league of conservation voters
Q&A: The League of Conservation Voters’ take on House Speaker Mike Johnson’s voting record: ‘appalling’
“To call him a climate skeptic is generous,” says the league’s Tiernan Sittenfeld. “He's said outrageous things about climate change, and what's causing it, whether he believes it's happening.”
Collins receives poor marks in environmental scorecard, King dinged by advocates for opposing tribal rights
In a congressional scorecard released this week, the League of Conservation Voters and Maine Conservation Voters gave Sen. Susan Collins poor marks for her 2022 voting record on environmental and democracy issues.
Major green group on track to spend record $100M in midterms
Peter Dykstra: Meet the Zeroes
Back in the day, even the climate-denying, drill-baby-drill zealots tried to maintain a saving green grace. Not anymore.
Once upon a time, environmentalists’ favorite villains always kept a pet green cause in their back pockets.
James G. Watt, Ronald Reagan’s pious, libertarian Interior Secretary, sought to lease every square inch of American coastline whether or not it bore potential for oil and gas. He also suggested that if environmental regulation could not be overcome with the ballot box, then the “cartridge box” awaited. But even Watt tipped his political hat to environmental values, endorsing a halt to global commercial whaling during a 1991 whale watch excursion.
Years later, Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe was well on his way to establishing himself as the alpha dog of congressional climate deniers. But in 2004, he became champion of the endangered Kemp Ridley sea turtles, co-sponsoring a measure to protect their nesting grounds along the Gulf Coast.
But now, when the most basic environmental questions have turned brutally partisan, things have shifted. Conservatives no longer feel they need to put up a green show to keep appearances, according to the scores of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), a half-century-old, non-partisan organization that tracks the behavior of congressional committees or individual congresspersons.
LCV bases its rating on key environmental votes in the House and Senate. What it shows is alarming.
Peter Dykstra is our weekend editor and columnist and can be reached at pdykstra@ehn.org or @pdykstra.
His views do not necessarily represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate, or publisher Environmental Health Sciences.
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