Climate

All people in our country should live in communities where they are able to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and have a safe, healthy, stable place to live.

Drake Palmer Starling

Senior Government Relations Advocate

Issues: climate justice

Our Position

In a time when environmental policy is under threat and corporate interests grow more emboldened, our 2025 climate advocacy will be rooted in Catholic Social Teaching and guided by a commitment to the common good.

Issues

We will focus on defending essential protections, resisting environmental policy rollbacks, and ensuring the implementation of existing laws that prioritize justice, equity, and the needs of frontline communities. Our faithful presence in Congress will be essential. Even in a year where bold legislative progress may be difficult, we are called to be steadfast—to hold the line on sound environmental policy and to keep the long-term moral vision of climate justice alive.

NETWORK Advocates for Federal Policies That:

Provide Clean Air, Safe Water, and Sustainable Agriculture

The challenge: Our advocacy in 2025 will include rigorous tracking of executive actions that impact air, water, chemical safety, and public health. We will be closely monitoring and responding to regulatory rollbacks and administrative changes that place corporate profit above human well-being.

The Trump administration’s repeal of Justice40—a policy that directed 40% of federal climate and health investments to communities long burdened by environmental racism—is a profound step backward in our nation’s pursuit of equity. We also anticipate renewed Congressional efforts to undermine the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, weaken EPA authority, and slash enforcement capacity.

In the face of these threats, we are called to defend core protections, lift up the voices of frontline communities, and hold fast to the vision of environmental justice where all of creation can flourish.

Our legislative strategy:

Defend EPA regulatory authority and resist deregulatory legislation or budget riders.
Oppose efforts to shield corporate polluters from liability or community accountability.
Protect environmental justice communities from disproportionate pollution and continued neglect.
Safeguard and strengthen climate-smart conservation and clean water provisions in the Farm Bill, ensuring that public resources support sustainable agriculture, healthy soil, and rural resilience—not industrial agribusiness.

Our short-term goal: Preserve the baseline environmental protections that communities rely on to breathe clean air and drink safe water.

Our vision: A world where every person—especially those historically harmed by pollution—can thrive in harmony with creation, sustained by clean air, safe water, and a just environment.

Protect Public Lands (deforestation and exploitation of natural resources)

The challenge: Expect the Administration and Congress to ramp up efforts to fast-track extractive projects and prioritize fossil fuel infrastructure under the guise of “energy dominance” and “permitting reform.”

Our strategy:

Block attempts to weaken environmental review processes like the National Environmental Policy Act that protect public lands and frontline communities.
Push back on mining expansion that ignores Indigenous rights, environmental justice, and local input.
Prevent the expansion of oil and gas leases on public lands
Prevent deforestation of our forests and national parks by logging and the timber industry

Our short-term goal: Prevent backsliding into extractive, polluting systems—and keep a just transition on the table.

Our vision: A future where sacred lands are preserved for the common good, not exploited for profit—and where the voices of Indigenous peoples and local communities guide our stewardship of creation.

Invest in Clean Energy, Not Polluters

The challenge: The Trump administration has been illegally impounding funds and deconstructing agencies responsible for implementing the climate investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and The Inflation Reduction Act. The Inflation Reduction Act is also under attack in the budget reconciliation process. Lawmakers aligned with corporate interests want to repeal key provisions, gut implementation, or redirect benefits to fossil fuel giants under the radar.

Our legislative strategy

Defend core IRA provisions, including tax credits, community investments, and labor standards.
Fight back against fossil fuel handouts masquerading as “energy transition” investments in the budget reconciliation.
Demand transparency and oversight to ensure that public dollars go to workers and communities—not polluters.
Our short-term goal: Protect historic investments from corporate capture—and keep the promise of climate justice alive, even in a hostile Congress.

Our vision: An economy powered by clean energy, rooted in equity, where public investments uplift workers, communities, and creation—not corporate polluters.

How You Can Help

Nothing at this time. Make sure you are signed up for our emails to received the latest policy updates.

Climate Executive Orders and Actions

Executive Order or Action	Impacts
Oil drilling in Alaska: Opens federal and state lands in Alaska to potentially unlimited mining, drilling, and oil and gas leasing.	Risks increased air pollution nationally and poses risk of water pollution and toxic exposures for Alaskan Indigenous communities.
Stalling wind power development: Temporarily withdraws U.S. coastal areas from wind power leasing pending review of federal wind policies.	Pauses new coastal wind projects and jeopardizes their future, setting us back in renewable energy development.
Threatening protected lands: Authorizes new, expansive authority to mandate energy production on federal and other lands, using eminent domain to do so.	Threatens to remove environmental protections for federal and some private lands in order to make way for drilling and mining.
Expanding mining of fossil fuels: Expands oil energy production and mining on federal lands and water.	Promotes massive fossil fuel production, accelerating the pollution of air, water, and soil and the destruction of land that comes with mining.
Freezing disbursement of funds for clean energy projects.	Billions of dollars in funding authorized by the Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act have been halted across the country. This funding freeze imperils clean energy goals and efforts to limit carbon emissions, including by discouraging the purchase and use of energy efficient vehicles and appliances.
Abolishing the American Climate Corps.	Limits opportunities for young Americans to gain valuable work experience in clean energy jobs.
Withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement.	Removes any international accountability for U.S. environmental policies and practices, and harms global cooperation in addressing climate change. Gives China and the EU a competitive advantage in the booming clean energy market and limits opportunities for U.S. workers.
DOJ request on clear air cases: The Trump administration has requested that the Supreme Court put on hold three upcoming Clean Air Act cases, including the EPA’s “Good Neighbor” regulations; a waiver granted to California to require stricter standards than the federal standard; and a challenge by oil companies who were denied certain waivers.	This action signals that the Trump administration is likely to rescind the regulations or revisit the EPA decisions at issue in these cases.
Removing climate-related data from the Department of Agriculture website.	Deprives farmers of critical information on drought, floods, and shifting growing conditions, imperiling their ability to protect the nation’s food supply by responding to emerging climate threats.
Repealing 31 regulations and changing the purpose of the Environmental Protection Agency to “lowering energy costs.”	This action threatens to reverse decades of progress on clean air, clean water, combating greenhouse gas emissions, and protecting lands. This action also eliminates enforcement efforts that prioritize protecting neighborhoods that corporations have historically polluted, particularly low-income neighborhoods and Black and Brown communities.