The Houston Chronicle recently featured an op-ed by RFF's Associate Director Larry Shapiro on the recent cancellations and standstills that pipeline developments have faced around the country.  In the op-ed, Shapiro details how, even with victories in court, pipeline developers are still canceling new pipelines due to pressure from opponents with concerns about water quality, eminent domain, and high utilities bills.

Read the entire op-ed here. 

The RFF board president Miranda Kaiser and RFF board member Neva Goodwin collaborated with the New York City controller Scott Stringer for an op-ed for the New York Daily News calling for the removal of Lee Raymond, former CEO of Exxon, from the board of JP Morgan Chase. They wrote, “Raymond is neither independent nor climate competent. He has served on the board of JPMorgan for 33 years, including 19 years in board leadership roles, and is as entrenched as it gets. During Raymond’s 42-year tenure at Exxon, he presided over a corporate strategy of climate denial. He has devoted his career to accelerating the expansion of fossil fuels, while publicly rejecting the science of climate change. . .  By voting Raymond off the board entirely, we can send a message that we will not allow fossil fuel’s old guard dictate our future. That’s a legacy none of us can afford.”

Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the executive director of Voces de la Frontera (a grantee and partner of the Democracy and Power Innovation Fund), wrote an op-ed for the New York Times discussing the importance of engaging Latino voters, the youngest and fastest growing demographic in the United States. Based in Wisconsin, Voces de la Frontera approaches voter engagement through their members who leverage relationships among people they already know to make sure they register and vote. Given the likely impact of the coronavirus pandemic on voting, Christine is advocating for automatic voter registration and ballots with prepaid return postage to be mailed to all registered voters at least a month in advance of an election.

On March 18, the federal government enacted the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, a bill to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Among other things, the bill established emergency paid leave measures. This bipartisan bill is an essential first step in addressing the crisis we are all living through, and paid leave cadvocates in Congress are pushing for further protections and to make the existing provisions permanent. Paid leave champions Senators Gillibrand and Murray and Congresswoman DeLauro introduced the PAID Leave Act to strength the Families First Act and provide these necessary long-term protections. The PAID Leave Act would permanently require employees to receive seven paid sick days (and up to 14 in the event of another public health emergency) and establish the FAMILY Act, a permanent paid family and medical leave program.

Bill McKibben’s recent piece in the Rolling Stone looks at the history of JPMorgan/Chase and its current status as the nation’s largest funder of fossil fuel infrastructure in the world. Notably, the bank has chosen to fund projects with incredibly detrimental greenhouse gas outcomes. In the article, RFF president Miranda Kaiser recounts a different time when her grandfather ran the bank and was concerned about more than the bottom line.

Read the entire piece here: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/jpmorgan-chase-bank-biggest-investor-fossil-fuels-956927/

Learn more about the coalition of organizations working together to hold financial backers of climate change accountable: StoptheMoneyPipeline.com