Category: Greenhouse_Gases_MN Legislations_MN Politics_International_MN

The Senate ratified its first international climate treaty in three decades on Wednesday, approving an agreement worked out in 2016 that will phase down refrigerant chemicals that are among the most potent climate pollutants.
While the Senate is badly divided on most climate issues, strong backing from the business community to eliminate hydrofluorocarbons, known as HFCs, aligned with environmentalists’ agenda to help secure enough Republican support to meet the Constitution’s requirement of two-thirds support.

PR firms are paid to engage in unethical tactics that intimidate and silence Americans who are exercising their rights to support actions that combat climate change wealthy and powerful corporate entities are dragging citizens and public interest opponents through meritless. But protracted and extremely costly litigation to expose anyone who dares to stand up to them to financial and personal ruin in its work to silence its critics. — Rep Katie Porter

Democrats desperately needed the vote of Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia to get their signature legislative priority across the finish. So they did what Washington does best: They cut a deal.
To help land his support for a bill hailed by advocacy groups as the biggest investment ever in curbing climate change, Manchin said he secured a commitment from President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders to move a permitting-streamlining package for energy projects through Congress before Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.

Seventy-two House Democrats, including several committee chairs, warned House leadership Friday not to agree to ease restrictions on new energy projects in the push to keep the federal government funded past Sept. 30.
The warning came in a letter organized by Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, and follows similar opposition by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Senate. With Democrats holding paper-thin margins in each chamber, almost any defections on a temporary funding bill vote could cause big problems.

A group of 72 House Democrats led by Natural Resources Committee Chair Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) sent a letter Friday to party leaders urging them to split a contentious proposal on energy permitting from the upcoming government funding bill or any other must-pass spending legislation.

Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Today we’re reading this E&E News article about how Queen Elizabeth II, who died yesterday at 96, spent decades advocating for climate action. (As a former E&E News reporter, Maxine appreciates that the publication always finds a climate angle.) But first:

Sen. Bernie Sanders said Thursday he would oppose a stopgap government spending measure that includes forthcoming permitting legislation, underscoring progressive resistance to the bill amid protests by environmental groups.
Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, called the permitting proposal a “disastrous side deal” that would make it easier for fossil fuel companies to “pollute the environment and destroy our planet.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen praised Biden administration’s economic policies Thursday during a speech at a Ford Motor Company electric vehicle plant in Michigan.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority put itself front and center in American politics with its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. But the understandable passion around abortion rights should not obscure another profoundly consequential political struggle — over the federal government’s capacity to regulate the economy and protect the environment.

In 1981, as a young lawmaker, former vice president Al Gore held what some experts think was the first congressional hearing on climate change.