Press Releases

Lawsuit Challenges Trump Administration’s Failure to Cut Airplane Climate Pollution

Environmental groups sued the Trump administration today over its finalization of the nation’s first-ever airplane climate emissions standards, which don’t actually reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

Sierra Club Condemns Swap of Sacred Indigenous Land to Mining Company

The Trump administration is expected to release today a final proposal to transfer ownership of Oak Flat, a sacred land to a dozen Indigenous Tribes, to a mining company with ties to the destruction of an Aboriginal site in Australia. The move comes just days before Trump leaves office and comes despite years of opposition from Apache-Stronghold, the San Carlos Apache Tribe, and other Tribal entities, religious leaders, locals, and environmental groups.

South Carolina regulators agree to update long-expired permits at 3 coal plants located in majority Black communities

The Sierra Club and South Carolina’s environmental regulators have entered into an agreement to update permits at three coal burning power plants that have been discharging mercury, arsenic and other dangerous pollutants into local waterways using permits that expired as long ago as 2010.

Groups File Brief with D.C. Circuit Opposing Trump Administration’s "Indefensible" Clean Cars Rollback

Washington, D.C.—A dozen of the nation’s largest public health, consumer and environmental groups today presented the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia with a detailed and substantial case showing why the Trump administration’s rollback of the Clean Car Standards is unlawful.

Trump’s Last-Ditch Banking Rule Seeks to Prop Up Fossil Fuels

Washington, DC -- Today, just 10 days after the public comment period ended (which saw more than 35,000 public comments), the Trump administration’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) finalized a rule which effectively tries to force banks to lend to fossil fuel companies and other businesses without regard to strategic or reputational risks.

Evergy Withdraws Proposal to Charge Missouri Customers for Electricity They Did Not Use

Kansas City, MO -- Following Sierra Club’s intervention, Evergy customers will not have to pay for electricity they did not use during the COVID-19 crisis. Last year, Evergy asked the Missouri Public Service Commission (PSC) for the ability to track lost revenues because of decreased power sales during the COVID-19 pandemic, which would have allowed the utility to recover the money from customers in a future rate case. The utility withdrew this proposal as part of an order the PSC issued yesterday. 

El Sierra Club Urge a Actuar de Inmediato Mientras las Temperaturas Se Disparan

Hoy se emitió un informe basado en resultados de la NASA, NOAA, la Oficina Meteorológica del Reino Unido y Berkeley Earth que muestra que las temperaturas de 2020 igualaron las del año más cálido de la historia, el año del super El Niño de 2016.

USFWS cuts northern spotted owl critical habitat by 42% in likely death sentence for species

Today, with six days remaining in the Trump administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a final rule eliminating 3.4 million acres of critical habitat for the northern spotted owl in Washington state, Oregon, and California. This decision comes one month after the Service announced that the species should be uplisted from threatened to endangered, but the agency is too busy to provide these desperately needed protections.

Groups Challenge Trump Administration’s Latest Assaults on the Endangered Species Act

HONOLULU, HAWAI’I-- Today Earthjustice filed two lawsuits in the District of Hawai’i in response to the outgoing administration’s most recent attacks on the Endangered Species Act, the law that serves as the last safety net for animals and plants facing extinction. Toward the end of last month, the Trump administration issued two new regulations that strip vital protections from federal lands and other areas that the best available science indicates are necessary for the conservation of threatened and endangered species.  

STATEMENT: Temperatures Skyrocket, Sierra Club Urges Immediate Action on Climate

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, a report based on findings from NASA, NOAA, the United Kingdom’s Met Office, and Berkeley Earth was released showing that 2020’s temperatures rivaled those of the hottest year on Earth — the “super” El Niño year 2016. Last year’s temperatures breached this record without a boost from a heat-circulating El Niño event, revealing a sharp acceleration of global warming. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United States experienced 22 billion-dollar disasters, the most ever, fueled by the dry conditions in the West and the above average heat across the country in 2020. The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which President-elect Biden has said he will immediately rejoin after Donald Trump’s unprecedented exit from the global pact, set a more firm limit of “well below” 2 degrees Celsius of warming. Scientists have made clear that warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius could cause severe, irreversible damage to the planet, including the loss of most of the globe’s coral reefs, increasing risks of a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summer and further destabilization of the polar ice sheets, locking in large-scale sea-level rise.