• Energy

Virginia To Greatly Expand Renewable Energy Under New State Law

• #cleanenergy
• #climatechange
• conservation
• environment
• frontline communities
• renewable energy
• solar energy
• Virginia
• wind energy

Virginia will close all its coal-fired power plants by 2024 and its electricity will all come from renewable sources by and be 100 percent carbon-free by 2050 under a new law the Governor signed yesterday, with penalties imposed on the utilities that fail to meet these deadlines.

Why This Matters:  State government elections matter too. This is the most ambitious clean energy program enacted by a Southern state (yet).

• Politics

Trump Administration Had Secret Industry Backchannel for Comments on NEPA Rollback

• conservation
• environment
• National Environmental Policy Act
• NEPA
• science
• sunshine in government
• swamp

Environmental groups and Democratic Senators decried the White House Council on Environmental Quality using a separate, non-public email address for its select friends in industry and business to submit views on the administration’s proposal to weaken the regulations implementing a bedrock environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). 

Why This Matters:  The whole point of NEPA is for the public to know the environmental impacts of government actions and have a chance to comment on them — it is a sunshine law at its core.

• People

Interview of the Week: Gary Strieker, Executive Producer, This American Land

• #30x30
• #climatechange
• environment
• Land and Water Conservation Fund
• sustainability

https://www.thisamericanland.org/

• Land

Park Service Closes Shenandoah National Park But Some DC Monuments Remain Open

• #30x30
• #conservationist
• Appalachian Trail
• conservation
• environment
• hike
• Land and Water Conservation Fund
• science

The National Park Service continues to close parks on a piecemeal basis, this week Shenandoah National Park closed, but even after an appeal from D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) to close them before the weekend crowds descend, the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials in Washington, D.C. remain open.

Why This Matters:  Delegate Holmes Norton is right when she argues that “Federal agencies must do their part to flatten the curve,” but the Park Service is certainly not leading by example. 

• People

The Most Important Resource of the Twenty-First Century

• 21st Century
• climate change
• data
• disruption
• empathy
• environment

By Scott Nuzum What is the most important resource of the twenty-first century? Depending on whom you ask, the answer may be water, data, rare earth metals, or sand. In truth, each of these resources—and countless others—will play a critical role in shaping twenty-first-century events and society. But there is one resource that we don’t […]

• Politics

• clean air
• clean energy
• clean water
• conservation
• crystal clean
• environment
• President Trump

When it comes to environmental policy, it’s hardly “America First.” In fact, according to Yale University’s environmental performance ranking, it’s America 27th, compared with other nations. Despite this inconvenient truth, President Trump this week boasted of his team’s hard work to ensure our country has “crystal-clean” water and air. The sham event had to be moved indoors thanks to epic storms and flooding in Washington. Good thing — otherwise lightning might have struck him for all his lies.