Climate Caucus sends
letter to leadership urging cooperation on permitting
Last week, a group of lawmakers in the House Climate Solutions Caucus sent a letter to House leadership urging bipartisan climate cooperation and specifically highlighting permitting reform as an area of opportunity. The 26 members who signed the letter are 13 Republicans and 13 Democrats. (One of the signatories is Rep. Young Kim, pictured above speaking at CCL's 2022 conservative conference.) Addressed to newly elected Speaker Johnson and to Minority Leader Jefferies, the letter opens by saying, “We write to express our interest in working with you to advance bipartisan climate policies during the 118th Congress.” Ben Pendergrass, CCL’s Vice President of Government Affairs, says the letter sends “an important message” because it “is the first statement that includes Republicans saying any reform package must address transmission.” Before now, the issue of transmission was cast as a Democratic issue, so this letter represents concrete evidence of growing common ground. The letter comes just weeks after CCL staff delivered a briefing to the staff of Climate Solutions Caucus members about clean energy permitting reform and the need for increased transmission. That briefing, and the outreach of CCL liaisons, were directly responsible for some of the members of Congress joining the letter. Get all the details on this encouraging development in today’s blog post.
In other news this week: • New climate report just dropped: The Fifth National Climate Assessment was just released yesterday, outlining climate trends, impacts, and solutions in each region of the United States. Check out the report and plan to join CCL Research Coordinator Dana Nuccitelli on Dec. 15 for a discussion of its findings. • ICYMI: Republicans introduce foreign pollution fee: Sens. Cassidy and Graham recently introduced the Foreign Pollution Fee Act of 2023. This is an encouraging development after years of CCL volunteers lobbying on this type of policy idea! • Open positions: CCL is hiring a Senior Development Officer and a Development Coordinator. Please share the job listings with anyone in your network who may be interested. |
