Earth & Environment

The Earth and Environment Task Force advocates for clean air, clean water, and healthy surroundings. This includes promoting alternative energy, enforcing environmental regulations, and relying on science, not profit, to guide policy decisions.

Racial minorities experience unequally severe impacts on their health and economic well-being from air and water pollution, and from natural disasters resulting from climate instability.  We believe that the climate emergency is a human-caused threat to all life on earth, and that it disproportionately affects poorer nations and communities.

If you are interested in raising awareness about a cleaner environment and a healthy Earth, we invite you to participate.


Environmental Policy Articles

September 15, 2024: Project 2025, Climate, and the Imperative of Voting

by Jean Stewart, Chair, Environmental Task Force Making our voices heard through our votes for candidates who are climate champions—up and down the ballot—is more crucial than e... READ MORE...

May 14, 2024: Mayor Proposes Deep Cuts to DC’s Environmental Programs

by Jean Stewart, Chair, Environmental Task Force, PPC* The environmental community in Washington, DC, knew serious budget cuts were coming, as the city’s revenue sources have shrunk. But we h... READ MORE...

February 13 2024: Curbing Big Insurance Companies’ Investment in Drivers of Climate Change

by Jean Stewart, Chair, Environmental Task Force Big insurance corporations are complicit in our dependence on fossil fuels, the major contributor to the climate crisis we are facing. Many of t... READ MORE...

January 13, 2024: Climate Misinformation and Disinformation - Greenwashing in the 2020s

by Jean Stewart, Chair, Earth & Environment Task Force In 2010, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway authored a book, entitled Merchants of Doubt. This book shows how some scientists and PR... READ MORE...

October 26, 2023: Report Showcases Inflation Reduction Act Provisions To Advance US Climate Goals

Intro to report written by Barbara Wells As WNDC members advocate for measures to slow climate change, we need to promote and defend key provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that sup... READ MORE...

August 25, 2023: Is There a Catch to Combating Climate Change?

By Jean Stewart, Chair, Earth & Environment Task Force The biggest news stories in June were about the increasing outbreaks of huge... READ MORE...

June 22, 2023: Climate Justice and Public Health

By Jean Stewart, Chair, Earth & Environment Task Force The Northeast and Atlantic seaboard have recently been exposed to the health hazards of particulate matter—soot—from widesprea... READ MORE...

March 21, 2023: Earth Day: April 22—One Way to Celebrate: Consider Getting Off Gas

By Jean Stewart, Chair, Earth & Environment Task Force The Earth & Environment Task Force article in this Newsletter includes information about why “natural” gas (fracked gas, m... READ MORE...

January 23, 2023: The Coming Climate Migration Crisis

By Jean Stewart, Chair, Earth & Environment Task Force Growing interest in measures to mitigate damage and protect lives from more frequent and powerful weather events is apparent in news stori... READ MORE...

June 8, 2022: Getting Out the Environmental Vote

By Jean Stewart, Chair, Earth & Environment Task Force As we mobilize to counter voter suppression and motivate Americans to vote, there is another avenue to help accomplish this goal. With Ameri... READ MORE...

April 8, 2022: Earth Day 2022: Invest in Our Planet

By Jean Stewart, Chair, Earth & Environment Task Force On April 22, 1970, 22 million Americans celebrated the first Earth Day, standing for clean air, land, and water; 52 years later, 1 billion... READ MORE...

January 11, 2022: The True Face of Glenn Youngkin

Now that he is safely elected and about to take office as Governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin is showing what his real policies are going to be.  As he infamously said to his base voters in a vi... READ MORE...

January 5, 2022: Democracy, Voting Rights & the Environment

Across our nation, states like Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina are limiting access to the vote by those likely to vote Democratic: Black and Brown voters, college students, and indigenous people. &... READ MORE...

November 10, 2021: Food Security and the Environment

Food insecurity currently affects over 690 million people worldwide. While environmental issues are only one cause, they are an important one. Climate change will exacerbate existing problems with our... READ MORE...

November 9, 2021: Food Insecurity in the United States—a National Security Problem, a Public Health Crisis, and a Major Obstacle to the 2030 Agenda

Even though the United States of America played a major role in crafting the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in New York in September 2015, less than a decade to 2030, we... READ MORE...

August 12, 2021: IPCC Report on Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has labeled the global climate change crisis Code Red. It is irreversible, inevitable, and unprecedented. World leaders say: “We can’... READ MORE...

September 24, 2020: The Racist Underbelly of Climate Change

Most Americans seem to “get it,” that climate change is for real. At the time of this writing, wildfires rage across the West Coast and a very wet hurricane is moving toward the Gulf state... READ MORE...

May 1, 2020: Under the Cover of COVID-19

This administration and its corporate allies are using everyone’s deep concern with the COVID-19 Pandemic as a cover for a variety of actions damaging to the environment and public health, as we... READ MORE...

April 1, 2020: Gas Is Not Green

Climate Change. Some years ago, Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens was advocating switching from oil to gas, citing gas as a cleaner-burning fuel and calling it a useful “bridge” for moving awa... READ MORE...

December 1, 2019: No Longer a Crisis, but an Emergency

On November 6, The Washington Post announced a new report on what is happening to the earth’s climate. The findings are so dire that 11,258 scientists from 153 countries signed off on the report... READ MORE...

July 1, 2019: The UN Report on Biodiversity

On May 6, 2019 the UN released a statement based on the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’ research and analysis. The report concluded that the rat... READ MORE...

February 1, 2019: Recommendation from the Committee on Public Policy and Political Action: National Climate Assessment 4

The National Climate Assessment 4, presented at the WNDC speaker luncheon on January 10, 2019 by Dr. Fred Lipschultz, one of the authors, is a gold mine of information on the state of climate change i... READ MORE...

January 3, 2019: It’s Even Worse Than We Thought— But There Is Hope

A Dire Outlook Three reports on climate change have recently been issued, and each one is like a punch to the gut. In spite of 45’s “gut” telling him that climate change isn’... READ MORE...

October 19, 2018: New EPA Rule on Energy Production

The EPA under Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler has the same agenda as it did under Scott Pruitt: weaken environmental regulations to benefit big corporations. The Obama Clean Power Plan (CPP), if i... READ MORE...

September 21, 2018: Florence Releases Coal Ash

A little over two months ago, on July 17, EPA Acting Director Wheeler issued a revival of former Director Pruitt’s attempt to relax regulations of coal ash storage facilities at coal-fired power... READ MORE...

September 14, 2018: Updating Clean Energy Campaign in DC

A coalition of numerous groups, supported by the WNDC, has been working for the last two years for the DC Council to pass legislation to greatly reduce the city’s carbon footprint.  The cam... READ MORE...

July 19, 2018: Coal Ash Redux

The line from The Who’s classic rock song, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” that says “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” is never so true as at the EPA.  Rejoic... READ MORE...

June 15, 2018: The Ocean is Rising and So Are We: The June 9, 2018 March for the Ocean

On a hot Saturday morning, a wave of blue formed on the Washington Monument grounds in the shadow of Mz. Blue, a life size inflatable blue whale.  Promptly at noon, the blue wave—a large th... READ MORE...

May 25, 2018: Blocking Pruitt’s Efforts to Hide the Truth

A front-page article in the May 21 issue of the Washington Post announced a win for clean water in a battle with the EPA’s effort to relax regulations on storage of toxic coal ash. Coal ash cont... READ MORE...

May 18, 2018: Save Our Seas

The WNDC is a partner organization of the March for the Ocean (M4O) on June 9, World Ocean Day. This support reflects the strong stands we have taken for protecting the environment and for resistance ... READ MORE...

April 27, 2018: Pruitt Attack on Clean Water

EPA is proposing to change the stringent 2015 regulation governing coal ash storage. Coal ash is the residue left from burning coal. Coal-fired power plants typically mix coal ash with water and store... READ MORE...