- Over the next few weeks, President Bush and his congressional
allies will try once again to ram their disastrous energy bill through
the U.S. Senate. They fell only two votes short in November and they've
vowed to make passage of the bill their top priority now that Congress
has returned from recess.
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- This bill may be the worst piece of legislation you and
I will see in our lifetimes. It would pick your pocket, despoil your natural
heritage, endanger your family's health and smother your hope for a more
secure energy future. We ignore this bill at our own peril.
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- Let me tell you our simple plan for thwarting this shameless
attack on our environment and pocketbooks. If millions of Americans each
took one minute to protest this bill, it would cause every senator who
is tempted to vote for it to think twice about doing so.
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- You can make this happen within the next few hours by
doing two things:
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- First, go to
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- http://www.savebiogems.org/takeaction.asp?src=RR0401
and send your two senators an email or fax, telling them to vote against
this pro-polluter energy bill. Then, forward my email to at least four
of your friends, family members or colleagues.
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- I am emailing this message to 500,000 BioGems Defenders
and other NRDC activists. If each one forwards this message to just four
more people, we will generate a national tidal wave of opposition before
this day is over.
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- And that won't be a moment too soon. This disgraceful
bill would pick our pockets to hand out billions of dollars in taxpayer
subsidies to the oil, coal and nuclear industries. That's their long-awaited
reward for making big-time contributions to the Bush-Cheney campaign.
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- They profit while the rest of us pay the price -- in
tax dollars and environmental degradation. This bill gives the energy giants
a free pass to drill their way through our last wild places, burn more
dirty coal, build a new generation of risky nuclear power plants and dramatically
increase air pollution that would sicken the vulnerable -- especially children
and seniors -- for decades to come.
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- It would establish oil and gas development as the dominant
use of our federal public lands, open national parks to the construction
of electricity transmission lines, exempt polluters from core provisions
of our clean air and water laws and waive liability for the producers of
the toxic gasoline additive MTBE -- even though it has contaminated at
least 1,500 public water supplies in all 50 American states.
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- You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a more backward-looking,
wasteful and self-defeating energy "plan" than this one. At a
time when the federal deficit is soaring and we're going to war in the
Persian Gulf oilfields, the White House wants to stick us with the tab
for prolonging our destructive dependence on fossil fuels, foreign oil
and dangerous nuclear technology.
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- This is not a national energy policy. This is corporate
welfare, pure and simple. Estimates of the bill's corporate tax breaks
range from $23 billion to well over $100 billion with loan guarantees included.
No surprise there. Big energy companies cooked up this raid on the federal
treasury during hundreds of secret meetings with Vice President Cheney's
energy task force and their allies on Capitol Hill.
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- It's one thing to gouge taxpayers. But to claim this
rip-off is in the national interest, as the White House would have us believe,
is a slap in the face to every working American.
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- Poll after poll shows that the vast majority of voters
-- of both parties -- understand that we simply must reduce our out-of-control
appetite for fossil fuels if we ever are to secure energy independence.
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- That means turning American rooftops into the Persian
Gulf of solar energy. It means producing cars that get 40 miles per gallon.
It means constructing efficient buildings that use half the energy of the
average American office without sacrificing comfort. Making this transformation
to a super-efficient, low-pollution economy would save consumers upwards
of a trillion dollars, spare our last wild places from destruction, improve
our health, slow global warming and reduce our dependence on undemocratic
regimes overseas. It's a no-brainer to anyone living outside the White
House.
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- But unless millions of Americans speak out right now,
the enactment of the president's energy bill will doom us to an apocalyptic
future of blighted wilderness, poisonous air pollution, devastating climate
change and endless wars over fossil fuels.
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- Please make your voice heard. Go to:
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- http://www.savebiogems.org/takeaction.asp?src=RR0401
and tell your senators to obey the will of the American people, *not* the
dictates of giant energy corporations! Call on Congress to create a sustainable
and affordable energy path. And please be sure to forward this message
to at least four other people.
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- Believe me, millions of Americans are just waiting for
a simple way to stop this madness and lend their support to a sane and
hopeful energy future.
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- Sincerely yours,
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- Robert Redford Board of Trustees Natural Resources Defense
Council <mailto:biogemsdefenders@savebiogems.org>biogemsdefenders@savebiogems.org
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