Dear friends,
It’s always good to turn our attention to signs of progress.
The new climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, defines “carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels as an ‘air pollutant’.” This language was included specifically to address the Supreme Court’s ruling in June, which narrowed the scope of the EPA’s regulatory powers.
That language, according to legal experts as well as the Democrats who worked it into the legislation, explicitly gives the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and to use its power to push the adoption of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.
Republicans objected to the inclusion of this defining language before the bill passed on a party line vote. The new law seems to take the teeth out of the Court’s ruling in West Virginia vs. EPA, in which
conservative Supreme Court justices made clear that if lawmakers really wanted the government to move away from fossil fuels, they should say so.
Congress has said so.
Thank Congress for passing the Inflation Reduction Act AND remind them that Americans still need affordable child care! This 15-second action is from Moms Rising.
The fleet is part of a statewide campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions locally and improve urban air quality in accordance with state climate laws, which require enhanced air monitoring.
The vehicle can quantify about 20 different emissions.
Target areas include Manhattan, the Bronx, Albany and Buffalo/Niagara. Within a year, people living in these places will be able to go online and find their homes and workplaces, and see what kind of air they are breathing when they walk out the door.
The mobile labs are more effective than stationary monitoring units, which cannot identify local sources of pollution nor pinpoint the people within a large community who are most exposed to pollutants. When money is available to redress the harms, it can be directed to the areas most in need of mitigation measures.
The monitoring will expand to communities in Rochester, Syracuse, Mount Vernon/Yonkers, Brooklyn, Queens, and Hempstead next month.
NYS Senator Brad Hoylman has introduced legislation designed to curtail traffic fatalities by requiring vehicles to be equipped with “flexible speed governors,” a technology that makes it more difficult to speed. The bill would also require the DMV
to set rules for vehicles over 3,000 pounds, such as SUVs and pick-up trucks, ensuring that they have “direct visibility of pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users from the drivers position.”
Can a state regulate safety standards for vehicles? Two thoughts: The first is that we should try. The second is that we should encourage federal regulation.
Contact your NY state senator and tweet @SecretaryPete to urge that speed-regulation technology be mandated for all vehicles.
Starbucks union organizers in Memphis will get their jobs back. A federal judge reviewed the evidence presented by the National Labor Relations Board and ruled that
the dismissals earlier this year were motivated by anti-union feeling.
The company will likely appeal. Meanwhile 220 Starbucks stores have unionized since December and dozens more have elections pending.
According to the memo, which was reviewed by several news organizations, the company changed its policy, effective immediately, to also cover travel expenses if employees must travel more than 100 miles to obtain an abortion.
Obviously, people should not have to rely on corporations to protect their basic rights. At the same time, it is important that Walmart — which is based in Arkansas, where abortion bans do not make exceptions for rape or incest — is taking steps to insure reproductive health care for its workers.
United for Respect, a nonprofit worker advocacy group, has focused on changing policies at Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer. Learn more!
Occasionally, a scientific or technological breakthrough offers real promise for addressing some nasty problem that people have created in the name of progress.
‘Forever chemicals’, which corporations have been using to make nonstick cookware, water- and grease-repellant textiles, and dental floss that glides between our teeth, may not be forever anymore. Chemists first created per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, in the 1930s, and they now contaminate waterways, soil, and most of our bodies.
Two years ago, researchers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hit on a better approach by chance. When they placed a PFAS compound in a common solvent called DMSO as part of a toxicity study, the PFAS compound began to degrade.
The new study builds on that work. Researchers studied numerous recipes involving DMSO. One combined a little bit of the solvent with sodium hydroxide, a common component of soap, in water. When the team heated the mix to boiling temperature, it readily degraded one of the largest subsets of PFAS compounds.
This is promising AND it will need to be scaled up to meet the scope of the contamination.
[In the spring, I went down a major rabbit hole to locate a refillable container for my favorite dental floss so that I could stop purchasing plastic-cased floss, without having realized that my floss is coated in PFAS!]
If you haven’t done so already, stop using nonstick pans! I am looking into non-PFAS floss.
In the better-late-than-never category: Now that roughly 1 in 6 enlisted personnel are women, the army is developing a tactical brassiere in a variety of styles and sizes.
The project joins a wave of recent efforts to recognize the diversity of service members and improve uniform standards. Last year, the Army and the Air Force released new rules that allow more flexibility for service members who wear locs, twists, braids and ponytails. And last month, the Navy measured hundreds of sailors in Norfolk in its ongoing effort to create better-fitting uniforms for female personnel.
Ill-fitting clothing can ruin your day. If you’re not sure this is a justice issue, go shopping with a big-bodied friend.
We don’t generally rely on the courts for justice, AND, here are some hopeful rulings:
The US Supreme Court ruled that the current Georgia public service commission election system is discriminatory against Black voters and the planned November election must be postponed. The decision reversed a ruling by a Court of Appeals.
A judge has temporarily delayed enforcement of a Utah law to prevent trans students from participating in competitive sports. The plaintiffs, families of three transgender student-athletes, argue that law violates guarantees of equal rights and due process in the state constitution.
There are on-going court challenges against similar bans in Idaho, West Virginia and Indiana.
Call on Congress to pass a Transgender Bill of Rights. Personalize this ready-made action from Courage California.
I’ll be back next week.
with love,
L