In January, “committed environmentalist” Henry Waxman will take the chair of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, the body through which environmental legislation – and most significantly, climate change legislation – will pass on its way to the floor of the House of Representatives next year. As it happens, Representative Waxman is a charter member of the Center for Progressive Reform’s Advisory Council, and has been very supportive of the organization’s work.
CPR isn’t in the business of endorsing candidates, nor involving itself in intra-party battles for leadership positions. But we recognize an environmental leader when we see one, and our Member Scholars look forward to contributing their policy ideas to the work of his committee.
Yesterday, CPR President Rena Steinzor sent a letter of congratulations to Representative Waxman. She wrote:
On behalf of the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR), I want to congratulate you on your new position in the 111th Congress as Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. We’re not absolutely certain that your membership on our Advisory Council was the deciding factor, but we’re proud of our association with your achievement. We also congratulate your dedicated and knowledgeable staff on their years of service and know that they will be very successful in working on the important issues you will face as chairman.
You and CPR have a long history of mutual support. Your address to CPR at our January 2007 Meeting inspired our Member Scholars and staff. During your address, you were kind enough to compliment our work, “keeping the light burning so that we could combat the misinformation, the ideology, the misuse of science, the distortion of truth that we’ve seen in the last twelve years, and particularly the last six.” We want you to know we are equally grateful for your continued pursuit of transparent government, clean science, and progressive health and safety regulation….
As you move into your new position at Energy and Commerce, we look forward to continuing our work together.
Congratulations, Mr. Chairman!
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Matthew Freeman | November 21, 2008
In January, “committed environmentalist” Henry Waxman will take the chair of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, the body through which environmental legislation – and most significantly, climate change legislation – will pass on its way to the floor of the House of Representatives next year. As it happens, Representative Waxman is a charter […]
Margaret Clune Giblin | November 20, 2008
One important environmental challenge facing soon-to-be-President Obama is how to reinvigorate the National Forest System’s environmental protections. The system encompasses 192 million acres of land, which – to the constant amazement of those of us on the East Coast – represents about 8 percent of the total land area of the United States (roughly equivalent […]
Matt Shudtz | November 19, 2008
Last Friday, the American University Washington College of Law and the Robert L. Habush Endowment of the American Association for Justice hosted a conference on emerging ideas in consumer product safety. CPR Member Scholar Sid Shapiro opened the day with a presentation of a new paper he’s written with Professors Ruth Ruttenberg (National Labor College) […]
Shana Campbell Jones | November 18, 2008
Bigfoot lives, and he’s not hiding out from the paparazzi somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. He drives more than 630,000 vehicles. He is the largest consumer of energy in the United States, costing taxpayers about $14.5 billion. He generates about 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide yearly, approximately 1.4 percent of all U.S. greenhouse […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | November 17, 2008
The Bush Administration’s penchant for secrecy was one of the most corrosive aspects of the way it ran the government these last eight years. This preference for conducting government business behind closed doors ran the gamut from military and foreign policy, where secrecy is more easily justified, to regulatory policy, where it is much less […]
Matthew Freeman | November 15, 2008
Don't miss CPR Member Scholar Holly Doremus's piece in Slate, published November 14, on the Supreme Court's ruling in NRDC's challenge to the Navy's use of harmful-to-whales sonar in anit-submarine training off the California coast. [Also available in PDF.]
Robert L. Glicksman | November 14, 2008
As President-elect Obama and his transition team begin planning to implement the new Administration’s agenda, a flood of policy proposals can be expected to compete for the President-elect’s attention. Proposals to deal with the nation’s economic crisis surely deserve to top the agenda. This week, CPR issued Protecting Public Health and the Environment by the […]
Robert Verchick | November 13, 2008
President-Elect Obama has promised to support spending $150 billion over 10 years to create 5 million new “green collar jobs.” If allocated correctly, these jobs could jump-start the economies of urban neighborhoods and pockets of rural poverty. Imagine a country where a new generation of workers earns good wages and benefits— even saving for the […]
Rena Steinzor | November 12, 2008
About one in every fifteen Americans is a child under five years old, and those 20 million kids all experience the miracle of discovery and development. These fragile human beings are not simply little adults, the scientists tell us, for all sorts of reasons. They breathe five times faster, for one thing, inhaling much more […]