Care About Climate Change, Clean Air? Call Your Senators!

The Senate votes tomorrow on four pieces of legislation that all aim to block or delay Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) action to reduce the carbon dioxide pollution of the nation’s biggest polluters. These polluters have convinced their friends in Congress to author a wave of bills exempting them from strong air pollution limits—they are the…

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The Senate votes tomorrow on four pieces of legislation that all aim to block or delay Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) action to reduce the carbon dioxide pollution of the nation’s biggest polluters. These polluters have convinced their friends in Congress to author a wave of bills exempting them from strong air pollution limits—they are the Dirty Air Acts we’ve been warning you about for months.

These Dirty Air Acts will give polluters free rein to dump carbon dioxide pollution and other climate change pollutants into the air—at the expense of public health and the American quality of life. Please, call your senators and tell them to oppose these Dirty Air Acts!

The legislative measures up for a vote today are offered by Senators Rockefeller (S.AMDT.215), McConnell and Inhofe (S.AMDT.183), Baucus (S.AMDT.235), and Stabenow (S.AMDT.265) as amendments on an unrelated small business innovation bill (S.493).

Some of these block common-sense limits on carbon dioxide pollution in perpetuity, while others freeze these limits for a period of time.

In setting these carbon dioxide pollution limits, the EPA is trying to do what it was created to do: protect Americans from pollution. Until recently, there has been no limit on the amount of climate change pollution that polluters can pour into the air, particularly for the worst actors. The EPA is required under the Clean Air Act to protect the public from this pollutant, and it has a moderate plan to begin to reduce the carbon pollution of only the biggest polluters. It must be allowed to begin doing this work.

For 40 years, the EPA has protected our health. And for 40 years, the Clean Air Act has been saving lives and protecting public health. At every single step along the way, polluter industries have cried foul. They have protested any requirements to clean up their pollution, and they have insisted that those regulations would cause the sky to fall and guarantee certain economic demise for America. For the last 40 years, we’ve seen the contrary: 
 
Clean Air Act regulations have returned enormous economic benefits to the American people, outweighing the costs 30 to 1, in addition to the deaths and sickness they’ve prevented. Volumes of science prove the health benefits these limits will provide Americans.  
 
Recent polls show us that most Americans recognize the importance of these pollution limits and agree that science, not politicians with political motives, should be followed when setting these pollution controls, as the Clean Air Act requires. 
 
Please call your senators NOW and tell them to oppose these attacks on clean air in America. Tell them to vote against these Dirty Air Acts and any other bills or amendments that block or delay the EPA from limiting climate change pollution!

Liz Judge worked at Earthjustice from 2010–2016. During that time, she worked on mountaintop removal mining, national forests, and clean water issues, and led the media and advocacy communications teams.

Established in 1989, Earthjustice's Policy & Legislation team works with champions in Congress to craft legislation that supports and extends our legal gains.

Earthjustice’s Washington, D.C., office works at the federal level to prevent air and water pollution, combat climate change, and protect natural areas. We also work with communities in the Mid-Atlantic region and elsewhere to address severe local environmental health problems, including exposures to dangerous air contaminants in toxic hot spots, sewage backups and overflows, chemical disasters, and contamination of drinking water. The D.C. office has been in operation since 1978.