INDIANAPOLIS – The Sierra Club launched a radio advertising campaign this week highlighting how Senate Bill 309, pending in the Indiana House, gives monopoly utilities control of solar power across Indiana. The Indiana House of Representatives will vote on the bill as early as Tuesday.
Anchorage, AK -- Over the weekend, Hilcorp, the company responsible for an ongoing three-month long methane leak, announced that it had spilled oil in the Cook Inlet. The cause of the spill continues to be investigated, and the layer of ice over the Inlet makes it difficult to investigate and impossible to fully clean up.
This spill comes as Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans are looking at ways to circumvent President Barack Obama’s designation to permanently protect the Arctic Ocean from offshore drilling.
MONROE COUNTY, OH - Yesterday, the US Geological Survey reported an earthquake in Monroe County with the epicenter located at 39.6663º N, 81.244º W. The 3.0 magnitude earthquake was located in the Marietta Unit of the Wayne National Forest. Approximately 40,000 acres of the forest are slated for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) by the Bureau of Land Management.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, shortly after Donald Trump's draft plan to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada was revealed last week, leading environmental organizations including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council put forward an environmental platform for NAFTA renegotiation.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced today that coal production dropped 18 percent in 2016, putting it at its lowest levels since 1978. The announcement comes at historic levels of clean energy growth in the American energy market, with solar and wind outpacing fossil fuels in new capacity additions for the past two years and clean energy jobs far exceeding fossil fuel jobs in 2016, according to the Department of Energy (DOE).
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Yesterday, ten states including Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, reached a $157.45 million settlement with Volkswagen AG over the “Dieselgate” scandal. Under the settlement, Volkswagen must pay the states set amounts and must provide consumers three electric car models, including two electric SUVs, by 2020.
Boston, MA -- Seventy-four city and town conservation commissions across Massachusetts today urged Governor Charlie Baker to drop his support for wasteful and costly fracked-gas pipelines in Massachusetts.
Ina joint letter, the conservation commissions say new pipelines impede the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals in the Global Warming Solutions Act and Baker’s Integrated Climate Change Strategy.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said today that President Donald Trump would decide by late May whether to pull out of the universal climate accord reached in Paris. The Paris Climate Agreement was reached by over 190 nations in December 2015, and is an historic, world-wide pact to tackle the climate crisis.
In response, Sierra Club Peoples Climate March Campaign Coordinator Maura Cowley released the following statement:
COLUMBUS, OH - The Ohio House of Representatives just passed House Bill 114, which is eerily similar to legislation vetoed by Governor Kasich in December 2016. The legislation dramatically weakens utility requirements to conduct energy efficiency programs, which have been proven to provide big savings for customers, while also making renewable energy requirements completely voluntary.
Washington, DC -- Today, the Sierra Club, Northern Plains Resource Council, Bold Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed a federal lawsuit in Montana, challenging the State Department’s border-crossing permit and related environmental reviews and approvals for the Keystone XL pipeline.