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Tell Congress: Strengthen Climate Bill
On Friday, the American Clean Energy and Security Act will hit the House floor for a critical vote.
Please call your representative and urge them to strengthen HR 2454. Now is the time to raise your voice again to tell Congress loud and clear: Stand up to corporate polluters and deliver effective climate legislation that will protect us for generations to come.
To contact your representative:
Call the House of Representatives Switchboard: (202) 224-3121
You can also look up your U.S. Representative here: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
Please urge your representative to do the following:
- Listen to the scientists, not the lobbyists, and cut global warming emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
- Require polluters to pay for emissions credits – don’t hand them out for free, thereby providing financial windfalls to coal and oil power plant owners. The nuclear utility Exelon bragged this week to investors that the climate bill will provide it $1 billion in extra profit per year. In addition, giving away allowances deprives the government of money needed to invest in clean technologies.
- Don’t rely on Wall Street to get climate change right. Under the bill, the price of pollution would be determined by a trillion-dollar derivatives market that could be similar to the one that helped sink our economy into is current depressed state.
- Boost the amount of renewable energy utilities must use. The first draft of the bill would have required utilities to produce 25 percent of their power from renewable energy by 2025; that figure has shrunk to 20 percent, and additional loopholes prompted the American Wind Energy Association to conclude that the renewable standard will result in “effectively zero” new renewables.
- Remove the “carbon tax” that households would be asked to pay . This pot of money would be controlled by the utilities and used to fund only carbon capture projects by coal utilities. The bill doesn’t, but should, provide money to help homeowners pay for such as things as weatherization or to receive rebates for rooftop solar.
After you make the call, drop us a note and tell us how it went.
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