| Dear Katy, While the public and the media are distracted by Donald Trump's latest tweet, Mitch McConnell is quietly — and quickly — moving a dangerous and dirty energy bill through the Senate that would line the pockets of the fossil fuel industry and could lock in our dependence on fossil fuels for decades to come. The so-called "Energy and Natural Resources Act of 2017" would increase fracking, allow the government to more easily approve dirty oil and gas pipelines and exacerbate the climate crisis even more. Mitch McConnell knows how unpopular this legislation is – so he's fast-tracking the bill without a single public hearing. The oil and gas lobby wants nothing more than to see this bill slip by without the public's knowledge or input. We must sound the alarm immediately and pressure the Senate to reject this disastrous dirty energy bill. Tell the Senate: Reject the Trump-McConnell dirty energy bill. Click here to sign the petition. The Trump-McConnell dirty energy bill is one of the worst energy bills ever introduced in the Senate. Specifically, it would: - Speed up the approval of liquefied natural gas export terminals, which would increase domestic fracking;
- Give significantly more power to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a largely unaccountable federal energy agency, to sanction new natural gas projects; and
- Authorize hundreds of millions of dollars for research and development into extracting methane hydrates, known as "flammable ice," which are frozen fossil fuel deposits under the ocean floor and are potent greenhouse gasses.1,2
Incredibly, the bill even contains a "renewables" section that fails to make any mention of solar or wind power. At a time when our country must embrace clean, renewable sources of energy to create a more sustainable future, this bill doubles down on extracting the very dirty fossil fuels causing the climate change catastrophe. With Trump occupying the White House and an administration filled with climate deniers, Mitch McConnell sees a perfect opportunity to pay back his friends and donors in the oil and gas industry. As our allies at Friends of the Earth put it, Donald Trump has done everything in his power to put our government in the hands of the fossil fuel industry. At a time when the world has already leased more fossil fuels than can be burned, the Senate energy bill will increase fracking and pave the way for new fossil fuel extraction.3 A vote in the Senate could be coming any day now. We must act immediately to ramp up pressure on lawmakers to reject this dirty energy bill before it's too late. Tell the Senate: Reject the Trump-McConnell dirty energy bill. Click the link below to sign the petition: https://act.credoaction.com/sign/dirty_energy?t=7&akid=24016.12967895.V5hP4X Thanks for all you do. Josh Nelson, Deputy Political Director
CREDO Action from Working Assets Add your name: References - Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth and Center for Biological Diversity, "Organizational Sign-on Letter: Oppose Senate Bill 1460, The Energy and Natural Resources Act of 2017," accessed July 7, 2017.
- Oil Change International, "The Madness of Exploiting Methane Hydrates," March 13, 2013.
- Friends of the Earth, "Senator Cantwell resuscitates dirty energy bill," June 29, 2017.
Photo Credit: Yuri Gripas/Getty Images |
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