Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Plan C is a concerted effort to encourage and support the use of ballot measures allowing voters to have a direct say in the climate-related laws and policies of their states. Ballot initiatives are as close to a pure democratic practice as one is likely to find.
Seven months after Juan and Jonathan Leija were forced to evacuate their flooded homes during Hurricane Harvey, the cousins face challenges that go beyond just recovering their lives. Building back isn’t easy for anybody, but the Leijas are doing it as looming policy decisions threaten to uproot them again.
Environmentalists weren’t able to block the confirmation of Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator based on his horrendous record of climate change denial and plundering natural resources. But Pruitt’s growing corruption scandal has given them new hope.
I have been writing a lot lately about the rising number and variety of environmental lawsuits being filed in state and federal courts. The hundreds of active climate-related cases exhibit a wide range of purpose.
I thought it helpful to provide a rundown of the remaining legislative days’ events and offer a bit of commentary about what Congress and the White House/executive branch will be doing between now and November. Having some idea of what our elected leaders and representatives are likely to be up to in Capital City should help readers plan what they might want to be up to politically themselves.
The pending battle between the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the Trump administration bears following. At a minimum, the conflict will determine whether the state or the administration ends up setting the defacto national 2025 fuel efficiency standard.
It comes as no surprise that EPA Administrator Pruitt recently announced the Agency’s intention to rollback the 2022 through 2025 Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for autos and light trucks.
As of one year later, there has been no great purge. Federal data sets related to environmental and climate science are still accessible in the same ways they were before Trump took office. However, in many other instances, federal agencies have tampered with information about climate change.
DeChristohper emphasizes that simply getting rid of Trump as first priority will not solve the environmental crisis. If the system wasn’t sufficiently self-correcting before, and if the status quo is irreparably broken, then it’s clear that some other change in strategy is needed.
The growing number of legal cases is the result of the failure of the legislative and executive branches to craft a stable framework of environmental protections based upon the overwhelming preponderance of scientific research that even the oil companies have come to accept.
The days of constructive political debate and compromise in the legislative and executive branches of government are gone, leaving the courts as the primary venues in which the causes and consequences of global climate change are being debated, and stable solutions sought.
Progressives need to breathe deeply and make our peace with the reality. Division expresses an economic arrangement, and it’s not something we can fix through urging more civil discourse. Even though we’ll want to use our conflict resolution skills in order to cope, we can also expect more drama at the extreme ends of our polarizations, and more ugliness and violence.
