Joint Letter to CEQ Requesting Comment Period Extension on Carbon Capture Guidance
The Center for Progressive Reform joined dozens of other public interest organizations in a public comment period extension request for the White House Council on Environmental Quality's Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Sequestration Guidance. The groups asked the agency to extend the comment period from 30 days to at least 60 days.
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Supreme Court Conservatives May Slash EPA's Authority on Climate
After the Supreme Court's decision last month rejecting the Biden vaccine mandate for large employers, it wasn't just the public health community that was asking "where do we go from here?" Environmental activists and attorneys immediately recognized that the Court's reasoning in the vaccine case, National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, will likely lead to a win for the fossil fuel industry in the biggest environmental case of this term, West Virginia v. EPA.
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Author(s): Noah Sachs
State Courts Should Hear Cities' Climate Deception Lawsuits
On Jan. 25, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held oral argument in Baltimore v. BP PLC, a case in which the city is seeking to hold BP and other fossil fuel companies liable in state court for their systematic deceptive marketing campaign to hide the catastrophic dangers of their products. The goal of their decades-long, ongoing disinformation campaign: to lock in a fossil-fuel based society—and continue reaping astronomical profits—even during a fossil fuel-driven climate emergency. Other cities, counties, and states have brought similar suits in their state courts, all invoking long-standing state deceptive marketing laws. So why is Baltimore's case before a federal appellate court? The panel's three judges wanted to know—and the answer is more misrepresentation.
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Author(s): Karen Sokol
Testimony in Support of Virginia House Bill 899 — Above Ground Storage Tank Regulation
The Center for Progressive Reform joined other organizations in support of Virginia House Bill 899, which would create a registration program for non-petroleum aboveground storage tanks in the Commonwealth.
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Why the Chemical Industry Is an Overlooked Climate Foe — and What to Do About It
Climate change is quickly evolving into climate catastrophe, and there’s a narrow window of time to do something about it. While the world works on solutions, there’s surprisingly little focus on the chemical industry, which accounts for roughly 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions — as well as other environmental harms.
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Author(s): Darya Minovi
The Supreme Court’s Plan to Block Climate Action We Haven’t Even Taken Yet
On Feb. 28, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the first of an expected wave of cases challenging governmental action to address the climate crisis. The court’s grant of four petitions seeking review in this case—two by coal companies and two by states—portends that the six conservative justices will erect significant barriers to meaningful climate policy and will continue to interfere with democratic governance in disregard of the rule of law.
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Author(s): Karen Sokol
Tanks for Nothing: The Decades-Long Failure to Protect the Public from Hazardous Chemical Spills
Throughout most of the U.S., the public is not protected from spills and other disasters involving storage of hazardous chemicals — including toxic and flammable substances — in aboveground tanks. For decades, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and most states have refused to act to protect the health and safety of workers and communities, as well as water and natural resources, from the threat of hazardous chemical tank fires, spills, and explosions. In the absence of federal action, 10 states have established comprehensive programs that impose registration, inspection, and design and siting requirements to prevent releases from aboveground chemical storage facilities. Some of these state programs were enacted by lawmakers in response to catastrophic incidents, like a fatal explosion in Delaware or the Elk River leak in 2014 in West Virginia that contaminated drinking water for hundreds of thousands of residents. Several years ago, Virginia studied the issue of unregulated chemical storage and found that aboveground storage tanks pose a threat to the safety of Virginians and their drinking water. At that time, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) recommended action, but policymakers chose instead to wait on an EPA rule that never came.
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Author(s): David Flores, Darya Minovi, Johnathan Clark
Carbon Capture Technology Will Worsen the Climate Crisis and Further Endanger Marginalized Communities, Policy Brief Finds
Policymakers, philanthropists, and advocates in Louisiana and across the nation must reject the fossil fuel industry’s initiatives to capture carbon emissions and store them underground in sedimentary rock and instead pursue solutions that have proven power to curb the climate crisis and protect marginalized communities. So concludes a new policy brief published by the Center for Progressive Reform. The brief reveals the false promise of large-scale carbon capture use and storage technologies and offers specific recommendations that policymakers, philanthropists, and advocates can use to oppose large-scale rollouts of this technology and instead support just solutions to the climate crisis.
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Author(s): Katlyn Schmitt, Robert Verchick, Karen Sokol
The False Promise of Carbon Capture as a Climate Solution in Louisiana and Beyond
Carbon capture use and storage (“carbon capture”), heavily promoted by the coal, oil, and gas industries, is now at the center of the national climate policy debate. Today when industries burn fossil fuels, the resulting carbon dioxide and methane soars into the atmosphere, traps heat, and contributes to climate breakdown. Using carbon capture technology, industries claim they will recover post-combustion carbon dioxide from their flues and smokestacks and either “store” the gas permanently underground in sedimentary rock or “use” the gas to recover oil or make other products. Proponents claim it’s a win-win — benefiting both the planet and the fossil fuel industry. But, on closer inspection, the large-scale roll-out of such technologies is a false promise.
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Author(s): Katlyn Schmitt, Robert Verchick, Karen Sokol, David Flores
A Promising Step: Center for Progressive Reform Applauds Passage of Landmark Climate and Social Spending Package in U.S. House
Center for Progressive Reform Executive Director praises U.S. House passage of the "Build Back Better" budget bill, notes its historic investments in climate action, and urges Congress and the White House to go even further to secure a just, inclusive transition to clean, renewable energy.
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Author(s): Minor Sinclair