President Obama promised that his administration would take action to confront the climate crisis — and now the EPA has finally proposed the first-ever safeguards against carbon pollution from our nation's aging power plants.
This is a big deal, and the big polluters know it.
This is the beginning of what could be the biggest climate fight in history. Fossil fuel billionaires are mobilizing like never before. They're already sending their lobbyists to Washington and spreading their fear-mongering talking points on Fox News.
Don't let the fossil fuel billionaires get the last word. Flood the White House and EPA with 25,000 new official comments saying that America is ready for strong climate action!
Dear Administrator McCarthy,
Along with all 2.4 million Sierra Club members and supporters, I want to see strong climate action. I'm happy with the framework put forward by EPA's proposed safeguards against carbon pollution from existing power plants but want to see the standard strengthened.
Already, many states will be able to achieve even greater carbon reductions than called for in this plan because they are retiring dirty power plants and moving to clean energy and energy efficiency much faster and at greater scale than EPA estimated. A strengthened standard would take this progress into account as a base to be built upon -- not an excuse for states to avoid taking further climate action.
Even though the Clean Power Plan focuses on reducing carbon pollution from power plants 30% by 2030, the EPA has estimated that we could make these reductions faster -- 29% by 2025 and 27% by 2020. We know we can go much further than 30% by 2030 because states are already going beyond EPA's proposal by retiring dirty power plants and scaling up renewables and energy efficiency.
[Your comments will go here]
We need states to choose clean energy and energy efficiency to meet their carbon pollution reduction goals. It's not time to build more dangerous and expensive natural gas and nuclear power plants. Solar and wind power continue to grow exponentially nationwide - and along with energy efficiency this is where the states should concentrate their efforts. Let's create more productive jobs in an industry that doesn't pollute our air and water or disrupt the climate.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
