Bill Mckibben wrote a New Yorker piece on the enabling role financial institutions play in the fossil fuel industry’s ongoing search for carbon-dense oil and gas, and how they could accelerate a shift to a clean energy economy if the institutions backed away from financing Big Oil. He quotes Tom Sanzillo of IEEFA, an RFF grantee, and references David Rockefeller’s role as past CEO of JPMorgan Chase and RFF’s decision to divest and includes a quote from RFF director Lee Wasserman.

Lee said, “How much morally worse is it to enable the expansion of a deadly fossil-fuel industry, whose business model is certain to cause the death and suffering of millions of people and the loss of much of the earth’s diversity? Big, sophisticated banks such as Chase and Wells Fargo understand climate science and know that our current path is leading towards climate catastrophe. Yet their machine of finance cranks along.”

RFF Director Lee Wasserman wrote an opinion piece, featured in the New York Times, describing a different litmus test to determine a candidate’s or elected official’s stance on climate change. Instead of focusing only on cutting emissions we should also be asking “Will [an official’s] policies lead to an increase or decrease in the amount of fossil fuels coming out the ground?” Read Lee’s take on the track records of California Governor Jerry Brown, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and New York Governor Cuomo against his proposed question here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/opinion/climate-change-fossil-fuels.html

The Center for Climate Integrity, an RFF grantee, released a first-of-its-kind report titled “High Tide Tax: The Price to Protect Coastal Community from Rising Seas.” The study found that coastal communities in the contiguous U.S. face more than $400 billion in costs over the next two years to defend coastal communities from inevitable sea-level rise. For hundreds of small costal and tidal communities identified in the report, the costs will far outstrip their ability to pay.

Read coverage of the report in the New York Times and Forbes.

This summer, Connecticut became the 8^th state to pass a statewide paid family and medical leave policy. Connecticut Working Families, an RFF partner, led the flight to establish the program and worked hard to continually push for stronger job protections and a more inclusive definition of who constitutes a family member.

RFF grantee, the Land Institute, is leading a research center to develop a number of perennial crops including an intermediate wheat grass called Kernza. Mainstream food producers, including General Mills, are anxious to use Kernza. Hear more about it on this NPR report.

Nonprofit VOTE released a report called “Engaging New Voters” which shows that nonprofits who encourage the community they serve to get registered to vote, through nonpartisan voter engagement efforts, play a critical role in narrowing voter turnout gaps and fostering a more representative electorate. RFF’s Institutional Accountability and Individual Liberty program area supports various independent civic engagement groups filling in the gaps of serving young, low-income voters who are often left out of the engagement process by political parties and candidates.