setbacks.

Then, Gov. Baker refused to sign long-sought legislation to protect children and firefighters from toxic flame retardant chemicals after it passed votes in the House and Senate. He chose to side with corporate lobbyists despite strong support for the bill from House and Senate leadership, health professionals, organized labor, and the entire environmental community. In trying to explain his pocket veto, Baker quoted chemical industry talking points nearly verbatim.

The latest howler is a late-January ruling by the Baker-appointed Department of Public Utilities (DPU) that killed a carefully built consensus between advocates and utility companies to start creating fair access for renters to the state’s nation-leading $3 billion energy efficiency program. The deal would have incentivized the utilities to serve renters for the first time, by paying out aabout enablers in positions of power and the underlying structural problems in the economy. As a result, Gov. Baker’s popularity at the polls and reputation as a climate-friendly centrist belie his actual performance, but that may be changing as growing numbers of Massachusetts residents come to feel the consequences of his administration’s dinosaur thinking on matters of health, justice, and environment.

Alex Papali is a zero waste and clean energy organizer with Clean Water Action in Boston, a member of the statewide Green Justice Coalition.