In June, a heat dome over the central and eastern US caused deaths, power outages, closed schools, and the deaths of 2,000 cattle. More than 100 million people were under heat alert and advised to stay indoors. The 2018 National Climate Assessment found that the frequency of heat waves has tripled since the 1960s, and that the average heat-wave season has increased by 45 days. This, along with the toxic air pollution of power plants, threatens all of us, but especially the poor, children, the elderly, and those who must labor or live outside.
We now face another summer of drought, heat, storms and fires, while the dark-money members of SCOTUS, in air-conditioned comfort, tear down desperately needed climate protections for the profit of corporate polluters. By limiting the EPA’s ability to regulate power plant emissions in West Virginia v. EPA, they made a defacto decision that already-born lives don’t matter.
But Sir, you are president to the rest of us. You recently used the Defense Production Act to boost renewable energy manufacturing under the guidance of workers, environmental justice communities, and other impacted people.
Now, we need you to use your legal authority to declare a climate emergency – ban new federal fossil fuel leasing, halt permit approvals for new pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure, and stop new gas exports.
Using authorities under the National Emergencies Act and the Defense Production Act, you can also halt crude oil exports, stop offshore oil and gas drilling, restrict international fossil fuel investment and rapidly manufacture and distribute clean and renewable energy systems.
By 2019, most Americans believed in climate change, 8 in 10 understood that human activity was fueling it and two-thirds said that President Trump was doing too little to tackle the problem. We were ready in 2020 for a president to take us into the next century of a safer and cleaner world. It’s time for you to do so. Thanks.
▶ Created on July 1, 2022 by Jess Craven
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