NRCM Blog

National climate blogger calls Mainers to action

The U.S. must get its act together and pass federal climate legislation if we hope to avert a climate disaster. This was the message from climate scientist and clean energy expert Dr. Joe Romm at an August 18th NRCM event at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. Romm edits the nation's most read climate blog (www.climateprogress.org) and served as Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the Department of Energy. To hear more from Joe Romme, visit the "NRCM Insider."

The fossil fuel industry has launched a massive disinformation campaign and is bankrolling fraudulent lobbying tactics to block passage of climate and clean energy legislation, according to Romm. He explained that the climate bill passed in the House of Representatives this summer will create a huge number of clean energy jobs, especially through massive funding of energy efficiency programs through revenues from a cap and trade program. Establishing a cap on carbon emissions and investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy will be absolutely critical for reducing carbon emissions.

"Anyone who is paying attention to what we are doing to the climate knows that we'd better do something." Romm encouraged Maine people to contact Senator Olympia Snowe (207) 874-8883 and Senator Susan Collins (207) 780-3575 to urge their support and leadership in passing strong climate and clean energy legislation this year. NRCM is encouraging members and activist to get involved in the nation’s most significant environmental legislation in a generation.

Whether or not you’ve attended an event like this one with Joe Romm, we’d like to hear from you here on our blog about your efforts to take action. Did you make a call to one of the Senators? Or write a letter? What motivated you? Did you get a response?

Dylan Voorhees, NRCM Clean Energy Project Director

NY Times editorial - Judicial Rebukes on Clean Air

Judicial Rebukes on Clean Air - 2/18/2008 New York Times editorial

The federal courts have been a bulwark against the Bush administration’s relentless efforts to weaken 40 years’ worth of environmental law, including statutes protecting the nation’s forests, wetlands and endangered species. The courts have been especially important in resisting the administration’s assault on the 1970 Clean Air Act, which began with Vice President Dick Cheney’s 2001 energy report and continues to this day.

In 2006 and 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the Supreme Court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to follow the law and require utilities to install pollution controls when upgrading power plants. Another Supreme Court decision last year held that the Clean Air Act required the E.P.A. to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, an obligation the agency continues to duck.

This month, the D.C. Circuit ruled that the E.P.A. had once again ignored the law by failing to require deep and timely reductions in mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. Like most clean air cases, this one was mind-numbingly complex. The gist of it was that the E.P.A. — seeking as usual to please industry — had approved a weak set of regulations that would let many plants off the hook for emissions reductions that would be required under any honest reading of the law.

The D.C. Circuit, by no means a radical group of judges, has become so exasperated that it has taken to quoting Lewis Carroll. In 2006, in a reference to “Through the Looking Glass,” the court said that the E.P.A.’s reading of the law would make sense “only in a Humpty Dumpty world.” This month, invoking “Alice in Wonderland,” the court said the agency’s reasoning recalled “the logic of the Queen of Hearts, substituting the E.P.A.’s desires for the plain text” of the law.

Desire still burns bright at the E.P.A., which reportedly intends to make one last-ditch effort to weaken the rules requiring new pollution controls on upgraded plants. Our advice to the agency would be to take a dispassionate look at its losing streak in the federal courts and, for once, leave the law alone.