Campaign Watch: National Environmental Scorecard
Ten of North Carolina’s 15 representatives in Congress scored flat zeroes on the key environmental votes of 2017.
The national League of Conservation Voters (LCV) has released its 2017 National Environmental Scorecard on the key environmental votes of last year by members of the U.S. House and Senate. The results aren’t pretty for the gang running Congress.
Both North Carolina Senators and eight of 13 House members scored an absolute zero—not a single pro-environment vote among those scored for the 2017 session by LCV.
On the bright end of the scale, two of North Carolina’s House members—Alma Adams (NC12) and David Price (NC4)—scored perfect 100s for the year, and a third—G.K. Butterfield (NC1)—scored a positive 91%. A fourth N.C. Representative—Walter Jones, Jr. (NC3)—was willing to buck his leaders’ anti-environmental marching orders at least part of the time and scored 31%. To see how each of the North Carolina delegation’s members scored in 2017 and check each of their votes, see here.
Speaking to the overall trends and patterns of Congress on the environment in 2017, LCV Senior Vice President Tiernan Sittenfeld said, “This Republican-led Congress repeatedly refused to stand up to President Trump’s extreme anti-environmental agenda and his attacks on our air, water, land and wildlife. In a year where devastating hurricanes and wildfires showed why the need to fight climate change is so urgent, Congress turned their backs on our families by confirming climate change deniers to top environmental posts, voting to reverse vitally important clean water protections, passing an abomination of a tax package that opens up the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, and so much more.”
The 2017 scorecard totals continued to reflect the disturbing long-term trend of increasing partisan polarization in Congress on environmental matters. LCV (and NCLCV, as well as all the other state-level LCV partner groups) are non-partisan organizations. However, they can only report the votes as actually cast by members of Congress, and call on voters to reverse negative trends by holding each individual member of Congress accountable for their environmental records.
For LCV’s full commentary on the 2017 National Environmental Scorecard, see here.
Up next, Massive data sets released by utilities in response to environmental reporting requirements show a disturbing pattern of water pollution from coal ash storage and disposal facilities.
