Brief #138 – Environment Policy
By Todd J. Broadman
Since March 10, 2022, nearly all Americans can go without their masks indoors per new Center Disease Control guidance. Nearly for the entirety of the pandemic, different guidance has been given about masks – which has led to a lot of confusion and misinformation. Local, state, and federal government look to the CDC for guidance on how and when to guide their citizens on mask mandates.
Brief #137 – Environment Policy
By Jacob Morton
he Biden administration announced its plan to spend $5 billion to install electric vehicle (EV) charging stations along the nation’s highways. Biden’s plan will extend over five years, providing funding directly to states that submit their own plans for developing their portion of what the administration calls an “Alternative Fuel Corridor,” that would connect forty states along interstate highways across the country. The plan seeks to build half a million charging stations by 2030 so that owners of electric vehicles will be able to find a charging port anywhere within 50 miles of their location across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
Brief #136 – Environmental Policy
By Todd J. Broadman
The politics of immigration along the border between Texas and Mexico now involves the National Butterfly Center (NBC). The NBC is a 100-acre nature preserve located in Mission, Texas. Since 1993, the NBC has served as a protected migratory refuge for the monarch, the rare pale sicklewing, and over 80 other butterfly species.
Brief #135 – Environment Policy
By Jacob Morton
A new study published by the Health Effects Institute shows that Federal air pollution regulations are not doing enough to protect our elders from serious illness and death. The recent report published by HEI shows that Americans 65 and older are still at risk of death from exposure to fine soot pollution in the air, even at the levels allowed by the Federal government.
Brief #134 – Environmental Policy
By Todd J. Broadman
On January 27, the country’s largest ever oil and gas lease sales were canceled by a federal judge. A total of 308 tracts totaling nearly 1.7 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico had been auctioned to thirty-three oil companies – Shell, BP, Chevron and Exxon Mobil among them. $192 million had been paid to the government for drilling rights.
Brief #133 – Environmental Policy
By Timothy T. Loftus
The race to electrify the transportation sector, now the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in the US, will entail controversial decisions and tradeoffs involving the use and management of America’s public lands.
Brief #132 – Environment Policy
By Todd J. Broadman
Seventy million American homes and businesses depend on natural gas, oil, or propane on-site for heating, hot water, and cooking. The annual carbon dioxide generated is 560 million tons or 40% of total US emissions when you include the carbon used in building construction. The amount of methane, a far more potent CO2 gas, that routinely leaks as part of the gas distribution process, is equivalent to all US vehicle emissions.
Brief #131 – Environment Policy
By Katelyn Lewis
Federal officials announced Thursday their plan to tighten restrictions on the amount of lead allowed in drinking water in an effort to reduce the health hazards such exposure has caused in poor, often minority communities across the U.S.
Brief #130 – Environment Policy
By Timothy T. Loftus, Ph.D.
This past October, the Northwest News Network reported that a coalition of conservation groups, the Nez Perce Tribe, and the State of Oregon reached an agreement with the Biden Administration and federal agencies to pause, until next summer, long-running litigation over the operations of Snake River dams within the Columbia River Basin.
Brief #129 – Environment Policy
By Todd J. Broadman
With President Biden’s COP26 climate pledge as backdrop, his administration has been issuing oil leases at a record pace. Biden said that climate change is “the challenge of our collective lifetimes, an existential threat to human existence as we know it. And every day we delay the cost of inaction increases.” His pledge is to cut U.S. emissions by up to 51% over the next nine years. At the end of October, the administration had approved 3,091 new drilling permits on public lands at a rate of 332 per month, outpacing the Trump administration’s 300 permits per month in fiscal years 2018-2020.
Brief #128 – Environment Policy
By Jacob Morton
At the UN’s COP26 Climate Summit earlier this month, representatives from 197 nations gathered in Glasgow, Scotland with the goal of collectively accelerating global efforts towards achieving the climate goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The focus of the conference centered around three major pillars of climate change action: Adaptation, Finance, and Mitigation. Here are the key takeaways.
Brief #127 – Environmental Policy
By Katelyn Lewis
Climate experts say the gathering of leaders from around the world in Glasgow, Scotland, for a two-week climate meeting led to imperfect, yet possible, updates to the Paris Agreement to slow global warming. The success of COP 26 depends on whether countries, including the United States, hold up their end of the bargain.