The Sietch Blog

Jun 26
Call Up Your Rep And Make Them Pass Climate Change Legislation

Call 877-9-REPOWER (877-9-737-6937) and we’ll connect you to your Representative right after providing you with talking points. (We’re expecting high call volume, and if you are unable to be connected please use our secondary line, 866-590-0971.)

When connected to your Representative’s office, just remember to tell them your name, that you’re a voter, and that you live in their district. Then ask them to “vote ‘yes’ on comprehensive clean energy legislation.”

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Today the U.S. House of Representatives will vote to determine the fate of the American Clean Energy & Security Act (H.R. 2454). Please contact your Member of Congress to ask him or her to vote in favor of this legislation.

A renewable electricity standard (RES) is a policy to ensure that a growing percentage of electricity is produced from renewable sources, like wind power. To create a long-term commitment to renewable energy, the U.S. needs to adopt a strong national RES. This policy would foster a sound investment climate for renewable energy manufacturers to invest billions of dollars in new facilities and employ hundreds of thousands of Americans in high-quality jobs.

Although the current RES provisions aren’t reaching President Obama’s campaign goal of 25% renewable energy by 2025, passing this bill out of the House of Representatives is an important step in the legislative process. We also ask that you contact your Senators and ask them to help strengthen the RES in their version of the bill that will come up for a vote in the near future.

When you talk to your senator tell them:

Here’s what’s WRONG with the legislation:

The Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that to avoid the worst climate impacts such as intense droughts, super charged hurricanes and increased heat waves, the U.S. and other industrialized countries must cut their emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020. This bill, as it’s currently written, only calls for a 4% reduction by 2020. And there’s very little chance those targets will be improved.
These weak targets are made even worse by 2 billion tons per year of allowable offsets. Offsets allow polluters to put off for more than a decade real cuts in their emissions The offsets are so high that they will exceed the actual pollution reductions required until at least 2026 — that’s time we don’t have!
Coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of global warming pollution in the U.S. In order to tackle climate change, we need to begin phasing out coal immediately. But instead of phasing-out coal plants, ACES will actually encourage the growth of a new generation of coal-fired plants! To add insult to injury, tens of billions of taxpayer dollars would be spent on the myth of carbon capture and sequestration — an untested and unproven technology that is decades away from full-scale deployment even by the most optimistic estimates.

Click here to contact your Senators and Representative to express your support for a strong national RES.