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January 10, 2000
"Subsidizing economic development in the suburbs is like paying teenagers to think about sex." - Lyle Wray, Citizens League (St. Paul, MN)
1) TAKE ACTION: PUBLIC REVIEW OF TRANSPORTATION PROJECTS COULD HELP PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT AND REDUCE SPRAWL
2) NEW NATIONAL MONUMENTS ON TAP AT THE CANYON!
3) CLEAN CAR AWARD EARNS NATIONAL ATTENTION
1) TAKE ACTION: PUBLIC REVIEW OF TRANSPORTATION PROJECTS COULD HELP PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT AND REDUCE SPRAWL
The Department of Transportation is currently reviewing how to implement the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, which Congress passed in 1998. Through a rule-making process currently under assessment, the DOT will determine how to require Metropolitan Planning Organizations to order public review of transportation projects. The rules would apply to projects that receive federal funds.
Through rampant highway construction, patterns of transportation investment are having a huge impact on communities and the environment. Too many metropolitan planning agencies are exacerbating sprawl and other issues that drain resources from central cities and chew up forests and farmland by emphasizing highway expansion ahead of public transportation.
Individuals and local jurisdictions who attempt to affect the transportation planning process and have tried to obtain information disclosing how federal transportation funds are spent locally encounter numerous obstacles. People have a right to know how federal transportation funds are spent in their communities.
Call Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater (202-366-1111) and tell him that the Department of Transportation should use the opportunity created by the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century to bring new accountability and transparency to the transportation planning process.
Greater transparency and accountability will allow ordinary community members to substantively participate in transportation planning activities. It would also allow local, state and federal agencies to better track how federal dollars are spent and improve the efficiency of local planning efforts. Call Secretary Slater at 202-366-1111 and tell him to make transportation planning as open and transparent as possible, as mandated by TEA-21.
We know that the highways built using tax dollars enable sprawl. How can we challenge sprawl if we can't even find out how our money's being spent?
2) NEW NATIONAL MONUMENTS ON TAP AT THE CANYON!
President Clinton is expected to formally declare several new National Monuments on Tuesday January 11 at the Grand Canyon. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt recently recommended the step, proposing three new areas in Arizona and California for National Monument designation as well as an addition to a fourth existing Monument in Arizona. Although the news is not certain, we expect the president to announce protection for:
-Nearly 1 million acres of scenic wildlands along the north rim of the Grand Canyon area as the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument; -Over 70,000 acres of canyon and mesa country containing hundreds of archaeological sites north of Phoenix as the Agua Fria National Monument;
-Thousands of small islands and rocky coves on the California coast near the Channel Islands; and
-Expansion of the Pinnacles National Monument in California through the protection of an additional 8,000 acres of prime wildlife habitat. Perhaps the most significant, if only in size, of these areas is the Shivwitz Plateau in Arizona. The proposed Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument borders the northwest side of Grand Canyon National Park, and would protect the upper reaches of several canyons which contain streams draining into the Grand Canyon's Colorado River. This area combines the best in scientifically sound ecosystem and watershed protection planning with matchless scenic value.
Club activists around the country are greeting the news with enthusiasm. We expect this announcement to be the first in a series of initiatives to protect other special places as National Monuments. This is a great way to start off a new millennium of land protection! Combined with the potential for full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the President's initiative to protect our last wild unspoiled roadless National Forest lands, 2000 is shaping up to be an historic year for land protection!
3. CLEAN CAR AWARD EARNS NATIONAL ATTENTION
The following press release was issued last week to announce the Sierra Club's Clean Car Award given to the Honda Insight:
SIERRA CLUB GIVES FIRST PRODUCT AWARD IN 108-YEAR HISTORY
Honda Insight receives "Sierra Club Award for Excellence in Environmental Engineering"
Los Angeles--The Sierra Club today honored the Honda Insight with the first product award in the organization's 108-year history, the "Sierra Club Award for Excellence in Environmental Engineering" Carl Pope, Sierra Club Executive Director, presented the award today at the Los Angeles Auto Show. The Insight was chosen because of its revolutionary hybrid design and fuel efficiency of more than 60 miles per gallon. According to EPA tests for model year 2000 vehicles the Insight beat its nearest competitor by nearly 20 mpg.
"I feel like the proverbial man who bit a dog," said Pope. "After all, it isn't every millennium the Sierra Club praises a car. But the Honda Insight deserves this first Award because it marks the beginning of the automotive industry utilizing 21st Century technology."
As a hybrid, the Insight combines attributes of electric and gasoline motors. The Insight's highly efficient gas-powered engine, refillable at any gas station, powers the vehicle and also generates electricity for the electric motor, which also helps provide power. The Insight also captures the energy typically lost to braking, directing it to recharge the batteries. Unlike purely electric vehicles a hybrid does not need to be plugged in. Because the Insight runs on both gasoline and clean electricity it achieves fuel economy of 61 mpg in city and 70 mpg in highway driving and therefore emits much less global warming and air pollution than other vehicles. Through the "Award for Excellence in Environmental Engineering" the Sierra Club will inform the American people about advances in technology which make vehicles more environmentally sound. The award will be presented when a company develops and mass markets a vehicle that represents a substantial environmental improvement over vehicles of similar size. The award goes to the product, not the company.
"This is an award for a real car that real people can buy and use," said Pope. "We want people to know there are environmentally sound alternatives readily available. In this case, Honda built a great car and has committed to marketing the Insight in all 50 states."
While other auto companies are touting prototypes for cleaner vehicles, the only hybrid vehicle Americans can buy today is the Insight. Toyota's hybrid Prius will be available this summer.
Better environmental technology is critical because our nation's vehicles emit an enormous amount of pollution. American cars and trucks produce more carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution than the CO2 emissions for all but three other countries. The 120 billion gallons of gasoline American cars and light trucks consume produces over a billion tons of CO2 pollution annually.
"This car proves that the technology exists to dramatically clean up the pollution from America's cars," said Dan Becker, Director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming and Energy Program. "The biggest single step we can take to curb global warming is to make cars and light trucks go further on a gallon of gasoline. While there is no technology to remove carbon dioxide from a car's exhaust, we can decrease emissions by making them more fuel efficient. That is why we're so excited about the Insight."
Automobiles are major contributors to global warming, smog and suburban sprawl. This award recognizes the Honda Insight which can help reduce global warming and air pollution. We must also design convenient and livable neighborhoods to encourage walking, bicycling and public transit. This, along with reduced subsidies to driving, will help curb sprawl and traffic congestion.
The Sierra Club is grateful for the technical assistance of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy which consulted with us on this award.
QUOTE OF THE DAY "We can never have enough of Nature." Henry David Thoreau
1) "DRIVERS WANTED" -- SIERRA CLUB ENDORSES ELECTRIC HONDA
2) SAVE UTAH WILDERNESS
3) HELP EMPOWER WOMEN AND GIRLS
4) PROTECT AND RESTORE OUR NATIONAL FORESTS!
5) STOP SUPERFUND ROLLBACK
6) SPEAK UP AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
1) SIERRA CLUB ENDORSES ELECTRIC HONDA
Today Sierra Club will award our first ever "Award for Excellence in Environmental Engineering" to the Honda Insight, a 65 mile per gallon (mpg), Ultra Low Emission Vehicle. The Board of Directors created this award for 3 reasons:
1. We have been vociferous in wielding the stick when auto companies produce heavily polluting vehicles so it is incumbent on us to offer the carrot when a company produces a much cleaner car,
2. Some car manufacturers are trying to greenscam the American people by portraying polluting vehicles as "clean", even going so far as to give awards to the 48 "Greenest" cars, SUVs and pickups. We need to help consumers distinguish between cleaner cars and those merely pretending to be cleaner.
3. This new car is much cleaner than any other mass market automobile, beating the next most efficient car by 20 mpg. If they sell, Detroit is prepared to start manufacturing and selling their own designs. But Detroit won't produce them unless Honda's sell well.
For years auto companies have built heavily polluting vehicles and Sierra Club has responded by blasting the companies for their irresponsibility. We have decried their fouling of our air, our climate and our landscape. In 1999 our efforts culminated in a campaign against the Ford "Valdez", the most polluting passenger vehicle ever produced. Calling it a "garbage truck which dumps into the sky", we embarrassed Ford on every network, Time, Business Week and over 200 newspapers.
A key goal of this campaign has been to force the government to clamp down on polluting cars. Last month, President Clinton issued final Tier II Clean Car rules which require automakers to make SUVs produce no more smog pollution than cars beginning in 2004. But another goal was to put public pressure on auto companies to make cleaner cars. The first of these has just gone on sale.
Because Honda's Insight gets 65mpg, it will emit about 1/6 as much global warming pollution as Ford's Valdez and just over 1/3 as much as a Ford sedan. It is also certified by EPA as an "Ultra Low Emission Vehicle," meaning that it emits a fraction of the smog pollution of most other cars.
Another reason for creating this award is to prevent green scamming by auto companies. Most national magazines are currently running picture perfect ads for giant polluting SUVs set in nature. Ford's 14 mpg Navigator ad says, "In addition to being the world's most powerful SUV, Navigator is also a designated Low Emission Vehicle..." While Navigator emits less smog than it is allowed by current law, it spews vastly more than Honda's Insight and more than the Tier II standards will require.
Another key opportunity for green scamming is the "AMES Awards," (for Automotive Market Environmental Sensitivity), a new for-profit Michigan-based company. They are creating an award which they will give to what they deem to be the greenest vehicles in each of the 15 "vehicle utility classes". So the 48 most "environmentally sensitive" large SUVs, pickups, minivans, sub-compact cars, will receive the "AMES Award." They are soliciting auto companies to buy memberships. One of their "preferred" green vehicles is the 14 mpg, 3 ton Ford Expedition.
The principal of the AMES Awards company comes from Chrysler. Their solicitation to auto companies read in part: "Membership provides opportunities to publicize and promote a manufacturer's AMES Awards success....Participation in Amesalliance.com also may pay off for manufacturers in another way. With automakers under increasing scrutiny from federal regulators ans special interest groups, the Awards provide the industry with an incentive to voluntarily lower emissions and increase both fuel economy and the use of recycled materials to gain market share....the industry has an opportunity to demonstrate that market-based incentives can substitute for regulatory actions as a means to provide a solution to environmental problems."
At its November meeting, the Sierra Club Board of Directors voted to create the award for a 3 year experimental period. A committee consisting of the chairs of the Club's Global Warming (Chase), Transportation (Holtzclaw) and Corporate Relations (D. Cellarius) Committees along with the director of the Global Warming Campaign (Becker) was appointed to work out the details of the award, name it and select the first recipient. The Committee was chaired by Paul Craig, a member of both the Energy and Global Warming Committees.
The Committee decided that the award should go the product not the company, it cannot be used in image advertising or to advertise cars other than the winner. A car company would be allowed to use award in advertising as long as Carl Pope approves in writing all ad and/or PR copy including visuals and sound, if applicable. Sierra Club will accept no financial contributions from auto companies during the duration of the award program. We also agreed to place a message regarding sprawl in award materials including the press release (which is being issued today).
FEATURED ACTION
Please send a letter-to-the-editor of your local papers. Point out that auto makers have spent years claiming that they can't make a fuel efficient vehicle for a mass market. Honda's 65 mpg Insight shows that this simply isn't true. The Honda Insight proves that energy efficient cars can be built with cost effective technology that is available today. It is clean enough to earn the first ever Sierra Club Award for Excellence in Environmental Engineering. The Honda Insight is available now and the Toyota Prius (50mpg) will be debuting later this summer. Japan has shown the way and now it is time for Detroit to meet the challenge and prove that they can make cleaner cars too.
(2) TAKE ACTION TO SAVE UTAH WILDERNESS- STOP THE HANSEN WEST DESERT BILL
In October, Utah Rep. James V. Hansen introduced H.R. 3035, the "Utah National Parks and Public Lands Wilderness Act", a bill to designate wilderness on Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service lands. Unfortunately, Hansen's proposal is woefully inadequate, protecting less than two-fifths of the existing 2.6 million acres of wilderness-quality land in the West Desert. To make matters worse, while he hasn't supported the Hansen bill outright, Interior Secretary Babbitt has endorsed the inadequate number of areas covered by Hansen's proposal.
And not only does the bill exclude crucial wilderness-quality areas, it specifically denies water rights necessary to protect and sustain fragile desert wilderness. Moreover, the bill would give carte blanche to the U.S. Air Force, allowing them unrestricted access to the air space above new wilderness areas, and use of the wilderness lands themselves!
The bill is scheduled to be marked up in February. So please, write or call your Member of Congress right away and urge him or her to oppose H.R. 3035. Also, please call the Office of Environmental Quality at the White House (202-456-6224) and tell them you oppose H.R. 3035. Express your disappointment that Secretary Babbitt supports the wilderness designation of less than half of the qualifying wilderness lands in this part of Utah. You can refer to it as Congressman Hansen's Utah Wilderness bill.
Thanks for your help!
(3) HELP EMPOWER WOMEN AND GIRLS
Your Senators and Representatives are back in their districts until January 24, 2000. Now is the time to make arrangements to meet with your legislators during this holiday recess. Urge them to empower women and girls by co-sponsoring the Microenterprise for Self-Reliance Act.
As part of our work on women's empowerment, the Sierra Club supports the Microenterprise for Self-Reliance Act. This piece of legislation would request $90 million in funds for international micro-credit programs for low-income women in the developing world. Micro-credit programs allow low-income women to borrow small amounts of money at low interest rates to enable poor women to start their own businesses. These programs have a 90% repayment rate. As women earn income they also gain self-esteem and more bargaining power economically and with regards to the reproductive rights.
The Microenterprise for Self-Reliance Act (H.R. 1143 and S.1463) has been introduced in both Houses of Congress. It sponsors are Sen. Michael DeWine and Rep. Benjamin Gilman. It has 24 co-sponsors in the House and 11 in the Senate. To see if your Representative and Senators are co-sponsors, visit https://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d106:HR01143:@@@P and https://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d106:SN01463:@@@P.
For more information visit our website at www.sierraclub.org/population or contact Jennifer Kurz at jennifer.kurz@sierraclub.org.
(4) HELP END COMMERCIAL LOGGING - CALL YOUR MEMBER OF CONGRESS
Did you know that over one-third of all National Forest lands are identifed by the Forest Service as crucial to maintaining aquatic species? That's just one more reason to end the Forest Service's commercial logging program. Write a letter or call your member of Congress through the Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and urge him or her to co-sponsor H.R. 1396, the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act. For more information contact Sean Cosgrove at (202) 547-1141.
(5) STOP SUPERFUND ROLLBACK!
Two anti-environmental Superfund bills have recently passed out of Committee and are now being reconciled in order to bring the legislation to the House floor, maybe as early as next week. Both H.R. 2580, which passed out of the Commerce Committee, and H.R. 1300 which passed out of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, would severely weaken environmental and public health protections surrounding our nation's most hazardous waste sites -- Superfund sites.
These bills would open up loopholes in the Superfund law that would allow owners of polluted property to avoid paying for its cleanup. The legislation would severely weaken the "polluter pays" principle upon which Superfund was founded---leaving the American taxpayers to pick up the costs of cleanup. The bill also would relax cleanup standards that would leave sites still polluted even after they have been dubbed "clean." Call your representative and tell him or her you want our nation's Superfund sites cleaned-up and therefore you oppose H.R. 1300 and H.R. 2580!
(6) SPEAK UP AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
On May 2, the Mexican military arrested Rodolfo Montiel Flores and Teodoro Cabrera Garcia, two environmentalists who organized their communities to curb logging in the old-growth forests of the Sierra de Petatlan in southwestern Mexico. Wealthy land owners, angered by disruption to their profitable logging ventures, targeted Montiel and Cabrera and urged corrupt Army officials to arrest them. Since May, Montiel and Cabrera have reportedly been beaten, tortured, and forced to confess to charges concocted by the military--including drug trafficking and belonging to a guerrilla group.
Please write to the Mexican Ambassador and demand that Montiel and Cabrera be released from jail immediately. Tell him that torturing environmentalists is an outrageous violation of basic human rights.
Ambassador Jesus Reyes Heroles, Embassy of Mexico, 1911 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20006, FAX (202) 728-1698. For more information, visit our Web site, www.sierraclub.org/human-rights
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