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DEFENDING ENVIRONMENTAL AGENDA
Feb 1
"The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind" -Bob Dylan, 1963
(1)RENEWABLE ENERGY: Wind, Open for Business
(2)GLOBAL WARMING: Is it Me or is Hot in Here?
(3)FACTORY FARMS: Cattle Producers award the Sierra Club
(4)TAKE ACTION: Here We Go Again...
1. Wind - Good for Business
In Ft. Collins, CO, the Sierra Club and Chamber of Commerce, who don't always see eye to eye, are working together to encourage local businesses to go green. Due to the efforts of local Sierra Club volunteers, more than 50 percent of the town's businesses have agreed to operate on wind power. By saving fossil fuels with wind power, companies are seeing more consumers come through their doors.
Wind energy is cheap and clean. It is produced by wind turbines, usually with two or three blades. The turbines collect kinetic energy from the wind, and drive generators and produce electricity. In Ft. Collins, each $25 paid on a wind energy bill saves 1,000 pounds of coal from being burned.
Read the story in the Coloradoan: https://www.coloradoan.com/news/stories/20030130/business/881349.html
2. Is it Me or is Hot in Here?
Since carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for global warming, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and the Sierra Club want the gas to be included as a harmful pollutant under the Clean Air Act. The three states are so serious, their attorneys general are planning to sue the EPA. If the lawsuit is successful, the EPA will have to set standards to maintain cleaner air.
Global warming is a reality. Nine of the ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1990, but fortunately, there are solutions. The technology exists to decrease carbon dioxide pollution in cars, power plants, factories, and refineries. It is only up to our government to make sure these solutions are implemented. Admitting that carbon dioxide is a hazardous pollutant is an important first step.
Read about the impacts of global warming on the Sierra Club webpage: https://www.sierraclub.org/globalwarming/health/
3. Cattle Producers award the Sierra Club
The Bryan County Cattle Producers, a group in southern Oklahmoma, recently awarded the Oklahoma Chapter of the Sierra Club for their efforts. The award lauded efforts to protect water that was almost sold in a backroom deal to Texas and its factory farms.
Too often, large animal factories pollute lakes and rivers with waste. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, factory farms have already polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states. The Sierra Club is committed to keeping factory farm pollution out of America's drinking water, lakes and rivers, and eliminating the threats that these factories pose to our public health and rural heritage.
Visit the Sierra Club's Clean Water webpage at: https://www.sierraclub.org/factoryfarms/
4. TAKE ACTION: Here We Go Again...
Like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the east, the Western Arctic has been targeted by the Bush administration as a priority for drilling. On January 17th, the Bureau of Land Management issued a potentially devastating draft for oil and gas leasing in the 8.8 million-acre northwest planning area. The BLM should develop supplemental leasing alternatives that will provide protection for the most special places in the region and ensure that, in areas where development proceeds, strong environmental safeguards are upheld to protect the land, air, water, and wildlife resources of this unique arctic environment.
Click below to send a fax directly to the BLM. There's a draft provided! https://www.sierraclub.org/action/?alid=201&st=curr
"To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them." -Theodore Roosevelt's message to Congress, December 3rd, 1907
(1)INTERNATIONAL: Shining a Spotlight on Shameful Records
(2)POLITICAL: Not Our First Choice
(3)CLEAN CARS: Tampa Bay Wins Big!
(4)TAKE ACTION: Take Action - President Bush's State of the Union
1. Shining a Spotlight on Shameful Records
A New York Times editorial applauds the Sierra Club for its effort with the AFL-CIO, Amnesty International USA, EarthRights International, Friends of the Earth-US, Global Exchange, and Oxfam America to produce the report, "International Right to Know: Empowering Communities Through Corporate Transparency."
The report highlights U.S. multinational corporations and their shameful human rights, environmental and labor records.
Read what the New York Times says about the issues mentioned in the report: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/25/opinion/25SAT4.html
Read the Report: https://www.sierraclub.org/human-rights/
2. Not Our First Choice
Part rancher and part cowboy, Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) is the new chair of the House of Representatives Resource Committee; it oversees hundreds of millions of acres of public lands. Rep. Pombo is not good friends with our wild places. He has spoken out and developed legislation to change the Endangered Species Act and has bashed the whole environmental movement.
Rumor has it, he is in the process of developing a way to break down the Antiquities Act that has been used by Presidents for almost 100 years to establish national monuments. For this wild stallion, this is just the tip of the Arctic (that he wants to drill).
Read all the rumors at TomPaine.com: https://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7138
3. Tampa Bay Wins Big!
Not only did the Bucs win big this past weekend, but the Sierra Club did too. In St. Petersburg, activists held a Clean Car Training Workshop that featured hybrid cars, speakers, and many attendants varying in age. A local city councilman spoke to the group and said he wants the city's fleet to go green.
By going green, drivers are helping America become oil independent, to curb global warming, and they are saving money at the gas pump. Going green is an option now when purchasing a few varieties of cars not coming from Detroit. Motown needs to expand green driving choices- so they include an assortment of cars, trucks, and SUVs.
Read more about the Sierra Club's Car Campaign at: https://www.sierraclub.org/freedompackage/
4. Take Action: President Bush's State of the Union
You'll watch tonight's State of the Union address, and your blood pressure will skyrocket when President Bush gives lipservice to protecting the environment. You know the truth: time after time, President Bush has turned his back on sensible solutions that would protect our air, water, lands and energy needs. Instead, he's rewarded industries that pollute, poison and plunder.
Don't just sit there stewing - spread the word about better solutions to cleaning up our environment.
Immediately after listening to the speech, call in to your local talk radio stations. Don't let right-wing radicals dominate the airwaves and brainwash your neighbors - call in and speak out. You can find stations near you at https://www.radio-locator.com/
Then, send letters to the editor of your local daily and weekly newspapers. Be sure to include your name, address and phone number so the editor can call you to verify that you wrote it. Otherwise, they won't publish it. Find local newspapers at https://www.newspaperlinks.com/
What's the Bush Administration's record on the environment?
Fuel Cells: Fuel cells are an important part of a clean energy future, but the President's rhetoric does not match the reality. His program funnels millions to Detroit without requiring that they produce a single fuel cell vehicle for the public to purchase. Indeed, the auto industry is using the promise of future fuel cells as a shield against using existing technology to dramatically cut our oil dependence, and pollution, today. This technology is sitting on the shelf while Detroit dithers. Go farther at: https://www.sierraclub.org/globalwarming/cleancars/
Clean Air: The Bush Administration is weakening the Clean Air Act on several fronts. While creating loopholes to allow power plants and factories to pollute more, they're also pushing a plan to slow down the progress made by the clean air laws that protect the health and safety of families and communities across the country. Instead, we think every American deserves to breathe clean air. When outdated powerplants and refineries invest in boosting their output, we think they should also invest in scrubber technologies so they spew less pollution. Learn more at: https://www.sierraclub.org/cleanair/
Logging public lands: Under the guise of forest fire protection, the Bush Administration presented a plan to increase logging in National Forests. The problem is that the plan won't protect the communities or forests from dangerous fires and will cost taxpayers in the form of subsidies to the timber industry. The Sierra Club has a plan that will save lives and protect communities. Read it at: https://www.sierraclub.org/logging/fire_protection2.asp
Energy: Following a series of secret meeting with energy industries, the Bush Administration is pushing a plan to increase use of fossil fuels instead of investing in the quicker, cleaner, cheaper solutions to our energy problems. By increasing the fuel economy of cars, SUV, and trucks - and by increasing our reliance on renewable energy sources like wind and solar power - we can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, curb global warming, and save money at the same time. Energy savings start at https://www.sierraclub.org/energy/
Arctic Drilling: The Bush Administration continues the old call to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This despite the fact that it would take more than a decade to obtain a drop of oil, and then would produce less than a six-month supply, and the drilling would destroy one of the last truly pristine American landscapes left. For more on this treasure: https://www.sierraclub.org/wildlands/arctic/
"I'll even accompany her on the piano." -Sierra Club organizer Sarah Kite on whether she will sing with the proverbial fat lady after the Rhode Island Governor stopped a destructive port development in response to a local Club campaign. [See Item 1 below.]
(1)SPRAWL: Governor Sinks wasteful Port Plan
(2)FORESTS: Giant Sequoias stand-up to Fire
(3)AUTOS: $75,000 SUV Tax Break
(4)TAKE ACTION: Attack on the Tongass - We Need Your Help!
1. Governor Sinks wasteful Port Plan
After years of work by the Sierra Club to prevent a deep-water cargo-container port in Providence, Rhode Island, newly sworn in Governor Carcieri announced that it is "dead." What is at stake now for the state-owned Quonset-Davisville Port and Commerce Park? Locals are still waiting to see but the Governor is skeptical of another plan to bring in cargo by barge.
The port project was drowning money for years, an environmental impact study was not started until last year, it would have led to poor development around the port, and pollution problems for Narragansett Bay. The Governor does not have a secondary plan yet, but he wants to talk to people of nearby towns and the Corporation that was pursuing the container plan. The Sierra Club wants Rhode Island to evaluate the park and figure out what would be the best land use for residents living nearby.
Read the article in the Providence Journal (this website is registration required): https://www.projo.com/news/content/projo_20030118_edc18.5cef7.html
2. Giant Sequoias stand-up to Fire
The U.S. Forest Service has come forth with a plan to log the three-year old Giant Sequoia National Monument in California's Sierra Mountains. The plan calls for logging 10 million board feet a year, all in the name of fire protection. The Giant Sequoias that are resistant to forest fire are now the target of timber companies while the trees near homes and communities, which present real risk, are left off the chopping block.
When President Clinton designated the area as a National Monument, he asked the Forest Service to develop a management plan with clear restrictions on logging. The U.S. Forest Service and Bush Administration have done nothing of the sort, keeping logging companies close by in their hacksaw holster.
Help the Sequoias stand tall, visit the Sierra Club Sequoia Task Force website at: https://www.sierraclub.org/ca/sequoia/
3. $75,000 SUV Tax Break
If unrealistic commercials of SUVs trampling over nature didn't turn-on consumers enough, the Bush Administration has a loophole in the economic stimulus package that allows doctors and lawyers to write off $25,000 to $75,000 after buying a brand-new SUV. Why does the Bush Administration want small businesses to buy the largest SUV possible?
This law was originally created for farm and construction equipment. Its intention was not to be used by the affluent to buy $50,000 SUVs unless, of course, the SUVs are being used to fertilize.
Read a column on the issue in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: https://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/epaper/editions/friday/wheels_e372e3a2d6bc10ab002a.html
4. Attack on the Tongass - We Need Your Help!
Deep in the pages of a sweeping appropriations bill, wilderness opponents have buried language that threatens the Tongass, America's largest National Forest. The short sentence inserted by Alaska Senator Ted Stevens provides that a nine million acre wilderness review presently underway for the Tongass may NOT be subject to further public appeal.
After the draft review recommended no new wilderness areas, Alaskans and the American public were outraged and in record numbers asked the Forest Service that valuable areas be protected. The Tongass Wilderness review comments represent one of the largest outpourings of public response to protect any single forest in the nation. Almost 100 percent of the comments asked the Forest Service to designate more wilderness in the Tongass.
Call your Senator and tell him or her to protect the Tongass National Forest by opposing Senator Stevens rider that would shut the public out of the wilderness designation process.
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