly negative" things about it, while only 14% had heard "mostly positive" things. One reason for this disparity: Fox News has devoted more time to the topic than any other television news outlet. And President Trump naturally pitched in, tweeting that the GND would eliminate "Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military." Such claims, however fantastical, have already spread widely. But even the mainstream media has tended to play up the negative.
Both right-wing and mainstream media outlets have promoted the idea that unions are in firm opposition to the Green New Deal, frequently exaggerating and distorting the nature of what opposition there is. As for the concerns of environmentalists, readers would largely have to follow radical online publications or search out the websites of green organizations.
The Media, the Labor Movement, and the Green New Deal
The Washington Examiner, Fox News, and other right-wing outlets have waxed gleeful every time representatives of organized labor, including Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, have critiqued or expressed reservations about the Green New Deal, a topic on which the rest of the mainstream media has also run stories. Labor's position is, however, significantly more complicated than any of them have acknowledged.
In an hour-long interview at the Economic Club of Washington in April--reported in the Examiner under the headline "AFL-CIO Opposes Green New Deal"--Trumka actually devoted less than 30 seconds to responding to a question on the topic. Asked if he supported the GND, he replied "Not as currently written... We weren't part of the process, and so the workers' interest really wasn't completely figured into it. So we would want a whole lot of changes made so that workers and our jobs are protected in the process." Not exactly a wholesale rejection.
His brief reaction echoed a March letter from the AFL-CIO Energy Committee to Ocasio-Cortez and Markey signed by the presidents of the United Mine Workers and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Among other things, it protested the absence of a labor voice in drafting the proposal. It also focused on the potential loss of jobs, as well as the fact that the GND was "not rooted in an engineering-based approach" to climate change, reflecting union hopes that improved technologies might allow the U.S. to meet climate goals while still extracting and burning fossil fuels (and so preserving jobs in that sector of the economy).
Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso, a long-time ally of the coal, oil, and gas industries, a climate-change denier, and a reliably anti-union vote in Congress, first noted the existence of the letter in a tweet headlined: "The @AFLCIO, which represents 12.5 million workers & includes 55 labor unions, slams the #GreenNewDeal." Both the right wing and the mainstream media largely agreed with his interpretation. The Washington Post, for instance, headlined its article "AFL-CIO Criticizes the Green New Deal," while the Examiner called the federation the "latest opponent" of the resolution.
Two facts were, however, missing in action in this reporting. First, the members of the AFL-CIO Energy Committee come from only eight unions, most of them deeply dependent on the fossil-fuel industry. In that sense, it doesn't represent the federation as a whole. Second, the letter itself was more nuanced than the media coverage suggested and even its signers were far from unanimous. True, one of them, Terry O'Sullivan, president of the Laborers International Union of North America, claimed to be unalterably opposed to the GND, saying it was "exactly how not to" address infrastructure and climate change. Linking them, he wrote, would cause "social and economic devastation." In contrast, in an article ignored by the media and headlined "Labor Champions a Green New Deal," another signer, United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, suggested that the letter actually supported the GND.
The Energy Committee's letter laid out its own vision of how to address the coming crisis through:
"[the] development and deployment of technologies like solar, wind, nuclear, hydroelectric, carbon capture and utilization, battery storage, and high speed rail that limit or eliminate carbon emissions. We know that the increase in natural gas production has lowered emissions in the power sector and provided a new source of construction and manufacturing jobs. We must invest in energy efficiency in the industrial and commercial sectors, retrofits and upgrades to schools and public buildings, and to make our communities safe and resilient. All of these investments must be paired with strong labor and procurement standards to grow family-sustaining, middle class union jobs."
Much of this sounds like it's aligned with the language of the GND, which also calls for increased efficiency, retrofits, upgrades, and labor guarantees. The differences may seem subtle, but are worth mentioning. The Energy Committee emphasizes investment in new carbon capture and storage technology, while the GND advocates only "proven low-tech solutions that increase soil carbon storage, such as land preservation and afforestation." For obvious reasons, CCUS is the preferred path of the fossil-fuel industry itself: it's an aspirational technology that will require massive federal investment in big energy and holds out the promise (however illusory) that fossil fuels can continue to be extracted and burned. Many environmental organizations argue that its development is not just a gift to fossil-fuel companies, but a pie-in-the-sky distraction from the real work of ending the use of oil, coal, and natural gas.
The Energy Committee's letter also advocated increasing the use of natural gas as part of a path to lowering carbon emissions--and it's true that natural gas does emit less carbon than burning either coal or oil. In fact, until recently, the shift from coal- to natural-gas-fired power plants played a role in slightly lowering U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Still, natural gas is a fossil fuel, and the more we burn, the more we contribute to climate change. It in no way falls into the GND's category of "clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources." And keep in mind that, even during a decade of reductions, the United States still emitted far more greenhouse gases per capita than most other countries and, in the last two years, its carbon dioxide emissions have begun to rise again. Our per capita emissions are still way above those of, say, Europe or Japan. Shifting to a slightly cleaner fossil fuel while continuing to burn so much carbon does little to avert catastrophic climate change.
These disputes are real. Nevertheless, the right wing caricatured the AFL-CIO response to paint the GND as an outlandish, anti-worker proposal.
From the left, the environmental organization Friends of the Earth also caricatured the AFL-CIO stance, writing: "With the energy committee's position, the AFL joins climate deniers like the Koch brothers, the Republican Party, and Big Oil. We encourage the AFL and other unions within it to rethink this position." Such language only exacerbates any labor-environmental divide, while ignoring union concerns that workers in affected industries will be paying the true price for lowering carbon emissions.
Friends of the Earth could have focused instead on Richard Trumka's words at the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit. The Federation, he insisted, does not question climate science.
"I learned something about science in the mine. When the boss told us to ignore the deadly hazards of the job... that sagging timber over our heads... that Black Lung cough... science told us the truth. And today, again, science tells us the truth: climate change threatens our workers, our jobs, and our economy."
He then asked one question: "Does your plan for fighting climate change ask more from sick, retired coal miners than it does from you and your family? If it does, then you need to think again."
Or as Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants and a strong Green New Deal supporter, put it:
"The skepticism really comes from a place of generally being opposed to something that they believe is going to be an attack on their jobs, their livelihoods, and their communities... We have to do things like show communities that have been hurt that we actually mean what we say when we say 'leave no worker behind.'"
For the unions, an emphasis on trade is also critical from both an environmental and a labor perspective. United Steelworkers President Gerard elaborated:
"The USW has aggressively demanded that climate policies include strong trade measures to ensure American jobs in energy-intensive and trade-exposed industries are not decimated by U.S. corporations evading pollution-control regulations by shipping factories to countries that ignore pollution."
Why Labor Hesitates: A Tangled History
While a skeptic could read Gerard's stance on trade as no more than a narrow self-interest in preserving jobs in the face of a planetary crisis, it's also a crucial issue purely from a climate-change perspective. In addition to the shift from coal to natural gas, another factor in the slight decline in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions until recently was deindustrialization and the outsourcing of industrial production to Mexico, China, or Vietnam, which represents a thoroughly illusory reduction in carbon emissions. The atmosphere, of course, doesn't care whether a factory is located in the United States or China, since total global emissions are what's warming our planet.
While the AFL-CIO leadership has been cautious about the Green New Deal proposal, some unions have enthusiastically hailed it, among them public and service sector ones. With its two million members, the Service Employees International Union, not currently affiliated with the AFL-CIO, signed on wholeheartedly at its convention in early June. The 50,000-strong Association of Flight Attendants soon seconded that position as its president, Sara Nelson, explained that, in her industry, "it's not the solutions to climate change that kill jobs. Climate change itself is the job killer," since extreme weather and increased turbulence are grounding more flights and making air travel more dangerous.
Maine's state federation and a number of labor councils followed suit, as have quite a few union locals. While the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, for instance, has been reluctant to endorse the Green New Deal, at least one of its locals has signed on. "We're all about green jobs," declared Lou Antonellis, the business manager of local 103 in Boston. "We've been promoting green technology for a long time." (For a fuller list of labor endorsements, click here.)
There is a context--think of it as a deeply tangled history--that lies behind the complexity of labor's response to the Green New Deal. As a start, labor in the United States has rarely spoken with a unified voice. In addition, the union movement is now distinctly on the defensive. The unionized share of the labor force has fallen from a high of 35% in the 1950s to less than 11% today, thanks to a combination of deindustrialization, automation, cutbacks, attacks on the public sector, and a virulent corporate backlash against unions that began in the 1970s. Mass production powerhouses like the auto workers, steel workers, and miners--all in sectors in which a fossil-fuel-free future is challenging to imagine--have been hit the hardest, a situation that provides some context for their suspicions about climate-change proposals.
The weak position of organized labor in the United States also contributes to the AFL-CIO's opposition to the notion that the planet's biggest polluting states need to make the biggest reductions. As a result, its stance on international climate agreements lags well behind the international union movement. The AFL-CIO, for instance, opposed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol because it required greater reductions from the biggest polluters and, since then, has consistently supported the U.S. government position that wealthy countries should not be required to meet emissions reductions standards unless poor countries do, too.
Environmental Organizations and the Green New Deal
You wouldn't know it from the media coverage, but environmental organizations are also divided on the Green New Deal. Many of them feel the proposal is too weak. Its language, they say, still allows for fossil-fuel extraction, use, and export, and for the expansion of nuclear energy.
The GND, after all, aims not at zero carbon emissions, but at "net-zero." In translation, that means carbon dioxide emissions could continue as long as some kind of offset system was implemented to compensate for them. Even as the AFL-CIO Energy Committee argues that net-zero goes too far, many environmental organizations critique the GND's unwillingness to opt for "zero emissions." In fact, even zero emissions raises red flags for some environmentalists, who point out that nuclear power, despite its non-renewable nature and devastating potential environmental consequences, remains a zero-emissions form of energy production. Instead, many environmental organizations advocate that we move to energy sources that are both 100% renewable and zero emissions.
Like the unions, such radical environmental organizations complained that they were left out of the discussion leading up to the Green New Deal proposal and had no chance to push for moving more quickly to 100% renewables and what they call "100% decarbonization." While they, like the unions, call for a "just transition," their focus tends to be on indigenous and other front-line communities affected by fossil-fuel extraction as well as workers in those industries. Unlike the labor critiques, this environmental position has gotten scant attention in the mainstream media.
Many of the 600 signers of a letter outlining the radical environmental critique of the GND were small, local or faith-based organizations. Some of the large mainstream environmental groups like the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council, and the Environmental Defense Fund were conspicuously absent from the signatories. Others like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, 350.org, the Sunrise Movement, the Rainforest Action Network, the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Amazon Watch did, however, sign on. So, notably, did the Labor Network for Sustainability, the most radical voice in the labor movement working in support of climate-change action.
The Indigenous Environmental Network wrote:
"We remain concerned that unless some changes are made to the resolution, the Green New Deal will leave incentives by industries and governments to continue causing harm to Indigenous communities. Furthermore, as our communities who live on the frontline of the climate crisis have been saying for generations, the most impactful and direct way to address the problem is to keep fossil fuels in the ground. We can no longer leave any options for the fossil fuel industry to determine the economic and energy future of this country. And until the Green New Deal can be explicit in this demand as well as closing the loop on harmful incentives, we cannot fully endorse the resolution."
Other organizations like 350.org signed on to the Green New Deal despite reservations. Greenpeace lauded it, while cautioning that "the oil, gas, and coal industry will fight this tooth and nail while continuing to dump pollution into our atmosphere. In order to get us to the green future we want, federal legislation MUST also halt any major oil, gas, and coal expansion projects like pipelines and new drilling."
The Future of the GND
Despite challenges from parts of both the labor and the environmental movements, which its sponsors had undoubtedly hoped would be among its strongest supporters, Markey and Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal resolution has gone a remarkably long way toward putting a genuine discussion of what an effective and just climate policy might look like in the public arena for the first time. For grassroots environmental organizations, labor unions, nongovernmental outfits, Congress, and the media, as heat waves multiply, the Arctic burns, and extreme weather of every sort becomes everyday news, the question of what is to be done is finally emerging as a subject to contend with, even in the 2020 presidential election campaign. In policy discussions, the urgency of the climate crisis is being acknowledged for the first time and the question of how to radically lower carbon emissions while prioritizing social justice is coming to the fore. These are exactly the debates that are needed in this all-hands-on-deck moment when human civilization is itself, for the first time in our history, in question.
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