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Friday, February 18, 2000
"I want to ensure that these majestic cathedral groves, which John Muir called "Nature's masterpiece," are protected for future generations to study and enjoy" - President Bill Clinton
1. WILDLANDS Save the Sequoias
Earlier this week President Clinton began the process of creating a new National Monument to protect the Giant Sequoias in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The President sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman asking him to study the size and scope of a new monument to protect the over two thousand year old trees. In his letter the President wrote, "Dr. Edgar Wayburn, Honorary President of the Sierra Club, mentioned this to me this summer when I awarded him a Presidential Medal of Freedom last summer."
Early information indicates the monument will be created from lands within the Sequoia National Forest. The National Forest holds John Muir's beloved Giant Sequoia groves and is also valuable as habitat for black bear, bobcats, and peregrine falcons as well as the endangered Sierra Nevada red fox and wolverine. The Sequoia National Forest has long suffered from logging, road construction, grazing and off-road vehicle damage. Sierra Club members have been fighting for protection of the Sequoias since the days when John Muir walked the hills. California volunteers have worked hard for many years to draw attention to the plight of the Giant Sequoias. You can join this proud history of activism to protect the Giant Sequoias. Please write the President and thank him for taking steps to protect the Sequoias as a National Monument.
2. NATIONAL FORESTS Urge Reps to Support Wildforest Protection
This is a great time to set up a district lobby visit to with your representative to urge full support for the Wild Forest Protection Plan. Your representative is home in a district work period through February 28th. It is essential that representatives hear from constituents who support protecting our last wild forests. Call your representative and ask for a constituent meeting to discuss wild forests. If you don't have time to set up a meeting, call the district office and make the same points.
Talking Points for Your Lobby Visits:
Wild forests purify our drinking water, provide our families with places to hike, hunt, fish and camp, and give homes to fish and wildlife including endangered grizzly bear and salmon.
More than half of our National Forests have already been hammered by logging, mining and other destructive activities. Our National Forests are cris-crossed by 383,000 miles of official roads -- enough to circle the Earth 15 times.
The wild forest protection plan can safeguard some of the land still untouched by these industries and unscarred by roads. The President's plan is our last, best chance to protect our wildlands and wildlife as a legacy for our children.
Your support for the Wild Forest Protection Plan is critical to the final success of the plan. Please support a final roadless policy that: · protects all National Forest roadless areas of more than 1,000 acres from all damaging activities · includes the Tongass and Chugach National Forests in Alaska · protects all roadless areas from new road construction, logging, mining, off-road vehicle use, oil and gas development and other harmful activities · protects (name local national forest)
Finally, please oppose any attempts
3. CLEAN WATER Hold Factory Farm Owners Accountable for Pollution
Believe it or not, the giant corporations who own the livestock at many poultry and pig factories bear no legal responsibility for the massive water pollution these operations cause. To escape accountability, Perdue, Smithfield, Tysons and the other industrial corporations contract with independent growers to raise the animals. When EPA or state agencies issue Clean Water Act permits, the legal responsibility for complying with pollution requirements lies with the contract growers. The big corporations are off the hook, so they have no incentive for making sure that livestock waste doesn't pollute the water.
That's not fair. These huge corporations deliver the animals to an independent grower, prescribe their medications, provide the feed, dictate terms under which the animals must be raised, and then take them to the processing plant. They should also take some responsibility for making sure that their animals' waste does not pollute water. Making the companies responsible for the massive amounts of waste that enters our rivers and streams could be accomplished by having the EPA and state agencies issue Clean Water Act permits that identify both the corporation and the grower as "co-permitees."
Sierra Club and other environmental groups have long urged EPA to take this step, and the Agency's draft Clean Water Act guidance for issuing permits to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) recommends issuing co-permits. But these wealthy, influential corporations strongly oppose this provision that would hold them accountable for their polluting practices, and EPA may back down and delete it from the final guidance.
Please urge EPA Administrator Carol Browner to require co-permits and hold corporate livestock facilities responsible when they pollute our water. Write her at: U.S. EPA, 401 M Street SW, Washington DC 20460.
4. RESPONSIBLE TRADE Stop Corporate Polluters from Ruining our Democracy
Every time we turn around, the United States Trade Representative has taken another wack at environmental protection in the name of "fee trade" for corporate polluters. You've heard about how the USTR undercut our own clean air standards and sea turtle protections.
Now it's come to light that the USTR threatened the European Union with a World Trade Organization complaint for trying to clean up the growing pile of toxic waste from junked computers. The Euro's -- and many American toxics activists -- believe that the only solution to the growing pile of obsolete computers is "extended producer responsibility," requiring manufacturers to take back and recycle used electronic equipment. Extended producer responsibility would be as good for America as it would be for Europe. After all, in the next few years, we will dump more than 300 million computers -- and the 1.2 billion pounds of lead they contain -- into landfills, polluting the water we drink with a potent killer of brain power.
Since the computer industry would have to pick up the tab for recycling, the American Electronics Association took advantage of the USTR's secretive, industry-only advisory committees to persuade the Clinton administration to mount a formal attack against the proposed European standards LONG before Congress, the public, or the press could learn what was going on.
Rep. George Miller thinks that we need to flush the polluter lobbyists at USTR out into the open. Next week, he will circulate a letter to his House colleagues asking them to urge President Clinton to open up USTR decision-making to the public and to other federal agencies, such as the EPA.
TAKE ACTION. To help Rep. Miller clean up the mess at USTR, call or write your Representative. Urge them to sign the Miller letter on "Democratizing US Trade Policy." For more info or to join our listserv see www.sierraclub.org/trade.
5. POPULATION Support Fairness in Contraceptive Coverage
The Equality in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive Coverage Act (EPICC) would require all insurance companies that offer prescription drug coverage to also cover prescription contraceptive drugs and devices. Similarly, the measure would require that health plans offering coverage for outpatient medical services also provide coverage for outpatient contraceptive services. EPICC would make contraceptives more affordable and accessible for all Americans, begin to bring parity to health care costs for men and women, improve women's and children's health, and protect the environment.
EPICC (S.1200 and H.R. 2120) has been introduced in both houses of Congress. It is sponsored by Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Harry Reid (D-NV) in the Senate and Jim Greenwood (R-PA) and Nita Lowey (D-NY) in the House.
For more information visit our website at www.sierraclub.org/population or contact Carol Schlitt at carol.schlitt@sierraclub.org.
6. SPRAWL Support Better America Bonds
As poorly planned development continues to eat away at Americans' quality of life, Congress can help stop sprawl by supporting the Better America Bonds Act, H.R. 2446 in the House of Representatives and the Community Open Space Bonds Act, S. 1558 in the Senate. These bills would help local communities by financing smart growth measures, revitalizing urban areas and removing open space from the path of development.
These companion bills would set up a voluntary program allowing communities to carry out their own conservation priorities by using zero interest bonds to purchase open space, protect water quality, improve access to parks, and redevelop abandoned industrial city centers. Call your Representative and Senator and tell urge them help promote smart growth initiatives that protect open space by cosponsoring these bills.
7. GLOBAL WARMING: Urge Support for Clean Car Letter
Global warming is one of the most pervasive environmental crises we face, and every day the science on global warming is growing stronger and the evidence is becoming clearer. 1998 was the hottest year since record keeping began in 1860, and 1999 was right behind it. It is time to take the biggest single step the United States can take to curb global warming -- raising miles-per-gallon standards for SUVs, minivans, pickups and cars. Since 1996, Congress has attached a rider to the Transportation Funding bill that has frozen the CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards and has even prevented the U. S. Department of Transportation from examining the need to raise the CAFE standards.
PLEASE call or write your Representative and urge them to sign the letter that Reps. Boehlert (R-N.Y.), Dicks (D-Wash.), Greenwood (R-Pa.), and Waxman (D-Calif.) are circulating in support of fuel economy standards. The Boehlert/Dicks letter to President Clinton urges him to "work with Congress to implement" the law setting automotive fuel economy standards. The anti-environmental rider that has frozen CAFE standards since 1995 starts in the House. It is time to stop it! Please urge your representative to sign the Boehlert/Dicks Clean Car letter.
"For over half a century we've believed that Big Dams would deliver the people of India from hunger and poverty. The opposite has happened." - Indian author Arundhati Roy
TAKE ACTION
1) Cut Down Forests to Fund Rural Schools? There's a Better Way
Almost a century ago, Congress passed a law requiring the U.S. Forest Service to turn over 25 percent of its logging revenues to rural counties to fund schools and roads. That outdated law creates a perverse incentive for affected communities to support high levels of logging. It was written back when we saw our forests as infinite and valued them only for their timber. We know better now.
In recent years, because of a decrease in logging in some communities -- due to both unsustainable logging practices and various protection measures -- payments to counties have declined, and some rural school systems have suffered. The Clinton administration has proposed de-linking county payments from timber cuts, to provide stable funding for schools and reduce the incentive to continue an unsustainable logging program.
But powerful members of Congress are backing a bill that would take money from schools and give committees of local officials the ability to tell the Forest Service to spend these funds on timber sales. Under this bill one-quarter of the counties current federal payment would go into a special account to be used for timber sales and other activities. The bill also creates "investment committees" of local interests that would dictate which projects the Forest Service would spend money on. Counties could only receive funds from the special account projects if they made a profit. This creates a huge incentive for counties to force the Forest Service to spend funds on damaging timber sales.
What makes it worse is that the National Education Association has been persuaded to support this ill-conceived bill, H.R. 2389, and its support helped it in the House. Now the bill is headed for the Senate as S. 1608 and could be voted on in the next month.
The bill ignores the contributions of National Forests to recreation, wildlife, fishing and water quality. Nationally, recreation generates nearly $40 to the economy for every dollar generated by logging, and creates more than 30 times as many jobs. And increased logging destroys recreation opportunities. In addition, rural communities rely on National Forests for clean drinking water and logging can clog streams with silt and run-off. Communities should not have to sacrifice clean drinking water, jobs and wildlife habitat to fund their children's education.
And they don't have to.
TAKE ACTION: Sierra Club members, especially those who are educators, should voice their support for a sensible plan to provide our children with both a sound education and a healthy environment. Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and tell your senators to oppose S. 1608. Educators should also call the National Education Association at (202) 833-4000 and tell President Bob Chase that the NEA should drop all support for S. 1608!
For more information: Contact: Sean Cosgrove, Sierra Club's National Forest Policy Specialist at (202) 547-1141; sean.cosgrove@sierraclub.org.
2) PROTECT WILD FORESTS
At the end of last year, the Sierra Club launched a massive grassroots effort to support the President's Wild Forest Protection Plan - a historic initiative that could lead to the protection of 60 million acres of our last unspoiled wild forests. You may be one of the hundreds of thousands of Club activists who signed one of our postcards or spoke at a public hearing in support of the Wild Forest Protection Plan. Sierra Club grassroots efforts were awesome and we flooded the Forest Service with comments.
But our work to protect these wild forests is far from over. Timber industry allies and off-road vehicle enthusiasts are mounting a massive campaign to delay and defeat this proposal. Please help demonstrate broad public support for protecting our last wild forests by writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Some Points to Address in your letter: Our national forests should be protected from all damaging activities; I support the protection of all wild forest roadless areas over 1,000 acres from all damaging activities; I urge my elected officials to publicly support this historic plan. If your letter is published, please send a copy to the Sierra Club in DC at 408 C St NE, Washington DC 20002, ATTN: Wild Forest Campaign. Thank you.
3) MAKE CORPORATE LIVESTOCK OWNERS ACCOUNTABLE FOR CLEAN WATER
Believe it or not, the giant corporations who own the livestock at many poultry and pig factories bear no legal responsibility for the massive water pollution these operations cause. To escape accountability, Perdue, Smithfield, Tysons and the other industrial corporations contract with independent growers to raise the animals. When EPA or state agencies issue Clean Water Act permits, the legal responsibility for complying with pollution requirements lies with the contract growers. The big corporations are off the hook, so they have no incentive for making sure that livestock waste doesn't pollute the water.
That's not fair. These huge corporations deliver the animals to an independent grower, prescribe their medications, provide the feed, dictate terms under which the animals must be raised, and then take them to the processing plant. They should also take some responsibility for making sure that their animals' waste does not pollute water. Making the companies responsible for the massive amounts of waste that enters our rivers and streams could be accomplished by having the EPA and state agencies issue Clean Water Act permits that identify both the corporation and the grower as "co-permitees."
Sierra Club and other environmental groups have long urged EPA to take this step, and the Agency's draft Clean Water Act guidance for issuing permits to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) recommends issuing co-permits. But these wealthy, influential corporations strongly oppose this provision that would hold them accountable for their polluting practices, and EPA may back down and delete it from the final guidance.
Please urge EPA Administrator Carol Browner to require co-permits and hold corporate livestock facilities responsible when they pollute our water. Write her at: U.S. EPA, 401 M Street SW, Washington DC 20460.
4) STOP CORPORATE POLLUTERS FROM ABUSING OUR DEMOCRACY
Every time we turn around, the United States Trade Representative has taken another wack at environmental protection in the name of "fee trade" for corporate polluters. You've heard about how the USTR undercut our own clean air standards and sea turtle protections.
Now it's come to light that the USTR threatened the European Union with a World Trade Organization complaint for trying to clean up the growing pile of toxic waste from junked computers. The Euro's -- and many American toxics activists -- believe that the only solution to the growing pile of obsolete computers is "extended producer responsibility," requiring manufacturers to take back and recycle used electronic equipment. Extended producer responsibility would be as good for America as it would be for Europe. After all, in the next few years, we will dump more than 300 million computers -- and the 1.2 billion pounds of lead they contain -- into landfills, polluting the water we drink with a potent killer of brain power.
Since the computer industry would have to pick up the tab for recycling, the American Electronics Association took advantage of the USTR's secretive, industry-only advisory committees to persuade the Clinton administration to mount a formal attack against the proposed European standards LONG before Congress, the public, or the press could learn what was going on.
Rep. George Miller thinks that we need to flush the polluter lobbyists at USTR out into the open. Next week, he will circulate a letter to his House colleagues asking them to urge President Clinton to open up USTR decision-making to the public and to other federal agencies, such as the EPA.
TAKE ACTION. To help Rep. Miller clean up the mess at USTR, call or write your Representative. Urge them to sign the Miller letter on "Democratizing US Trade Policy." For more info or to join our listserv see www.sierraclub.org/trade.
5) URGE YOUR CONGRESS MEMBER AND SENATORS TO COSPONSOR THE EQUALITY IN PRESCRIPTION INSURANCE AND CONTRACEPTIVE COVERAGE ACT (EPICC)
The Equality in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive Coverage Act (EPICC) would require all insurance companies that offer prescription drug coverage to also cover prescription contraceptive drugs and devices. Similarly, the measure would require that health plans offering coverage for outpatient medical services also provide coverage for outpatient contraceptive services. EPICC would make contraceptives more affordable and accessible for all Americans, begin to bring parity to health care costs for men and women, improve women's and children's health, and protect the environment.
EPICC (S.1200 and H.R. 2120) has been introduced in both houses of Congress. It is sponsored by Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Harry Reid (D-NV) in the Senate and Jim Greenwood (R-PA) and Nita Lowey (D-NY) in the House.
For more information visit our website at www.sierraclub.org/population or contact Carol Schlitt at carol.schlitt@sierraclub.org.
6) PUT THE BRAKES ON SPRAWL
As poorly planned development continues to eat away at Americans' quality of life, Congress can help stop sprawl by supporting the Better America Bonds Act, H.R. 2446 in the House of Representatives and the Community Open Space Bonds Act, S. 1558 in the Senate. These bills would help local communities by financing smart growth measures, revitalizing urban areas and removing open space from the path of development.
These companion bills would set up a voluntary program allowing communities to carry out their own conservation priorities by using zero interest bonds to purchase open space, protect water quality, improve access to parks, and redevelop abandoned industrial city centers. Call your Representative and Senator and tell urge them help promote smart growth initiatives that protect open space by cosponsoring these bills.
7) NIKITIN IS FREE!!!... OR IS HE? (ACTION ITEM)
On December 29, 1999, retired Russian Navy Captain and environmentalist Aleksandr Nikitin was acquitted of charges of treason and espionage, thanks in large part to vigilant efforts by international environmental and human rights activists who organized on his behalf.
This decision represents a remarkable vindication of Nikitin's efforts to expose an environmental catastrophe of leaking radiation from nuclear submarines. However, the Office of the Prosecutor in St. Petersburg, Russia, has filed an appeal and requested that a different judge preside over the case.
TAKE ACTION: Please write to Acting President Vladimir Putin and urge him to set Nikitin free and to allow environmentalists to operate without fear of intimidation and harassment. Write to: Mr. Vladimir Putin, Acting President of the Russian Federation, c/o Ambassador Yuri Ushakov, Embassy of the Russian Federation, 2650 Wisconsin Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20007. e-mail: president@gov.ru
8) GLOBAL WARMING:
URGE REPS TO SIGN THE BOEHLERT/DICKS CLEAN CAR LETTER
Global warming is one of the most pervasive environmental crises we face, and every day the science on global warming is growing stronger and the evidence is becoming clearer. 1998 was the hottest year since record keeping began in 1860, and 1999 was right behind it. It is time to take the biggest single step the United States can take to curb global warming -- raising miles-per-gallon standards for SUVs, minivans, pickups and cars. Since 1996, Congress has attached a rider to the Transportation Funding bill that has frozen the CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards and has even prevented the U. S. Department of Transportation from examining the need to raise the CAFE standards.
PLEASE call or write your Representative and urge them to sign the letter that Reps. Boehlert (R-N.Y.), Dicks (D-Wash.), Greenwood (R-Pa.), and Waxman (D-Calif.) are circulating in support of fuel economy standards. The Boehlert/Dicks letter to President Clinton urges him to "work with Congress to implement" the law setting automotive fuel economy standards. The anti-environmental rider that has frozen CAFE standards since 1995 starts in the House. It is time to stop it! Please urge your representative to sign the Boehlert/Dicks Clean Car letter.
"Four dams, nay four mounds of earth, are little to ask of those who have profited so much. Honor President Thomas Jefferson and his Corps of Discovery by, as Captain Lewis suggests, distinguishing yourselves as the Corps of Recovery." -- Captain William Clark (AKA Dr. John Osbourne, Sierra Club Northern Rockies Chapter Conservation Chair) at a Feb. 8 federal hearing on bypassing four Snake River dams
LEWIS AND CLARK ON HAND TO HELP SAVE SNAKE RIVER SALMON
The support for breaching four dams on the Snake River and allowing the river to flow free was overwhelming at a federal hearing Feb. 8 in Spokane, Washington. The Spokesman-Review newspaper reported that proponents of breaching the dam in an effort to restore its salmon greatly outnumbered the proposal's opponents.
According to the story, "four Snake River dams would be history if the decision were left to the people who had their say Tuesday in Spokane."
Sierra Club Northern Rockies Chapter Conservation Chair Dr. John Osborne invoked the spirit of Captain William Clark when, disguised as the famed explorer and with Merriwether Lewis at his side, he delivered moving testimony in support of their cause. Here's Osborne's persuasive address:
"I am Captain William Clark, former governor of Missouri territory, superintendent of Indian Affairs, and, with the esteemed Captain Merriwether Lewis, explorer of the once magnificent rivers of the Northwest.
"Returning to these waters, I am overcome with despair to find the Columbia and Snake river salmon nearly eradicated by a nation I so proudly once served. I am suffused with melancholy I have not previously known, not only at the breadth of this tragedy, but at the purposefulness with which my people have embarked upon this destructive course.
"The Corps of Discovery recorded 122 unknown animals, none more plentiful than salmon. So plentiful as to make these rivers boil in the manner of turbulent rapids. So plentiful a man could pull ashore and, in a single place, see 10,000 pounds being cured by the native bands who lived judiciously, but prosperously, beside these waters.
"It is not coincidence that when the Snake River flowed, as one of our men noted, 'swifter than any horse could run,' it was swollen with millions of sockeye, coho and chinook. Nor is it accident that because the damming hand of this nation transformed these living waters into putrid ponds, only a few hundred salmon remain.
"We first tasted the salmon of the Pacific along the Lehmi River, when we took fellowship with the Shoshoni people. But salmon were the sweetest as we struggled out of the terrible mountains of the Clearwater country, an ordeal of such note that my men ate even their candles.
"Fortune provided our greeting by the Nimipoo (Nee-me-poo), the Nez Perce, who fed us salmon and camas root. We were so starved that we ate ourselves ill.
"The Nez Perce again gave us hospitality as we waited for the melting of the snows in the high country on the return home. I humbly extend my regrets and apologies to Chief Twisted Hair and his people for the wanton carelessness and selfishness of the people of my nation who later pushed West. The Nez Perce honored their word. We continue to violate ours, in no small measure by our efforts to eliminate the salmon.
"Honored assembly, because of the Nez Perce, because of the salmon, we survived to open the great Northwest, for your forebearers and you. These sacred fish bind our nation. Should your generation allow their total demise, history will mark you with indelible shame.
"You have taken from these lands and rivers in every manner possible. Your dams sever the arteries that bring sustenance for the rivers, the streams, the giant white pine, and all of the animals and plants that thrived here. Can you not give back in some small measure?
"Four dams, nay four mounds of earth, are little to ask of those who have profited so much. Honor President Thomas Jefferson and his Corps of Discovery by, as Captain Lewis suggests, distinguishing yourselves as the Corps of Recovery."
Captain Clark couldn't have said it better!
NEXT PAGE -->
|
| * * * COMPANIES & PRODUCTS * * * |
|---|
| * * * IN-HOUSE RESOURCES * * * |
|---|