Last month, even as the Copenhagen climate talks were sinking further and further into chaos, a bit of welcome climate news came our way when the EPA finally issued its official ruling that greeenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and welfare. This finding compels the agency to regulate those emissions.
Predictably, big polluters are now on the offensive to protect their profits, and their allies in Congress are only too happy to help them.
The Senate will soon vote on the “Murkowski amendment,” so called because it was proposed by Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski on behalf of big polluters. (The vote is currently scheduled for January 20th, but that can change.) The amendment was proposed as what’s called a “rider” to a completely unrelated bill – a bill that has nothing to do with the climate whatsoever, but instead is intended to raise the ceiling on US public debt. This is a blatant and concerted effort by polluting industries and their allies in Congress to gut the Clean Air Act and delay efforts to reduce GHG emissions. We’ve got to stop them.
We can’t let polluting industries lock us in to several more years of dirty fossil fuels. We need policies that will move us toward taking the actions necessary to stop global warming and kickstart an energy revolution, not policies that strip us of one of the key tools we have available for reining in emissions. You can help by writing to your Senator and letting them know that you expect them to represent you, not polluters, and that you expect them to vote against Murkowski’s big polluter amendment.
