By Melissa Farr, Senior Distributed Organizer, Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter
It’s been a party over here! We hope you’ve celebrated the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s finalization of many critical pollution standards over the past few months. From methane to soot, vehicle emissions to power plant pollution, the EPA has taken historic action on climate. However, for each standard we celebrate, there is the looming risk of Congressional Review that threatens to ruin our party vibes.
The Congressional Review Act (CRA) is “a tool Congress can use to overturn certain federal agency actions.” Members of Congress can introduce a CRA resolution to stop a rule from going into effect, including our favorite new pollution standards from the EPA. And, CRA resolutions only need a simple majority to pass!
We believe that we can trust our Pennsylvania Senators, John Fetterman and Bob Casey Jr., to choose the health and well-being of Pennsylvanians over the interests of the fossil fuel industry, and rebuff all attempts to rollback pollution standards. However, we did find ourselves facing a surprising situation recently when Senator Fetterman expressed publicly that he was open to voting with Republicans to overturn the Cleaner Cars Standard. In response, Sierra Club Pennsylvania launched a digital accountability ad to encourage the Senator to do the right thing and reject the CRA resolution (S.4072).
We are thrilled to report that both Senators in Pennsylvania defended our climate and voted “no” on S.4072! With the initial accountability ad generating media attention, we used this spotlight to launch a second digital ad thanking Senator Fetterman for his decision. We hope you will thank the Senator too. Let’s make sure he knows we are paying attention and that he has our support when it comes to protecting pollution standards against future CRA resolutions. Please join us in thanking Senator Fetterman today!
This blog was included as part of the May 2024 Sylvanian newsletter. Please click here to check out more articles from this edition!