It’s hard to overstate the high that environmentalists
were feeling as this year began. President Obama had finally rejected
the Keystone XL pipeline that they had fought against for years. New Environmental Protection Agency rules
for reining in greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants
had helped Obama lead the world to a new international climate change
agreement in Paris in December. As icing on the cake, the Interior
Department in January surprised environmentalists and announced a moratorium on leasing federal coal. “We had come off of the best six months ever,” says Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president for government affairs of the League of Conservation Voters.
Then last month, the Supreme Court delivered the movement an unexpected defeat by staying the Clean Power Plan.
The blow showed environmentalists just how fragile their victories are,
but it also re-energized their efforts to influence the coming
elections. “When you contrast the incredible progress we’ve had and the
stay, it does underscore that the stakes couldn’t be higher,” Sittenfeld
adds.
The group’s rank-and-file supporters apparently
understand those stakes. Online donations to the League of Conservation
Voters started pouring in the evening the stay was announced. Within 24
hours, the organization had received $100,000 – making it one of the
largest days for online contributions in the group’s history, Sittenfeld
says.
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