In the News

The House voted along party lines last night on GOP measures to nix Biden-era land management plans for Alaska, Montana and North Dakota. The House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, a Democratic group, said the plans "balance multiple uses" and killing them is a "giveaway for Trump's corporate polluter friends.

House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition Co-Chair Rep. Paul Tonko, member Rep. Kathy Castor and 83 other Democrats signed a letter urging EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to reconsider repealing greenhouse gas emissions standards for fossil fuel plants.

After years of conservatives' pleas, the Trump administration on Tuesday proposed erasing the 2009 endangerment finding, the federal government’s bedrock scientific declaration on the dangers of greenhouse gases — a move that would run afoul of reams of research and topple most of the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate regulations, reports our Alex Guillén. House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition Democrats slammed the rollback, saying the decision to repeal the endangerment finding “represents a disturbing new level of extreme science denial by the very agency entrusted to protect the American public from pollution.” “Whether it’s the catastrophic flash floods in Texas, the wildfires that demolished Californian communities, or the scorching heat dome currently enveloping half of the U.S., it is no longer a question whether climate change endangers our lives,” they said in a statement.

The Trump administration’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed on Tuesday revoking a science-based determination that pollution fueling climate change harms public health. Leaders from the House of Representatives Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, including U.S. Reps. Mike Quigley and Sean Casten from Illinois, also spoke out against the proposed rollback, calling it “a disturbing new level of extreme science denial by the very agency entrusted to protect the American public from pollution.”

As floods and wildfires have battered national parks in recent years, a new study from green and Democrat-aligned groups aims to tie climate change to ecological decline. The report from the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition Institute and the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, to be released Tuesday, argues that parks will continue to see degradation until the rise in global temperature begins to cool — whether that’s decreasing snowpack in Yellowstone, wildfires in Yosemite or sea level rise in Acadia.

After Senate Republicans narrowly passed their version of the megabill — which took a softer strategy to phasing out Democrats' climate legislation on Tuesday than many hardline conservatives had sought — it's now up to the House to vote, with only a couple days until their self-imposed July 4th deadline. Lawmakers, industry officials and environmental groups are sounding alarms over the legislation’s elimination of key tax credits, pointing out how it will hurt America’s solar industry, put additional strain on the electric grid and halt America’s economic growth in the energy sphere. Members of the all Democratic House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition slammed the bill, saying it “destroys American energy security, kills jobs and sends electricity costs through the roof for American families.”

Democrats in the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC) condemned the bill as a "Blackout Bill," warning of higher energy bills and long-term economic consequences. "This disastrous legislation will cause more frequent and severe blackouts across the country, drive up household electricity bills by more than $400 a year, and kill hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs," SEEC co-chairs Reps. Doris Matsui, Mike Quigley and Paul Tonko wrote in a statement. "It's not too late to stop the madness."

Democrats were quick to slam the bill after passage Tuesday. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the measure a betrayal and said that Republicans had “covered the Senate in utter shame.” The House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, composed exclusively of Democrats, called out the energy provisions passed by the Senate. “This bill cedes America’s leadership in the industries of the future while giving handouts to the industries of the past,” the group wrote in a statement.