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Posts Tagged ‘polluters’

SB 875 – BAD BILL ALERT: Call your Rep now!!

Posted in Texas Legislature, tagged , , , , on May 25, 2011 |

Bad Bill Alert Vote NO on SB 875

The House passed on 2nd reading a bill which would give polluters a shield against being sued for nuisance over their greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, greenhouse gases include all sorts of bad pollution, like methane, and even the pollutants that cause smog: NOx and ozone. 

Even worse, there is concern that the Bonnen amendment would apply to every area of the state of Texas water code. 

This is a bailout for polluters and would take away your rights to stop emissions in your backyard that affect your family, your home, your farm, or ranch.

They say this is just about global warming, but it’s not!

Please call your Representative and tell him or her to

VOTE NO ON SB 875

Talking points to tell your legislator when you get their staff on the phone:

This bill is far more than a global warming bill – it’s immunity for polluters

The original bill was a bad concept, but it only limited local governments’ right to bring nuisance or trespass lawsuits for greenhouse gases.  The new version significantly expands the scope of the bill and TAKES AWAY PEOPLES’ (INDIVIDUALS, FARMERS, RANCHERS, BUSINESSES AND LOCAL GOVTS) RIGHT TO PROTECT THEIR PROPERTY FROM POLLUTION.

The Bonnen amendment went way too far

Please vote no

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EPA Should Use Clean Air Act to Address Climate Change

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 18, 2009 |

Statement of Tyson Slocum, Director, Public Citizen’s Energy Program

*Note: Tyson Slocum is delivered this statement today at a public hearing held by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on regulating greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing industrial facilities under the Clean Air Act.

As we approach the 40th anniversary of the Clean Air Act, it is appropriate for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use this law for the agency’s most important and challenging task yet: solving climate change. Decades of success using the act to make America’s communities cleaner and safer can serve as a model of how to tackle climate change.

Public Citizen supports the development of strong, science-based regulations to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, oil refineries and other “smokestack” emitters responsible for 70 percent of our nation’s emissions of pollutants that cause climate change. The EPA has emerged as the only arm of the federal government with the credibility to solve climate change, as Congress thus far has produced deeply flawed legislation that provides billions of dollars in financial giveaways to polluters while failing to fix our corporate-controlled energy system, which contributes to unsustainability and pollution.

Most unsettling is the fact that climate legislation passed by the House of Representatives would end the ability of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Public Citizen understands why polluters’ lobbyists have tried to eviscerate the EPA’s authority: Because they know that the agency now is largely shielded from the influence of corporate special interests and can therefore concentrate on formulating the regulatory solutions to climate change based on science, not politics.

As world leaders prepare to meet in Copenhagen next month to discuss how nations can work together to solve climate change, the eyes of the world will look not to Congress, but to the EPA for leadership. Public Citizen strongly supports the agency’s efforts to use the full extent of the Clean Air Act to implement science-based regulations to sharply reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing industrial sources.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, cleaner cars, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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EPA Calls for Proper Enforcement of Clean Air Act in Texas

Posted in Toxics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 8, 2009 |

Environmental Groups welcome EPA’s proposed rejection of key elements of TCEQ’s air permitting plan and call for proper enforcement of Clean Air Act protections in Texas

(Austin)  — Sierra Club, Public Citizen, and the Galveston/Houston Association for Smog Prevent (GHASP) welcomed the EPA proposal today to disapprove key aspects of the Texas clean-air permitting program that “do not meet federal Clean Air Act requirements” followed by other states.

Texas environmental community leaders commented on the proposed decision –

Tom ‘Smitty’ Smith, Director of the Texas office of Public Citizen –

It’s refreshing to see an agency that actually believes in enforcing our clean air laws.  We’ve gotten too comfortable with allowing substandard permits through TCEQ, and our air quality and our quality of life have suffered the consequences.  We must put the public’s interest above the special interests of the polluters if we are to pass on a better Texas than we found to our children and grandchildren.

Ken Kramer, Director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club –

The Sierra Club welcomes today’s action by EPA to disapprove portions of the State of Texas air pollution control program. Our concerns have fallen on deaf ears for years, but the new Administration at EPA is taking action once again to enforce the nation’s environmental protection laws.  We now need EPA to take swift action to ensure that every permit issued in Texas complies with the Clean Air Act’s health based protections.

Matthew Tejada, Executive Director of GHASP, Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention

This means two things to GHASP and for everyone in the Houston region: first it means that President Obama and Administrator Lisa Jackson have solidly put the EPA back where it is supposed to be – aggressively protecting the human and environmental health of this country.  Second, and possibly most important for us in Houston, it means that the government has finally jammed a crowbar into the most opaque and ineffective air permitting program in the country in order to shed a little bit of light – and hopefully let in a little bit of clean air.

The EPA will post notice for comments in the Federal Registry and the public will have sixty days to comment.

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Tell Congress: Corporate Influence Undermines Climate Change Bill

Posted in Global Warming, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 5, 2009 |

meltingAction Alert!

Climate change legislation currently being debated in Congress will prove a boon to the coal and oil industries, will fail to protect consumers and may very well not even curb global warming.

Lawmakers have conducted closed door negotiations with polluters.

The result: The bill was radically altered to accommodate the financial interests of big energy corporations while giving nothing new for the environment or for working families. Lawmakers have decided to give away most of the pollution allowances for free for the next two decades – an approach that would hurt working families and households the most. It will deprive the government of the money needed to invest in clean technologies and thwart the very goal of curbing global warming.

This is hardly the transformation this country needs to jump-start its economy and curb climate change. This is more of the same old wait-and-see, special-interest-bailout approach that has gripped Washington, D.C., for ages.

Tell your representatives that climate change legislation should not be weakened by the corrupting influence of big money, and that the people’s business should be done in front of the people.

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