Thinking Globally, Acting Transnationally
The U.S. government obviously isn't going to be taking a global leadership role regarding climate change, not for the next four years. At one time, that would have been the end of the story: the only way to accomplish anything internationally was through national governments. But we live in a different world today, and there are other channels for international action against climate change. Today, transnational networks of state and local governments, private firms, and NGOs are actively addressing climate change and other environmental problems, with or without the help of their national governments.
The Under2 MOU is a great example outside of the formal framework of international law. Here are the key facts:
The Under2 Coalition is a diverse group of governments around the world who set ambitious targets to combat climate change. Central to the Under2 MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) is an agreement from all signatories to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions 80 to 95 percent below 1990 levels, or limit to 2 annual metric tons of CO2-equivalent per capita, by 2050. A total of 167 jurisdictions spanning 33 countries and six continents have signed or endorsed the Under2 MOU. Together, the Under2 Coalition represents 1 …
Due to the blinders of his fossil fuel dream team and the industry's myths denying climate change (#ExxonKnew), President Donald Trump seems once again on the verge of withdrawing from the Paris climate change accord. That's a fool's errand.
Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement would be a major blow to U.S. standing and leadership in the world. It would also slow our country's efforts to do our part in avoiding catastrophic climate change. So why is he even considering a trip down this dangerous road?
At the significant cost of further tarnishing the United States' image abroad, Trump gets to keep a political promise and make dubious noise about aiding the domestic coal industry. But like so many other Trump actions, its rhetorical impacts (both positive and negative) will be significant, but the practical impacts will be substantially muted by systemic checks …
Professors Michelle Bryan and Monte Mills of the University of Montana co-authored this article with Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholar and University of Nebraska—Lincoln Professor Sandra Zellmer. It originally appeared in The Conversation on May 3, 2017.
In the few days since President Trump issued his Executive Order on National Monuments, many legal scholars have questioned the legality of his actions under the Antiquities Act. Indeed, if the president attempts to revoke or downsize a monument designation, such actions would be on shaky, if any, legal ground.
But beyond President Trump's dubious reading of the Antiquities Act, his threats also implicate a suite of other cultural and ecological laws implemented within our national monuments.
By opening a Department of Interior review of all large-scale monuments designated since 1996, Trump places at risk two decades' worth of financial and human investment in areas such as …
We've seen a flurry of news coverage in the last several weeks on climate migration, displacement, and relocation. In a new report published today, the Center for Progressive Reform explores these issues and examines tools and resources that communities can use when faced with the challenges of relocating out of harm's way.
The New York Times Magazine recently profiled one homeowner in Norfolk, Virginia, who purchased a home that had never been flooded, but in the ten years since has flooded twice, causing her flood insurance premiums to skyrocket and the home to lose almost half its value. She ended up leaving her home and the city.
But climate-based migration and displacement isn't just affecting people on an individual level. Large-scale human movement, driven in part by climate impacts, is already occurring in various places around the globe, as noted in another article in …
Today, Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars and staff are releasing a comprehensive analysis of the Senate Regulatory Accountability of 2017 (S. 951), which Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) introduced last week. Our analysis explains how S. 951 would drastically overhaul the Administrative Procedure Act, which has successfully guided agency enforcement of public safeguards for over 70 years. A summary of the key findings of the analysis is also available.
The bill is the latest legislation to be put forward by conservative members of Congress who want to revamp the process by which the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and others craft the regulations that protect us from physical and financial harm. So, how does Portman and Heitkamp's bill differ from all the rest? They claim theirs is much …
Donald Trump's antagonism toward environmental and natural resource protections seems to know no bounds, legal or otherwise. Among his latest targets are our national monuments, which include some of the most beautiful and historically, scientifically, culturally, and ecologically important tracts of federally owned lands.
During the reign of destruction the president has unleashed in his first 100 days in office, his commitment to fossil fuel resource extraction and development regardless of the impact on our nation's natural resource heritage has become clear. Trump signed a bill repealing the Interior Department's regulations restricting mountaintop removal mining practices that impair water quality and create gaping landscape wounds. He blocked long overdue revisions to the Bureau of Land Management's land use planning rules that afforded greater importance to the protection of ecological integrity and required the agency to consider the impacts of climate change on public lands. He revoked the …
Cross-posted by permission from the Columbia Blue Sky Blog.
The Obama administration had a mixed record on white collar crime. On one hand, it extracted $4 billion and a guilty plea from BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill. On the other hand, it allowed HSBC, then the fourth largest bank in the world, to sign a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) over charges of laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel and serving as a banker for illicit regimes in Burma, Cuba, Iran, Libya, and Sudan. The bank paid $1.256 billion in penalties, but because it never admitted its crimes and controlled such vast amounts of money, the payment looked more like a cost of doing business than punishment. In fact, the Obama administration Department of Justice (DOJ) under the leadership of Attorney General Eric Holder and Criminal Division chief Lanny Breuer used DPAs …
Every worker has a right to a safe job. Yet on an average day of the week, 13 U.S. workers die on the job due to unsafe working conditions. An additional 137 lives are lost daily due to occupational diseases – mesothelioma, lung cancer, asbestosis, among others.
On Friday – Workers' Memorial Day – we will stand with the families, friends, and colleagues of fallen workers to remember each of them as individuals whose lives represent much more than a statistic. We will also renew our vow to fight for workers' rights so that every single person who leaves home for a job in the morning returns at the end of the day with all their limbs accounted for and with their health intact.
Workers, advocates, and forward-thinking companies have already developed many worthy ideas to improve working conditions across the nation. Some basic changes we could make that …
If Donald Trump has learned anything over the last 100 days, it's that unlike in golf, you can't call a Mulligan on the beginning of your presidency, no matter how much it might improve your score.
These last few months have been long on scandals and failure (Russian probes, the spectacular implosion of Trumpcare, etc.) and short on policy accomplishments, particularly in the legislative realm. This sad state of affairs has left Trump's PR team looking to inject some positive spin into the 100-days news narrative any way it can, and the Congressional Review Act (CRA) seems to be their go-to vehicle for doing just that.
Using the long-dormant law's expedited procedures, and almost entirely along party lines, conservative leaders in Congress have pushed through a raft of CRA "resolutions of disapproval" that target a wide range of Obama administration-era regulations for repeal …
As the clock ticked closer to the end of the work day a few Fridays back, the Trump administration quietly made an announcement certain to put smiles on the faces of many corporate interest lobbyists in and around the DC Beltway: Neomi Rao, a little known but very conservative law professor at George Mason University's Scalia Law School, would be the nominee for Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). The announcement probably went unnoticed by most of the working class families and low-income communities that Trump calls his base, but it may just have a huge impact on their health and well-being.
As the next "regulatory czar," as the position is popularly known, Professor Rao is set to play a key role in the Trump administration's efforts to roll back the kind of public safeguards that we count on …
