Blog

International Women’s Day celebrates the changes made by women and calls for action to accelerate women’s equality. This year, International Women’s Day notes that a challenged world is an alert world, and from challenge comes change.

To commemorate Women’s History Month, we’re interviewing women at the Center for Progressive Reform about how they’re building a more just America.

"The social cost of carbon" isn't exactly a household phrase. It's an estimate of the harm caused by emitting a ton of carbon dioxide over the many decades it remains in the atmosphere. That's an important factor in calculating the costs and benefits of climate regulations. For an arcane concept, it has certainly caused a lot of controversy. The Obama administration came up with a set of estimates, which Trump then slashed by 90 percent. In an early executive order, Biden created a task force to revisit the issue. Last week, the task force issued its first report. It's an impressive effort given that Biden is barely a month into his presidency. The document provides a clear overview of the ways in which climate science and climate economics have advanced since the Obama estimates and makes the case for rejecting the Trump administration's revisions. At least one federal court has already rejected those revisions, as well.

In the wake of the Texas blackouts, we're seeing a number of familiar moves to deflect blame by the usual suspects -- politicians, regulators, and CEOs. These evasive tactics all begin with a core truth: Eliminating all risk is impossible and would be too expensive even if it weren't. But then they spin that truth in various ways. The result is to obscure responsibility for the disaster and the steps that should be taken going forward.

Since I began serving on Louisiana’s Climate Initiatives Task Force, charged with finding a way to zero out net greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050, there is one question I get from people more than any other: "C'mon, are you serious?" It's not that Louisianans don't see the need. Sea-level rise could soon swallow our coast, and hurricanes souped up by climate change are now the new normal. The problem is how we see ourselves. Louisiana, I'm reminded, is an oil-and-gas state. Whatever were we thinking? My quick response is Louisiana is really an energy state, with more sun and offshore wind than most of our peers.

It is now a week out from the start of the massive Texas grid failure that has resulted in numerous deaths; millions of people plunged into darkness; scores of communities without clean water or heat in record cold temperatures; and billions of dollars in catastrophic damage to homes, businesses and the physical infrastructure that supports them. Critical questions surround the causes of this massive disaster and how to plan for the future so that a tragedy of this scale does not happen again.

Intersectional environmentalism is a relatively new phrase that refers to a more inclusive form of environmentalism, one that ties anti-racist principles into sectors that have long profited from overlooking or ignoring historically disenfranchised populations.

When it comes to addressing climate-related flooding, Maryland has made progress. However, its actions to this point don't come close to addressing the impact of flooding — in part because nearly all of the state's coastal land is private and exempt from "coast smart" regulations. Without proactive rules in place to prevent the harms of new development, the state will continue to dole out taxpayer dollars related to emergency response and recovery, and business owners and homeowners will continue to bear the brunt of the damage. Thankfully, there are solutions.

As a coastal state, Maryland is especially vulnerable to climate and ocean change — but important environmental protections are woefully out of date, endangering Marylanders' health, safety, economic welfare, and natural resources. Maryland could take a step to rectify that this year. State lawmakers are advancing important legislation that would bring outdated water pollution rules up to speed and protect Marylanders and the environment.