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President Biden had ambitious plans, with the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), to rebuild America’s aging infrastructure and revitalize our economy by fighting climate change through creating green jobs, reducing our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and championing environmental justice. In the scant few years since the passage of these monumental laws, changes are already taking root. For example, in Maryland, funding is flowing to various sectors of the state — private and public — for grid modernization, transportation planning, funding green banks, and cleaning polluted air, and all of it in the service of environmental justice.

Last month, the Biden administration rolled out the latest piece of its comprehensive Modernizing Regulatory Review initiative: a proposed guidance on how to account for “ecosystem services” in regulatory analysis. As I explained in my comments, if implemented well, this guidance will reinforce the administration’s broader efforts to reprogram an important step in the rulemaking process known as regulatory analysis so that it provides a fairer and fuller picture of the impacts of planned rules.

Net zero, or carbon neutral, policies are changing the discussions around reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But, even with the wide adoption of the idea, questions remain. How much does the public understand about net zero? How is the policy defined, and what are its goals? Most significantly, is it addressing climate justice?

This week, the D.C. Circuit hears three cases challenging the use of federal regulations to push adoption of electric vehicles and to allow California to forge a path toward zero-emission cars. If all three cases go badly, the regulatory system would be disabled from playing a role in this area. This would be a huge setback, though there are reasons to think that it would only delay, rather than prevent, the transition to clean cars.

In the coming years, key decisions that will greatly impact state efforts to address climate change will be made by agencies that the public often thinks very little about. Public utility commissions (PUCs) are state agencies that regulate energy markets. They set electricity prices, plan energy resource development, and oversee the utility providers within their states. For decades, these agencies have advanced an energy policy that is informed by a straightforward need to provide dependable electricity to consumers at fair rates.

How would I describe the world we live in? Well, the world we live in has molded me into an activist. I am of a generation that has been required to stand up and demand our rights, as our future is uncertain. More than perhaps any time in human history, our planet and the life it supports are struggling mightily. Because not enough has been done quickly enough on these issues, youth activists must pick up the torch and push to get things done.

Last week, in the capital of the state holding the largest recoverable coal reserves and the fifth-highest per capita combustion emissions in the country, a trial court shook the fossil fuel establishment by invalidating legislation that helps sustain the dominance of fossil fuels in Montana.

August 16 marks the one-year anniversary of President Joe Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law. The landmark law was the first major piece of legislation Congress passed to address climate change, and just one year later, it is already improving people's lives.

On May 23, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a proposed rule to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that run on fossil fuels. While these proposed standards are a good step forward and a much better approach to cutting climate pollution than the Trump administration’s misnamed "Affordable Clean Energy Rule," the EPA has room to strengthen them and greatly increase their climate and environmental justice benefits.