Today’s executive orders to protect polluters, signed by President Trump at EPA headquarters, are an unprecedented attack on clean air safeguards. Our children will bear the costs. Our families will bear the costs. Our communities will bear the costs. Never has a president, or an EPA head, acted with such reckless disregard for our health—or our safety in the face of the clear and present danger of climate change. Trump and EPA head Pruitt are doing the bidding of the biggest polluters.
This administration is willing to tell any lie. (Tweet this) Willing to alter any fact. Willing to let Americans pay any price—on behalf of polluters.
Trump and Pruitt are hell-bent on making it easier for Americans to get sick—and harder for Americans to get healthy.
Today’s actions hit me in the solar plexus—they’re so extreme. And they’ll hit all of us there if they are allowed to happen. Increased air pollution means a rise in asthma attacks, a rise in heart disease and stroke associated with particulate pollution, a rise in the premature births and low birth-weights associated with fracking pollution, a rise in the neurological damage mercury causes in the developing brains of babies.
All members of Moms Clean Air Force should be aware of exactly how huge the Trump/Pruitt Polluter Plan is. Here’s a partial list:
- Encourage more coal-fired power plants to spew mercury, a neurotoxin that harms babies’ brains, into the air.
- Get rid of protections against fracking pollution.
- Undo the smog protections that help prevent asthma attacks.
- Kill the fuel economy standards for cars that help us save money at the pump.
- Do nothing about dangerous climate change—except deny it.
- Ignore the Supreme Court ruling that EPA must regulate greenhouse gases.
- Let power plants unleash carbon pollution.
- Attack climate scientists.
- Attack science research and data collection.
- Kill plans for flood programs
Pruitt also wants to kill the popular Energy Star program for appliances, because energy efficiency is working too well, and we are saving too much money—in other words, we aren’t spending enough on electricity.
You read that right: America’s Clean Power Plan pushes states to get aggressive about finding efficient sources of energy, so people in every single state will have lower electric bills.
Ask yourself: Does any of the above protect your health? Does any of this protect your family? Does any of this protect your budget?
The answer is a deafening NO.
And let’s be clear: so far, the protections from pollution have NOT cost us jobs, have NOT hurt the economy, and have NOT raised electric bills.
Oil and gas and coal industry lies won’t stop the climate from changing. They won’t stop asthma and heart disease and neurological damage. Denying a problem doesn’t make it go away.
We cannot allow polluters to profit from treating our skies like their sewers. We cannot allow our country to go backwards on clean energy technology and deployment.
That’s how we achieve real energy independence—and profit all Americans.
TELL YOUR SENATOR: PROTECT OUR HEALTH FROM AIR AND CLIMATE POLLUTION