From: Elijah Zarlin, CREDO Action <act@credoaction.com>
Date: Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 9:15 AM
Subject: Tell President Obama: Don't appoint this fracking guy
To: melissa seaver <landrightsnfarming.seamom89@gmail.com>
Dear Melissa, President Obama keeps saying we need to confront climate change. So why is he going to appoint a major proponent of fracking to lead the Department of Energy? According to Reuters, President Obama has chosen for the job Dr. Ernest Moniz, the director of MIT's Big Oil-sponsored Energy Institute and a big believer in expanding toxic, climate-heating gas fracking.1 At a time when the last thing we should be doing is undermining our progress against climate change, Moniz is the wrong choice to head one of the most important agencies in the fight for a sustainable energy future. Moniz's Energy Institute at MIT is sponsored by the likes of BP, Chevron and Saudi Aramco. So it is no surprise that the gas industry and pro-fracking groups welcomed the rumor of Moniz's appointment to head the DOE.2 Moniz is a strong backer of the deeply flawed notion that we should expand our fracking infrastructure and development to serve as a "bridge" to low-carbon sources of energy.3 But fracking isn't a bridge to a better future; it's an expressway to climate change and toxic pollution. Expanding fracking will worsen its toxic air pollution and increase its huge volumes of toxic wastewater, will increase incidents of groundwater contamination, and will unleash an absolutely catastrophic amount of greenhouse gas4 — not just from burning gas, but from the tremendous leakage from fracking wells of methane, a greenhouse gas that has 20 times the heat-trapping power of C02 over 100 years, making fracked gas as bad for the climate as burning coal. What's more, heavy reliance on burning gas slows the implementation of the sustainable carbon-free sources of energy that will put a dent in our climate emissions. Climate change won't be solved by tradeoffs, compromises, or moderate-sounding catchphrases like "all of the above." President Obama cannot make a serious attempt at confronting climate change as long as he is pushing policies to "encourage" fracking and appointing administration officials who will undermine the progress he could be making. Last week, we delivered to the White House our open letter co-signed by over 240,000 people, calling on President Obama to lead on climate change and abandon his "all of the above" energy policy. But he still doubled down on it in his State of the Union address. By publicly protesting his likely pick for Energy secretary, we know that he'll hear the message. Click here to automatically sign the petition: Thank you for standing up to President Obama's support for fracking. Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager
1. "Obama settles on EPA, Energy Department nominees: source," Reuters, February 20, 2013
| |||||||||||||||
| © 2013 CREDO. All rights reserved. To remove yourself (melissa seaver) from this list, please visit our subscription management page at: http://act.credoaction.com/s?i=55122-4888946-Ca5UHVx To change your email address or update your contact info, please visit: http://act.credoaction.com/login/request_change.html?id=55122-4888946-Ca5UHVx |
