Dear {{ user.first_name|default:”Friend” }},
More fracking. More Keystone XL pipeline projects — in Latino neighborhoods. That’s what our families will be facing if we don’t fix the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to reduce air pollution.
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Earlier this year, the EPA announced new standards for power plants run by utility companies across the country. While the standards are a positive step to curbing pollution from coal plants, they would not address an insidious poison — methane from gas-fired plants. Methane is a greenhouse gas 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the long term when it comes to driving climate change.1
If we don’t have strong EPA rules that address natural gas pollution, we could end up with utility companies merely swapping one poisonous fossil fuel for another instead of switching to clean renewables like solar, wind, and energy conservation.
The deadline for the public to comment on the power plant rules is December 1. Between now and then, we want to make sure that the EPA hears directly from Presente members that we demand strong standards and encourage the use of renewable energy over fossil fuels. If Latinos — who are often most affected by climate change and air pollution — join our allies and speak up against letting gas-fired power plants continue to pollute with impunity, we can ensure the EPA gets the message.
Let’s be clear about something — there’s nothing ‘natural’ or ‘clean’ about the process of extracting and burning gas to generate power. More demand for natural gas would mean more fracking and pipeline projects ripping our communities apart. Latinos that live near fracking wells already report headaches, nosebleeds, rare cancers, and respiratory diseases associated with oil and gas drilling. But all of that, as disturbing as it sounds, could be a picnic compared to the devastation our communities will face as a result of climate change — from more super storms like Sandy and Hurricane Katrina on the East Coast to record droughts and wildfires in the Southwest.2, 3
Reigning in carbon pollution is critical to our communities. Nearly six million Americans — largely low-income people of color — live within three miles of a coal power plant, putting our communities at even greater risk of suffering heart attacks, lung cancer, asthma, and other diseases that have been linked to fossil fuel emissions. But merely switching from coal to natural gas is not acceptable.4, 5
Utility companies are just as complicit as the oil, gas, and coal industries in poisoning our communities. The only difference is that, unlike those other corporate industries, utility companies are actually supposed to be providing a public service to our families and so they are supposed to be accountable to us.
More than 5,000 Presente members have already called on the EPA to express their support to reduce carbon pollution from the power plants the utility companies run. But if utilities merely switch from one destructive fossil to another, our communities will continue to suffer.
Thanks, and ¡Adelante!
Mariana, Arturo, Refugio, and the rest of the Presente.org Team
P.S. Can you donate $5 to support our work? We rely on contributions from people like you to see campaigns like this through.
Sources:
1. More Bad News For Fracking: IPCC Warns Methane Traps Much More Heat Than We Thought, Think Progress, October 2, 2013
2. California community invites Governor Jerry Brown to see a fracking field from the playground, TreeHugger, May 28, 2014
3. New York’s Silent but Deadly Fracking Problem, Vice, June 19, 2014
4. Coal Blooded, NAACP
5. Report: EPA power plant rules may aid health, USA Today, May 27, 2014