#nrdc

[grewsomeart]

Hoping all of us can keep moving and keep fighting the current as we head into a new winter of discontent. A portion of sales will go to the Natural Resources Defense Council in hopes of slowing some of the oncoming destruction.

Grewsomeart shop

[wetlandsday]

Saving the Bogs (and Peatlands, Swamps, Marshes, Fens…)

Dawn breaks over a cypress swamp in Arkansas. Wetlands cover just 6 percent of the planet’s land area but provide habitat for 40 percent of wildlife. Protecting Biodiversity Means Saving the Bogs (and Peatlands, Swamps, Marshes, Fens…)

[angelasouthern]

New work for @nrdc_org (Natural Resource Defense Council) 🌸🌎🌼 In celebration of National Poetry Month and Earth Month this April, NRDC has partnered with @orion_magazine to ask three poets to face our climate crisis head-on. Three writers counter despair and summon courage in facing the challenges of our warming world. #nrdc #rachelelizagriffiths #seanhill #janewong #poets #nationalpoetrymonth #poetrymonth #lettering #handlettering #letteringartist #digitalcollage #editorialillustration #letteringillustration #earthmonth (at Austin, Texas) https://www.instagram.com/p/CqbagEBL-wS/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[nationallawreview]

FDA Affirms Its Decision to Remove 25 Plasticizers From the Food Additive Regulations

In a continuation of the US Food and Drug Administration‘s efforts to conduct post-market reviews evaluating the continued use and safety of chemicals authorized in its regulations, the agency is removing decades-old clearances for food-contact materials based on evolving toxicology concerns. Specialty chemical companies should take note of the development as an example of the way FDA may respond…

[intlforestday]

Focus on how forests' ability to regulate the movement of rainwater and snowmelt through forested landscapes can be degraded by industrial logging.

Extreme flooding events are increasing with climate change. Research shows how clearcut logging increases risks to communities and ecosystems. Flooding in British Columbia's Fraser Valley in November 2021.

Research study: Forest Degradation Increases Community Vulnerability to Extreme Floods.

[musicmags]

[odinsblog]

Elena Kagan issued a devastating dissent to the decision of her hard-right fellow supreme court justices to overturn the Chevron doctrine that has been a cornerstone of federal regulation for 40 years, accusing the majority of turning itself into “the country’s administrative czar”.

Kagan said that in one fell swoop, the rightwing majority had snatched the ability to make complex decisions over regulatory matters away from federal agencies and awarded the power to themselves.

“As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar,” she wrote.

For 40 years, she wrote, the Chevron doctrine, set out by the same supreme court in a 1984 ruling, had supported regulatory efforts by the US government by granting federal experts the ability to make reasonable decisions where congressional law was ambiguous. She gave a few examples of the work that was facilitated as a result, such as “keeping air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest”.

Now, the hard-right supermajority had flipped that on its head.

Instead of federal experts adjudicating on all manner of intricate scientific and technical questions – such as addressing the climate crisis, deciding on the country’s healthcare system or controlling AI – now judges would make those critical calls.

Kagan, displaying no desire to pull her punches, portrayed Friday’s ruling as a blatant power grab by the chief justice, John Roberts, and his five ultra-right peers, three of whom were appointed by Trump – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

“A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris,” she wrote.

Not for the first time, her most caustic comments relate to stare decisis – the adherence to legal precedent that is the foundation stone of the rule of law. Respect for the previous judgments of the supreme court is a reminder to judges that “wisdom often lies in what prior judges have done. It is a brake on the urge to convert every new judge’s opinion into a new legal rule or regime.”

By contrast, she went on: “It is impossible to pretend that today’s decision is a one-off, in its treatment of precedent.”

It has become an unquestionable pattern: the new hard-right supermajority has a fondness for tearing up their own court’s precedents stretching back decades. They did it when they eviscerated the right to an abortion in 2022, upending 50 years of settled law; they did it again last year when they prohibited affirmative action in university admissions, casting out 40 years of legal precedent; and now they’ve done it once more after 40 years to Chevron.

“Just my own defenses of stare decisis, my own dissents to this court’s reversals of settled law, by now fill a small volume,” Kagan said, her final words as plaintive as they were defiant.

(continue reading)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ed Pilkington at The Guardian:

The US supreme court has overturned one of its own most important precedents, the Chevron doctrine, that for the past 40 years has guided the work of federal government in critical areas of public life, from food and drug safety to environmental protection. In a ruling that the Biden administration has warned could have a “convulsive” impact on the functioning of government, the court’s hardline conservative majority delivered a major blow to the regulatory powers of federal agencies. Voting as a block, the six rightwing justices who wield the supermajority threw out the supreme court’s own 1984 opinion in Chevron USA Inc v Natural Resources Defense Council, which has required the courts to defer to the knowledge of government experts in their reasonable interpretation of ambiguous laws.

Writing the opinion, chief justice John Roberts bluntly stated that the Chevron precedent “is overruled”. He lambasted the legal theory laid out in the ruling, claiming it “gravely erred” and calling it was “misguided” and “unworkable” despite the fact that it has steered the functions of the federal government for four decades.

Roberts not only eradicated the Chevron doctrine, he turned it on its head. Under his ruling, the relationship between courts and federal agencies is reversed: in the modern era, the courts have shown deference to the expertise of agencies, but from now on the courts alone will decide. “The constitution assigns to the federal judiciary the responsibility and power to adjudicate cases and controversies,” Roberts wrote. “Agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.”

In recent years, the Chevron doctrine has become a central target of rightwing groups that blame it for what they see as a proliferation of government regulations executed by unelected bureaucrats in the so-called “deep state”. A key group behind the supreme court challenge, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, was founded with seed money from the oil billionaire Charles Koch.

[...] Elena Kagan issued a withering dissent, which was joined by her fellow liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She accused her rightwing peers on the bench of throwing out a precedent that had stood for 40 years as “a cornerstone of administrative law”.

Chevron had been applied over that period in thousands of judicial decisions and become “part of the warp and woof of modern government”, said Kagan. By casting out decades of settled law, the conservative supermajority had once again asserted their authority. “The majority disdains restraint, and grasps for power,” Kagan added.

The radical right-wing judicial activist majority on SCOTUS ruled 6-3 by Chief Justice John Roberts to overturn Chevron v. NRDC (aka the Chevron Doctrine) in the Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo ruling that would adversely impact federal government functions and regulatory powers in many aspects.

SCOTUS Justice Elena Kagan said it best in her dissent in Loper Bright Enterprises: “The majority disdains restraint, and grasps for power.”

[zmyaro]

I have so little patience for people insisting Z/llennials are anxious because of our phones. Do you think limiting federal agencies' abilities to protect workers and consumers would be less awful if I read it in a newspaper?? Do you think pollution would be less of a problem if Walter Cronkite told me about it?? Do you think more people under 30 would have secure employment and housing if the town crier shouted the stats??

Are there online platforms that create and exacerbate extremely unhealthy social situations? Absolutely, yes! But stop acting as though people aren't intelligent enough to also identify actual problems chronically affecting their lives.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Truthout:

We are witnessing a blatant attempt to burn our governmental structure to the ground, destroy any semblance of checks and balances, and allow billionaires and their corporations free rein without consequences.

What does this mean for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has protected the environment and human health for nearly 55 years, including by regulating air pollution, banning dangerous chemicals like DDT and working to reduce carbon emissions? Trump is revealing the fragility of our government: Progress often takes years of pressure, compromise and monumental amounts of work — consider the recent limits on the dumping of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) known as “forever chemicals” submitted by the Biden administration last fall, or the agonizing process of passing the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Now, Trump and his right-wing allies are attempting to destroy both with a snap of his fingers.

Speaking days into the Trump presidency — before some of the most horrifying orders came down — Matthew Tejada, senior vice president of environmental health at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), told Truthout that concerns about the future of the EPA can be broken down into three buckets: The White House may seek to roll back or revoke hard-earned environmental regulations and protections, withhold funds that the EPA is charged with disbursing for energy and environmental projects, and weaken the agency by attacking federal employees and the institution itself.

We are already seeing Trump attempt all three avenues of EPA sabotage predicted by Tejada, who previously worked within the EPA’s Office for Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. Within his first weeks in office, Trump withdrew Biden’s forever chemical reform plan, sought to keep lead in Americans’ drinking water and froze already allocated Inflation Reduction Act funds. Trump has also appointed chemical and oil industry insiders to the agency, fired every scientist on two of the EPA’s most influential science advisory panels and seems poised to attempt mass firings of EPA staff.

The EPA has been under assault before. But in many ways, the threats it faces today are unprecedented.

“EPA has been a punching bag since it was first created,” Tejada told Truthout. The agency was established in 1970 under President Richard Nixon, at a moment when the dangers of pollution were becoming impossible to ignore, from oil spills, to lifeless lakes, to deadly smog and chemical odors permeating cities, to the Cuyahoga River literally catching fire. In 1969, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act, which required federal agencies to assess the environmental impact before beginning major projects, and directed the president to assemble the Council on Environmental Quality. The following year, sensing a growing environmental consciousness, Nixon created the EPA.

Over the years, Tejada said the EPA has come to hold a key role in everyday life. “Not that everything has been perfect.… But if you look at the environment that we lived in in 1970, versus today, EPA has been wildly successful at cleaning up the environment in our country.”

“I think a lot of people don’t understand that its ability to have been as successful as it has been, has largely been due to the steady leadership and commitment of the institution and the people who inhabit it,” he continued. “And those people are now under threat in a way that they have never been. If they actually make moves to really gut the staff, to eliminate institutional memory and knowledge? A next president can’t just fix that. You’re talking about generations of value that can pretty quickly be extinguished, and that will take generations to rebuild.”

[mr-entj]

Mr-entj, you always say to start from the problems we want to solve. But how exactly can we find out what those are and how good we are at doing that?

Related answer:

Career and impact

Look around everywhere and see what catches your interest. Here are a few places to start and questions to ask:

Your immediate environment. Look around you—at your situation, family, neighborhood, socioeconomic class, ethnic group, town, city, and country. What issues are affecting them? What conditions are you living in? How are you treated?

For example, a former classmate of mine, whose family was deeply impacted by the Korean War, went on to study at Harvard and earn her PhD at Oxford. Today, she’s a recognized expert on North Korean human rights issues, publishing and speaking on the topic worldwide (currently a guest lecturer at Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government).

Within society. Check the news, social media, and entertainment channels. What themes keep surfacing? What news headlines are most fascinating or disturbing?

For example, I have a friend who was deeply troubled by corporate environmental abuse, everything from unchecked pollution to unpunished disasters and the growing threat of climate change. She pursued a law degree at Stanford Law School, later led the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and now serves as the Director of Global Climate Strategies for a climate non-profit.

At school and in academia. What research are people working on? What subjects interest you? Which professors are tackling interesting problems and pushing exciting boundaries?

For example, a friend of mine was inspired by her Child Development Psychology professor, who encouraged her to pursue graduate school. With support from that professor, my friend earned a spot in a top PhD program at the University of Michigan. Today, she’s a professor of Child and Adolescent Development in California, researching educational outcomes for first-generation Latino students.

At work. What’s inefficient or frustrating? What tools would make life easier? What solutions are missing that need to be built?

For example, a friend of mine noticed how tedious and frustrating it was to onboard contractors. So, he launched a startup to streamline everything from interviews to payroll. In 2021, he sold that same startup to Workday for $500 million USD.

For me, I'm driven by technological innovations that improve society (Product Management + Strategy) and working to ensure the responsible deployment of that technology to keep the world safe (Trust & Safety). For my wife (the INTJ), her focus is on ensuring technology is used fairly and that personal data isn’t exploited or misused (she's a lawyer that works in data privacy).

You won’t know how good you are at solving problems until you identify your strengths. Then: research, experiment, fail, learn, grow, and repeat. Without data, there are no new insights. Get out there, try something, and come back with real-world feedback.

[argyleteatime]

Hey Tumblings,

Following up on my last post - as America attempts to become a hellscape I've been looking into where I can help monetarily. If you have the resources and want, the below charities all go to good stuff, and have an above 85% rating on Charity Advisor. (These are on top of the well-known names of ACLU, PP, HRC, NAACP, CRR, SPLC, etc.)

For anyone who needs something to remind them of hope and gives straight-forward action options, my sister (who exists in a more positive state of mind than I do) shared Chop Wood, Carry Water with me, and I've found it valuable in keeping my spirits up. If you don't have the funds or energy for either of these, just be kind to yourself.

Transgender Law Center - Trans Rights 

PEN - Freedom of Expression/Literature

CREW - An Ethics Watchdog in Washington

Asylum Access - International Refugee Support

UNRWA - Palestinian Aide

National Immigration Forum - Supporting Immigrant Rights in the US

Race Forward - Racial Justice Fund

NRDC - Natural Resources Fund/Planetary Aide

Elevated Access - Provides free flights to people seeking Gender-Affirming or Abortion Care that cannot access them locally

Americans United for Separation of Church and State - What it says, has been instrumental in access to Birth Control, blocking far-right religious based laws

Lambda Legal - legal aid for LGBTQIA+ communities

[mariacallous]

This summer, the Supreme Court is poised to overturn a cornerstone of administrative law known as "Chevron deference." Established in the 1984 case Chevron v. NRDC, this doctrine instructs courts to defer to federal agencies' interpretations of laws where the underlying statute is ambiguous (or even silent). Absent Chevron, Congress could be forced to be much more specific in how it crafts legislation, delegates authority, and conducts regulatory oversight. If it refuses to adapt, agencies could be incapacitated and service delivery could stall.

Ironically, the effort to dismantle Chevron and return responsibility to the legislative branch may happen amid a historically unproductive and divided Congress. Briefing and oral arguments for Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the case challenging the 1984 decision, raised questions about Congress' preparedness. And outside the Court, commentators fear Congress may be too broken to fix.

As close watchers of efforts to modernize Congress over the past decade, we don't share that pessimism. But a lot will have to change. In the 40 years since Chevron was decided, Congress has seen worsening dysfunction and atrophy. Staffing on House committees has shrunk by 41 percent. Critical support offices like the Congressional Research Service and the Government Accountability Office have downsized by more than 25 percent. Meanwhile, the complexity of the federal bureaucracy has increased immensely.

While Chevron is often described as diminishing congressional authority, that's not entirely accurate. Rather than stealing authority from Congress, the ruling created the political conditions for Congress to be deliberately ambiguous, and punt contentious policy details to the executive branch. This change was then followed by a hollowing out of committee expertise, increased dependence on lobbyists, centralization of power in leadership, and more gridlock. As attorney Paul Clement argued in Loper Bright v. Raimondo:

Chevron is a big factor in contributing to gridlock. And let me give you a concrete example. I would think that the uniquely 21st-century phenomenon of cryptocurrency would have been addressed by Congress, and I certainly would have thought that would have been true in the wake of the FTX debacle. But it hasn't happened. Why hasn't it happened? Because there's an agency head out there that thinks that he already has the authority to address this uniquely 21st-century problem with a couple of statutes passed in the 1930s.

A post-Chevron world could force Congress to increase its internal capacity, invest in expertise, overhaul its processes, better monitor implementation, and respond more quickly. If not, depending where SCOTUS comes down, things could start to break.

Massive institutional reforms in Congress are rare and usually come in response to a crisis or scandal, whether post-Nixon budget changes, post-Jack Abramoff lobbying reform, or post-9/11 security changes (including the embrace of email after Anthrax attacks).

More recently, we saw continuity upgrades accelerated during the pandemic, and Congress is now responding with remarkable haste to responsibly adopt AI tools. Since 2019, a bipartisan modernization effort in the House has produced and implemented over 100 reforms, creating a virtuous cycle in which members, staff, and outside experts work together to improve the institution.

Post-Chevron, these efforts need to be dramatically expanded. This will require not just incremental adjustments but a comprehensive upgrade in resources, staffing, and operations. It will require a major increase to the legislative branch's budget even as the U.S. faces a difficult fiscal outlook. Indeed, while Congress is a mere 0.1 percent of federal expenditures, it has long been a salient and politically expedient place for politicians to make cuts.

One key area where Congress will need to improve is its regulatory monitoring and oversight. AEI scholars Kevin Kosar and Philip Wallach proposed a vehicle for this change: a new "Congressional Regulation Office" (CRO). The CRO would undertake critical tasks such as conducting benefit-cost analyses of significant agency rules, performing retrospective reviews to assess the effectiveness and impact of existing regulations, and identifying redundancies or conflicts across the regulatory landscape. Another approach would be to build this function inside of an existing agency, such as the Government Accountability Office or the Congressional Budget Office.

In addition to building a new regulatory support function, Congress will need to bolster its staff capacity and technology resources, with a particular focus on committees with substantial regulatory jurisdiction, as well as support agencies.

Unfortunately, to date, we are unaware of any major hearings or other efforts in Congress to address this challenge. Meanwhile, court watchers see that an upheaval to Chevron is coming. Regardless of where you come down on the merits of the case, it's crucial to get ready. While most will be focused on the November election throughout 2024, some of the biggest changes coming to Congress may soon be decided by nine votes.

[sustainabilitythoughts]

Recently I was talking to a friend about vampire energy, which is the electricity used by many devices to maintain a standby condition.  Many of these devices use small amounts of electricity even when sleeping or turned off.  Devices with clocks and internal thermostats to maintain a specific temperature as well as many “smart” electronic products use vampire energy.  My friend was interested in knowing how much power is used worldwide for this vampire energy, so I went looking for a number.  According to the article below, “Studies from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have found that more than 100 billion kilowatt-hours are wasted every year because of vampire energy, costing American consumers over $19—about $165 per US household on average—and 50 large (500-megawatt) power plants’ worth of electricity.”  “Cutting vampire energy consumption in half, in the US alone, would be the equivalent of turning off the carbon emissions of a medium-sized country, like Jordan or Lebanon.”  The article points out that “at the industrial level, 21 percent of all electricity consumed by buildings is wasted”.   Most of us are not in charge of industrial facilities, but when at work we can at least turn lights off and unplug our phone chargers before we go home.  Other things to consider:  

Plug electronic devices into an easily-accessible power strip so that you can turn the power completely off at night or when you are not using the device.  Choose settings that put the device into a low-power sleep mode after a short period of non-use. 

Unplug devices such as digital clocks in a guest bedroom.  You can plug them back in when guests are expected. 

Don’t leave chargers plugged in when they’re not actively charging your device.  All those smartphone, laptop, and personal care device chargers use electricity even when not connected to the item they are intended to charge.

[azspot]

The Supreme Court fundamentally altered the way that our federal government functions on Friday, transferring an almost unimaginable amount of power from the executive branch to the federal judiciary. By a 6–3 vote, the conservative supermajority overruled Chevron v. NRDC, wiping out four decades of precedent that required unelected judges to defer to the expert judgment of federal agencies. The ruling is extraordinary in every way—a massive aggrandizement of judicial power based solely on the majority’s own irritation with existing limits on its authority. After Friday, virtually every decision an agency makes will be subject to a free-floating veto by federal judges with zero expertise or accountability to the people. All at once, SCOTUS has undermined Congress’ ability to enact effective legislation capable of addressing evolving problems and sabotaged the executive branch’s ability to apply those laws to the facts on the ground. It is one of the most far-reaching and disruptive rulings in the history of the court.

Elena Kagan is horrified by what the Supreme Court just did. You should be too.