The 2018 elections may prove highly consequential for environment and energy policy, possibly slowing or even reversing the Trump-GOP deregulatory agenda. The latest Issue Backgrounder helps reporters frame the choices voters face, including environmental justice and offshore drilling.
"With three strong hurricanes, wildfires, hail, flooding, tornadoes and drought, the United States tallied a record high bill last year for weather disasters: $306 billion."
As Hurricane Harvey dumped record rains on the Houston area, nature ruled and man reacte. Harvey was Houston's reckoning.
"Congressional Republicans allowed a tax on oil companies that generated hundreds of millions of dollars annually for federal oil-spill response efforts to expire this week — a move that amounts to another corporate break in the wake of lawmakers’ sweeping tax overhaul late last month."
"Dominion Energy delivered a blockbuster offer to buy SCANA Corp. on Wednesday in the wake of South Carolina’s failed nuclear project, pitching a $14.6 billion deal that would be among the largest in state history."
"Wind turbines bring jobs, tax dollars for new schools, income security for farmers and energy independence. To these Texans, climate change has little to do with it."
"One of the longest and most consequential campaigns against science in modern history is becoming more extreme—and turning against its originators."
"The island is getting slapped with new taxes as it drowns in debt and tries to recover from a catastrophic hurricane."
"President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday instructing his deputies to devise “a strategy to reduce the Nation’s reliance on critical minerals” that are largely imported and used to produce everything from smartphones to weaponry."
Advertisement 
