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Sierra Club Clean Energy Campaign
While the electricity and transportation industries account for the vast majority of the pollution linked to global warming, acid rain, smog and mercury contamination, state and federal policymakers are pushing proposals to rollback environmental protections, drill for oil and natural gas in our national monuments and provide incentives for dirty energy technologies. More than 80 percent of Californians already breathe unhealthy air. Making bad decisions that lead us to a dirty energy future will exacerbate the environmental and public health problems associated with the energy industry and low income and minority communities will suffer disproportionate impacts. Healthy people will become sick; sick people will become more seriously ill; and gravely ill people will die prematurely in these areas. The Sierra Club's Energy Campaign is working to head off the attempts of shortsighted decision makers to use the energy situation to justify a range of anti-environmental state and national policies and put us on track to a clean and sustainable energy future that is good for our environment, families, communities and the economy. Thanks in large part to the valiant energy savings efforts of California consumers we have managed to squeak through most of the summer without the widely anticipated blackouts. Californian's are showing the nation that we don't need to drill, dig or destroy to keep the lights on and the energy campaign is working to make sure state and federal decision makers are taking heed. The energy campaign is playing both offense and defense in our effort to promote a clean energy agenda that prioritizes energy efficiency, clean renewable energy, and cleaner, more efficient and appropriately sited fossil generating capacity. Saving electricity is the quickest, cleanest, cheapest and safest way to address our energy problems. Energy efficiency and renewable energy are the only sources of energy that simultaneously meet our energy needs and, by reducing demand for fossil fuels, lower energy prices, alleviate supply shortages, protect the environment and better protect us from reoccurrences of this crisis in the future. We are working to:
Back to California Energy Main Photo courtesy Philip Greenspun. Up to Top |
The failure of California's deregulation scheme is causing hardship for the people of California and threatening to wipe out decades of progress toward cleaning our air and water. Greedy energy companies and their political allies have been gouging consumers and profiteering from California's temporary energy shortage. Perhaps even worse, the perceived crisis has created an atmosphere of panic that threatens to prolong our reliance on dirty, old and dangerous energy technologies of the past. Energy companies, decision makers at all levels and the public have been busy placing blame, making hasty decisions, and using the crisis to promote special interest agendas. The President of the United States is even playing along, using California's energy debacle to bolster public support for a national energy plan that takes us back in time by increasing our reliance on coal, oil and even nuclear technologies.