Dear Friend,It's an outrage. 2010 should start in a way that reflects our movement's amazing accomplishments from last year -- moving the ball forward to passage of comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. Instead, our elected leaders are proposing policies that would set us back decades and let the worst polluters completely off the hook.
Despite the chorus of alarm bells sounding the need to address the climate crisis and stop polluting the air our families breathe and the water we drink, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski and her allies are attacking the Clean Air Act -- for the second time in six months.
And it gets worse. Last night, news broke that the original version of the amendment was literally drafted with lobbyists for the oil and coal industry.*
We can't let this attack succeed. Write your Senators right now and tell them to vote NO on Senator Murkowski's proposal.
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We defeated this same effort once already, just six months ago -- but the fossil fuel lobby is at it again. The amendment would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to regulate most carbon pollution, letting the worst polluters completely off the hook.
Efforts like this are designed to do one thing and one thing only -- slow our transition to a clean energy economy that will create millions of new jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and solve the climate crisis.
Help flood your Senators with messages to vote NO on this attack on the Clean Air Act.
The very last thing we should do in the fight to end the climate crisis is throw away tools that we already know are effective at reducing pollution. But that's exactly what Senator Murkowski's proposal does.
For decades, the Clean Air Act has kept millions of tons of pollutants out of our air and water. Senator Murkowski's proposal would create an Alaska-sized loophole in the Clean Air Act, giving a pass to the biggest carbon polluters.
Email your Senators now and tell them to vote NO on Senator Murkowski's amendment -- and protect our air, water and climate:
http://cpaf.repoweramerica.org/cleanair
In 2010, our movement to solve the climate crisis will face its biggest test yet -- passing comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. But if Senator Murkowski's amendment passes, some in Congress will use it as an excuse to keep stalling -- and the long overdue promise of progress toward a 21st century clean energy economy will be lost.
You helped stop this toxic amendment once before. Together, we can and must stop it again.
Thank you,
Al Gore
Once again, short term personal monetary concerns trump long term societal environmental issues. A problem that will in all likelihood experience accelerated growth, as environmental issues negatively impact economic growth and vice versa.
ReplyDeleteI admire Gore's sunny disposition about a projected "Green Economy" and associated job creation, but I simply don't agree that said transition will be at all seamless or painless in the short term, as proposed green technologies will take some time to mature into profitability (even as they consume huge amounts of R&D dollars, which, for the most part, only the government is large enough and forward thinking enough to supply), during which current fossil fuel technologies will be enormously profitable simply due to supply and demand (less of the former and equal or greater amounts of the latter).
If we had simply been serious about all this back at Kyoto, we might finally be making some small amount of progress on all this by now. Instead, here we are, worse off than ever, and going nowhere fast (with two shooting wars and counting to boot!). And the money to fix any of this? Good luck with that.
disaffected,
ReplyDeleteI feel the pain too.
Transition will not cost as much as the wars and the military media oil complex costs.
And full on green would move some of the wealth from the 1% robber baron families back into the middle class from where it was plundered.