Search

Pennsylvanians are grappling with the fallout from the recently passed House Bill 1100 which provides tax incentives for the build out of the petrochemical industry.

One perspective that emerged in southwest Pennsylvania is that we shouldn’t back elected officials that don’t support policies that create blue collar prevailing wage jobs that will uplift Pennsylvanians. This perspective only gets it partially right.

As someone who came from a union household, I couldn’t agree more that we need leaders who will fight for policies and projects that provide a family-supporting wage. But uplifting

President Trump and Acting Administrator Wheeler are ditching a carefully crafted program that addressed the climate crisis. They are putting our health at risk, and our future, by catering to their fossil fuel industry cronies. This is bad attempt to prop-up 20th century energy companies while trying to slow the transition to clean energy.

The Massachusetts legislative session ended on July 31st. Overall, it was a controversial session that has been characterized as much by what didn’t happen as by what did. The two environmental actions taken by the legislature this session were environmental justice funding in the state budget, and a compromise clean energy bill. They also passed an environmental bond bill, but it is not clear how much it will raise and what impacts it will have.

The environmental justice language in the budget is a huge win in Massachusetts. The budget requires Baker’s environmental office to hire a full time