Today’s CALL TO ACTION 12.08.16:
The President-Elect, a climate-change skeptic, has chosen Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt is one of the leaders in a still-pending 28-state lawsuit against the Clean Power Act. He has previously benefited from close ties to the industries that he would be in charge of regulating. For example, the head of Continental Energy, a North Dakota oil and gas company that also works in Oklahoma, was co-chairman of Pruitt’s 2013 reelection campaign.
TODAY’S NEWS PIECE:
“As Oklahoma’s top law enforcement official, Mr. [Scott] Pruitt has fought environmental regulations — particularly the climate change rules. Although Mr. Obama’s rules were not completed until 2015, Mr. Pruitt was one of a handful of attorneys general, along with Greg Abbott of Texas, who began planning as early as 2014 for a coordinated legal effort to fight them. That resulted in a 28-state lawsuit against the administration’s rules. A decision on the case is pending in a federal court, but it is widely expected to advance to the Supreme Court. As Mr. Pruitt has sought to use legal tools to fight environmental regulations on the oil and gas companies that are a major part of his state’s economy, he has also worked with those companies. For example, the 2014 investigation by The Times found that energy lobbyists drafted letters for Mr. Pruitt to send, on state stationery, to the E.P.A., the Interior Department, the Office of Management and Budget and even President Obama, outlining the economic hardship of the environmental rules.”
CALL TO ACTION: If you’re concerned about the new leader of the EPA, we urge you to reach out to your state representatives and voice your opinion. We also urge you to volunteer or donate for organizations looking to protect our planet’s natural resources and tackle climate change.
ORGANIZATION: “The Sierra Club is now the nation’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization…Our successes range from protecting millions of acres of wilderness to helping pass the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act. More recently, we’ve made history by leading the charge to move away from the dirty fossil fuels that cause climate disruption and toward a clean energy economy.”
HOW TO DONATE: https://vault.sierraclub.org/ways-to-give/#donate-maintab
CALLING YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES AND/OR SENATORS:
***LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENTS IF YOU SIGNED UP FOR MORE INFO, DONATED, TWEETED, VOLUNTEERED, ETC.!
OTHER GROUPS TO DONATE/VOLUNTEER/OR SHOUT OUT:
Natural Resources Defense Council: https://www.nrdc.org/
Heal the Bay: http://www.healthebay.org/
Environmental Defense Fund: https://www.edf.org/
Friends of the Earth: http://www.foe.org/
Wildlife Conservation Society: http://www.wcs.org/our-work
OTHER NEWS PIECES:
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