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EPA workers push Biden to issue climate emergency, hire more scientists
By Michael Sainato - The Real News Network, September 12, 2022
Workers at the Environmental Protection Agency are calling on President Joe Biden to issue a climate emergency declaration at the same time they’re calling for improvements in staffing and resources for the agency in their next union contract.
The largest union representing workers at the EPA, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Council 238—which represents nearly 7,500 EPA employees around the US—voted to declare a climate emergency in May 2022 and are calling on Biden to do the same. AFGE is the largest union representing federal government and District of Columbia employees (currently the membership is about 700,000), though other smaller unions do represent professionals at the EPA.
“The climate emergency allows the president to deploy a lot more resources and attach a lot more solutions to the problems that the federal government has at its disposal,” said Nicole Cantello, president of AFGE Local 704 based in Chicago, Illinois, and an attorney who has worked with the EPA for 30 years. “From our standpoint, the Biden administration needs to do a lot to make sure that we have the best and brightest scientists, engineers, and lawyers working on this.”
In the wake of West Virginia v. EPA, the June 2022 US Supreme Court ruling that severely limits the EPA’s authority to cap emissions from existing power plants, EPA workers are also pushing the the Biden administration to expedite measures to strengthen the agency so that it can more adequately address the climate crisis.
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