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In his second State of the Union address, President Joe Biden hailed his administration’s significant accomplishments over the last two years and called on lawmakers to “finish the job” on a wide variety of policy issues. He uttered the phrase over and over — more than a dozen times, in fact — in relation to everything from repairing the economy and controlling the cost of prescription drugs to expanding access to affordable health insurance and making the tax code fairer. About a third of the way through his 73-minute speech, he called on the country to “finish the job” when it comes to climate change.

In their crusade against “wokeness,” congressional Republicans are taking aim at a Labor Department rule about pension plan investments. The rule’s transgression is apparently that it makes it easier for pension plans to consider how climate-related risks might affect a company’s bottom line. To avoid being woke, the GOP would apparently prefer pension managers to close their eyes to financial realities, sleepwalking their way through the climate crisis. The real fear, of course, is that more wide-awake investment might disfavor some of the GOP’s biggest corporate supporters.

Where are President Joe Biden’s regulatory process reforms? That’s the question many progressive advocates have been asking since the administration released its Day One memo inaugurating a “process with the goal of producing a set of recommendations for improving and modernizing regulatory review.” Two years later, this process remains in limbo.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its environmental regulatory state partners have engaged in many important successful efforts to foster compliance with regulatory obligations through enforcement actions and otherwise. But in her new book, Next Generation Compliance: Environmental Regulation in the Modern Era, Cynthia Giles documents widespread and significant noncompliance with these obligations.

There are U.S. Supreme Court cases going back a century or more dealing with what we would now consider environmental issues, such as preserving nature or air pollution. But when did the Court start seeing filthy rivers and smoky cities as embodiments of the same problem, despite their striking physical differences? And when did it start thinking of “wilderness” as a good thing rather than a failure to use available resources?

Greetings from sunny San Diego, where the Center for Progressive Reform is gathering alongside the annual Association of American Law Schools conference to celebrate 20 years of impact and explore legal and policy changes that would secure a more sustainable climate and a more just transition to clean energy. Also at the top of our agenda: celebrating our invaluable Member Scholars.

Here we are, starting another year. Last year turned out to have some major environmental developments. The most notable were the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the West Virginia v. EPA case, striking down the Clean Power Plan, and the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, with its huge economic incentives for clean energy. Here’s a quick rundown of what 2023 might hold in store.

In 2021, President Joe Biden created the Justice40 Initiative, which directs at least 40 percent of federal investments in climate, energy, transit, workforce, infrastructure, and environment-related programs to “disadvantaged communities.” The benefits are far-reaching and range from reduced air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, lower energy burdens (the share households spend on electric and other energy bills), improved public transportation, and the creation of clean energy jobs and training opportunities, among others.

Gentle giant. These two words appear over and over again in tributes to the late Rep. Donald McEachin, who died on November 28 from complications from cancer. He was 61. The Virginia Democrat indeed stood tall in the halls of Congress, where he served constituents in and south of Richmond. But he was a giant in the figurative sense of the word, too, particularly when it came to racial equity and environmental justice — issues he championed over two decades in political office.