The House Oversight Committee recently held a hearing to interrogate Big Oil executives about their companies’ decades of deliberate climate disinformation. A disappointing yet unsurprising outcome tells us it’s time for more climate mandates for real accountability.
Over the past few years, recycling prices across the U.S. have soared, with some cities and towns now spending millions of dollars on their programs. To understand the financial burden our communities are facing, I spent the better part of last year collecting recycling data from Massachusetts cities and towns. Here’s what I learned.
Thousands of hazardous waste sites and chemical facilities across New England are unprepared for the impacts of climate change. The failure of regulators to require such preparation leaves the health of our communities and our environment in jeopardy.
“We cannot allow this downward spiral to continue,” said Erica Fuller, Senior Attorney at CLF. “Like the now extinct passenger pigeon, scientists are getting better and better at counting fewer and fewer whales. It’s time to stop pointing fingers and put meaningful protections in place so whales are no longer needlessly killed by boats and fishing gear. Right whales can recover; we just need to stop killing them.”
“The EPA’s new plan is a key, first step in the battle to protect communities from these dangerous chemicals,” said CLF President Bradley Campbell. “But PFAS-type compounds of varying names are still being created, used, and released into the environment. The government must go further to stop this assembly line of ‘forever chemicals’ and hold the manufacturers accountable for the widespread contamination of the nation’s air, land, and water.”
“There’s a real risk that, because of the market power of these companies, they may actually crowd out competitors and ultimately make renewable energy more expensive for consumers,” says Brad Campbell, president of the Conservation Law Foundation.
Our communities and neighborhoods deserve to be safe – and we must urgently transition off dirty gas to protect them.
“President Biden’s announcement is a welcome relief after Trump threw science out the window and slashed protections for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts,” said Peter Shelley, senior counsel at the Conservation Law Foundation, in a statement. “With our oceans in peril from human impacts and the climate crisis, it’s time to protect more areas, not less.”
In a monumental decision, President Biden honors science by restoring protections to the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.
“President Biden’s announcement is a welcome relief after Trump threw science out the window and slashed protections for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts,” said Peter Shelley, Senior Counsel at CLF. “Restoring these commonsense safeguards will have an immeasurable impact on species that call the monument home and will result in a healthier ocean overall. With our oceans in peril from human impacts and the climate crisis, it’s time to protect more areas, not less.”
