A Greener Life

NOVEMBER 21, 2024

Trump’s second victory is very likely to increase fossil fuel production, and he has also pledged to “rescind all unspent funds under the Inflation Reduction Act ’’. The act aims to create green jobs, reduce fossil fuel consumption and switch to clean energy. This will be a decisive issue at COP29.

Paris Agreement

Law Columbia

MAY 22, 2025

On March 12, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced plans to reconsider EPAs 2009 endangerment finding for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, along with all regulations and actions that rely on the finding. EPA , that required EPA to make a science-based determination on the effects of GHG emissions.

2009

Law Columbia

MARCH 19, 2025

corporations and institutional investors owe a fiduciary duty to maximize profits through economic activities that continue to produce, sell, and use fossil fuels (i.e. 17] Enlightened shareholder value is another expansive formulation into which climate concerns might be smuggled. [18] This means that the leaders of U.S.

Law

Law Columbia

JANUARY 24, 2025

The Endangerment Finding was EPAs 2009 determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health and endanger public welfare and that new motor vehicles contribute to this pollution. Pursuant to the text of Clean Air Act Section 202 , along with a 2007 case entitled Massachusetts v.

Paris Agreement

Union of Concerned Scientists

FEBRUARY 18, 2025

Among the many attacks in President Trumps Day 1 Executive Order on unleashing American (fossil) energy , is a directive to EPA administrator Zeldin to reevaluate the agencys bedrock 2009 scientific determination of the harms caused by heat-trapping emissions and submit recommendations within 30 days (i.e. this week).

Fossil Fuels

Law Columbia

APRIL 28, 2025

This post is the first of a new Climate Law Blog series, 100 Days of Trump 2.0 , in which the Sabin Center offers reflections on the first hundred days of President Trumps second term across a variety of climate-related topics. This administration is moving fast to unwind federal climate regulation across the board.

Regulations

Law Columbia

AUGUST 8, 2025

On June 17, 2025, EPA published a proposed rule to either repeal entirely, or significantly revise, a rule issued in 2024 which set performance standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants to limit their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Pursuant to this statutory authority, EPA has been regulating power plants’ GHG emissions since 2009.

Clean Air Act

Law Columbia

OCTOBER 18, 2024

Several states and industry groups are challenging EPA’s 2024 rules which set greenhouse gas emissions limits for certain fossil fuel power plants nationwide (referred to here as the Power Plant Rules). Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in West Virginia v. That is followed by a summary of the two briefs filed by the Sabin Center.

2024

Union of Concerned Scientists

MARCH 6, 2025

A former member of Congress from Long Island, New York, with scant regulatory experience, Zeldin promised to defer to the research of the scientists on whether climate change made oceans more acidic. The obvious goal is to plunder more public land and water for private profit for the fossil fuel and mining industries.

Climate Change

Law Columbia

APRIL 29, 2025

The second Trump administrations efforts to roll back the United States actions to address climate change began with a barrage of executive orders and presidential memoranda on Inauguration Day, and that onslaught has continued over the subsequent 100 days. climate litigation database , and looks ahead at what we may see next.

Climate Change

Inside Climate News

AUGUST 7, 2025

By Marianne Lavelle The nation’s premier group of scientific advisers announced Thursday that it will conduct an independent, fast-track review of the latest climate science.

2009

Union of Concerned Scientists

AUGUST 11, 2025

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a sweeping effort to do away with the endangerment finding , a proposal that not only disregards science but also has huge consequences for stemming the climate crisis. Undoing this finding is a blatant attempt to evade that responsibility and pander to fossil fuel interests.

Fossil Fuels

Union of Concerned Scientists

JULY 30, 2025

But the fossil fuel industry lied and denied to keep society hooked on its heat-trapping product, and here we are today, with 115 degree heat index forecasts in the Southeast this week. Nobody wants to live in the climate future we’re entering, so the second best time to act is now. “If Our climate has already changed.

2025

Scientific American

JUNE 12, 2025

” The repeals, he said, would save fossil fuel generation and advance President Donald Trumps "energy dominance" agenda. But Zeldin also stressed at the event that the proposals could change before they are finalized, based on public comments. climate-warming emissions — and 3 percent of global emissions.

Regulations

Legal Planet

JULY 10, 2025

It is not too soon to be explaining that storms like this are becoming more intense as a result of climate change. ” Elizabeth Kolbert at the New Yorker reflects on Whitehouse’s decade of wake-up calls regarding government inaction to address the climate crisis. All the more fitting that this week, Sen.

Climate Change

PA Environment Daily

MARCH 13, 2025

In January 2009, DEP ordered then Cabot Oil & Gas, the company that drilled in the shale gas wells, to cease all fracking operations in Susquehanna County to conduct an evaluation of its fracking operations.

2026

Union of Concerned Scientists

AUGUST 7, 2025

Source: National Interagency Fire Center These wildfires are being made worse by climate change, which can increase the conditions conducive to fires. In western North America, climate change nearly doubled the area burned by wildfires between 1984 and 2015. Fires are also burning at higher severity , […]. “No

Ground-Level Ozone

Law Columbia

JANUARY 21, 2025

The general thrust of these is to encourage the rapid development of fossil fuel resources and all associated infrastructure, and remove any regulatory obstacles; to reverse federal actions on climate change, energy efficiency, and environmental justice; and to prevent wind farms from being built on federal lands and waters.

Endangered Species Act

Union of Concerned Scientists

JULY 31, 2025

They’re still trying to con us into thinking climate change isn’t a danger. Our friends at Climate Central have developed a peer-reviewed, online tool that quantifies the role of climate change in the near-term heat forecast—and, as usual, finds it to be ubiquitous and overwhelming this week. And act accordingly.

Fossil Fuels

Legal Planet

JULY 21, 2023

As Gernot Wagner puts it in ‘ Geoengineering: the Gamble ’: “The decision is all about risk-risk tradeoffs” He urges us to put the risks of potentially pursuing solar geoengineering against “the risks of unmitigated climate change.” The National Academy of Sciences adopted a ’risk-risk’ framing in its 2021 report.

Climate Change

Union of Concerned Scientists

MAY 30, 2024

Transportation is the largest sector for emissions , and passenger cars, trucks, and SUVs are the majority of transportation emissions, so there is no way to slow down climate change without a fundamental shift from petroleum to clean electricity to power our vehicles.

Electricity

Enviromental Defense

AUGUST 23, 2021

million for other categories of support to fossil fuels. Whether through paying companies to improve their operations or by paying for the development of new ‘clean tech’ for the oil and gas industry, the public should not be on the hook for lowering the emissions from the fossil fuel sector.

Fossil Fuels

A Greener Life

NOVEMBER 7, 2022

Two-thirds of the G20’s public finance for energy went to fossil fuels in 2019–2020. Subsidies reached new highs in 2021, even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a Climate Transparency analysis finds. In total, 63% of the G20’s public finance for energy went to fossil fuels in 2019–2020. By Catherine Early.

Fossil Fuels

Union of Concerned Scientists

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

Trading in disinformation In its climate lobbying report, ExxonMobil deemed 52 associations “aligned” for acknowledging the risks of climate change, publicly backing the Paris Agreement goal of limiting average global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and taking steps to reduce carbon emissions.

Fossil Fuels

Legal Planet

SEPTEMBER 17, 2024

However, China will also have to fix problems that have led to an underuse of renewable capacity and a preference for fossil fuel generation on the grid. This is not an accident: the government poured $22 billion into the EV industry starting in 2009. How is China’s commitment to clean energy impacting other countries?

Clean Energy

Enviromental Defense

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

The biggest barrier to climate action in Canada is the oil and gas lobby. For decades the fossil fuel lobby has masterfully weakened, derailed, and outright blocked government climate policy. The fossil fuel lobby meddles with Canadian politics and inserts itself into international climate change politics and diplomacy.

Fossil Fuels

Legal Planet

AUGUST 22, 2024

But these goals will only be achievable if the state has sufficient charging infrastructure to fuel the vehicles, along with available financing to help truck owners purchase or lease them. For this transition to succeed, it will require not just technological innovation but also robust policy support and financial investment.

Electricity

Enviromental Defense

JANUARY 14, 2022

We can’t solve the climate crisis unless private finance flows in a new direction. But Canada’s largest financial institutions still fund fossil fuel expansion projects and are too slow to invest in climate solutions. Canadian financial institutions have taken baby steps to advance climate-aligned finance.

Regulations

Union of Concerned Scientists

APRIL 16, 2024

New demands for electricity and the need to reduce climate-changing emissions are driving new grid planning efforts. Smaller, decentralized growth in electric heat pumps for buildings, and electric transportation replacing fossil fuels also require more access to electricity and a modern grid.

Electricity

Enviromental Defense

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

Last week world leaders gathered in New York for the UN Climate Ambition Summit where countries shared concrete action they’ve taken to phase out fossil fuels. There, the conversation was grounded in science, with leaders such as California’s Governor Newsom saying “The climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis.

Fossil Fuels

Union of Concerned Scientists

OCTOBER 17, 2024

Alito famously said that carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning, a key contributor to global warming, is not a pollutant. A report this year by the US Fish and Wildlife Service found between 2009 and 2019, the nation lost enough acreage of forest and scrub wetlands to equal the size of Rhode Island. Photo by Derrick Z.

Carbon Dioxide

A Greener Life

JUNE 19, 2024

It was a sign of how much has changed since 2021 when the UK hosted the flagship COP26 UN climate summit with a promise “irrefutably to turn the tide and to begin the fightback against climate change”. million has been given to pro-fossil fuel think tanks by Tory donors since the 2019 general election.

Fossil Fuels

PA Environment Daily

AUGUST 3, 2024

Pennsylvania won the International Envirothon competition in 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1994, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2009 and 2017 and frequently places in the top 10 finishers. Now more than 15,000 high school students across the state compete in 67 county Envirothons.

2003

Enviromental Defense

MARCH 22, 2022

We all know that to successfully address climate change we need to phase out fossil fuels and switch to electric power. Unfortunately, the current Ontario government’s plan is to burn more fossil gas to generate power. . Luckily it’s entirely possible (and cost effective!) This is completely doable.

Solar Power

Environmental Progress

JANUARY 20, 2022

Notably, in the same proposal, the Commission has also included screening criteria for gaseous fossil fuels. The Regulation sets a time limit on the inclusion of nuclear energy but not on fossil fuels and grants the Commission special powers to rule on nuclear taxonomy compliance.

Fossil Fuels

Enviromental Defense

JULY 27, 2023

The majority of Canadians understand that climate change is one of the most important issues we face. Enter, Canada’s Top Climate Villains The influential players behind Canada’s oil and gas industry, who should be held responsible for their outsized role in causing the climate crisis, aren’t the ones feeling the heat.

2009

Legal Planet

SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

In my last post I discussed the Commission’s remarkably radical – and challenging – headline recommendation on mitigation, a global phaseout of fossil fuels. But no part of their mandate or report matches this description of “stuff you wish you didn’t have to think about, but realize you must” better than SRM.

Government