Blog

Testifying before Congress, releasing new books, engaging with the news media — our Member Scholars packed virtually a year’s worth of advocacy on climate justice, clean air and water, and worker health and safety into the first three months of 2023.

Last summer, standing outside the Paradise Inn in Washington’s Mount Rainier National Park, I still needed a fleece to keep warm. In the shadow of the park’s snow-covered volcano, the meadows sparkled with wildflowers. I remembered a news article from a few years back about how Mount Rainier’s iconic flora were slowly retreating to higher elevations away from the inn. Park scientists attributed this to higher temperatures caused by climate change. There was some debate at the time about whether park staff should manually seed the meadows where lodge visitors gather or to let the buttercups and salmonberries crawl naturally uphill. I don’t know where they ended up on that.

The landmark Inflation Reduction Act gave the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) $3 billion to fund a wide range of pollution reduction, clean energy, and climate resilience measures in the nation’s most marginalized communities. At issue now is how the agency will allocate the funds to eligible communities and projects.

On March 29, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly passed a landmark resolution asking the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an advisory opinion on state obligations relating to climate change and the consequences of breaching them under several sources of international law, including the UN Charter, human rights treaties, and international customary law. The import of both the request and the opinion, however, is not just about Earth’s climate system and the extent of state obligations for protecting it; it is also about the potential for more equitable, just, and effective international governance.

Chester, Pennsylvania, located in Delaware County just southwest of Philadelphia, was founded in 1681, making it the oldest city in the state. Situated directly on the Delaware River, Chester was a manufacturing and industrial community for much of its history, though that activity began to decline starting in the 1950s. That legacy and other factors make the city of 32,000 potentially prone to a catastrophic toxic flooding event, now and in the future as the effects of climate change continue to intensify.

On the 16th of every month, I dread it: opening my Duke Energy bill. After the shock of seeing our first electric bill of $182 back in October 2022, I knew we were in for a long winter. I thought I was imagining bills going up every month, but it’s not all in my head. In December 2022, Duke Energy rates where I live in Asheville, North Carolina, rose 10 percent due to increased fuel costs. I’m in a privileged position, but the price hike still hurts. But there is a better way.

On April 10, the Maryland General Assembly passed the Private Well Safety Act (HB 11/SB 483) before it wrapped up the 2023 legislative session at midnight (Happy Sine Die!). With its passage, the Private Well Safety Act will provide roughly 830,000 Marylanders who get their drinking water from a private well with the necessary resources and information to monitor and safeguard their household drinking water and ultimately protect their and their family’s health.

The Delaware River Basin is a vital ecosystem that provides drinking water for millions of people and supports diverse wildlife, recreation, and agriculture in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. Unfortunately, industrial activities in the basin contaminate the water with toxic pollutants, leading to a variety of negative impacts on human health and the environment and endangering industrial workers.

As the Center for Progressive Reform enters our third decade of advocating for progressive policy for the public good, our country is facing wholly unprecedented challenges: A suffering climate. Unimaginable inequality and inequities that dispossess the majority. A faltering democracy. The Center is extremely gratified to have three new Board members join us and lend their deep expertise and wide range of experiences as we tackle these challenges and more.