Sample Letters to the Editor about Prop. 87

Copy these letters -- or better yet, write your own -- and send them into your local newspaper before the election.

Oil Companies should pay their fair share

Editor:

The cost of our oil addiction in California is enormous. We subsidize roads, we pay for health care expenses related to air pollution, and we pay to clean up after the industry’s many spills to our land and water. Air pollution is damaging crops and forests.

California is the third leading oil producer in the US, but receives no severance tax on oil produced here. Texas and Louisiana have hefty severance taxes, which the oil companies happily pay.

Prop 87 would make the oil companies pay their fair share of the costs of overcoming our oil addiction. It would use the money collected to promote, develop and commercialize renewable energy while educating the public about the problem and training workers to enter the green economy. It is the right idea at the right time. Yes on 87.

Signed

Editor:

Californians – like all Americans – are well and truly addicted to oil. We can help the nation and the world explore ways to reduce our dependence on oil, improve air quality and create jobs because people elsewhere follow our lead.

Proposition 87, an innovative idea for accelerating progress on overcoming our oil addiction, would force oil companies to pay their fair share toward overcoming oil addiction and its myriad problems: air pollution, health effects, crop damage, and worst of all, global warming. It would collect money for oil extracted in California (which all the other major oil producing states now collect for oil taken from their territory) and use it to spur innovation and commercialization of clean energy technologies, train workers to work in the new clean energy industries and educate the public about ways to reduce oil consumption. Proposition 87 is a great tool for leading America in a different, cleaner and safer direction.

Join me in voting yes on 87.

Signed