Moms Clean Air Force staff and members made news throughout the country this week!
HOT OFF THE PRESS…
- Congressman Shevrin Jones penned an op-ed here in Florida’s Sun Sentinel, titled, “South Florida will bear brunt of climate crisis if state, feds keep ignoring us ” in which the congressman urges Floridians to learn more about climate change from “…groups like the CLEO Institute and Moms Clean Air Force and rally behind a 100-percent clean energy economy. This is the only way to confront climate change and put the health of our communities, families, and children first.”
- Heather McTeer Toney wrote an approximately 1,500-word first-person essay “Hot House: Why It’s So Hard to Talk About Climate Change” in the online outlet Dame (“lady” in French). In this must-read essay, Toney openly shares her experiences as an African-American working in a predominately white environmental space. Toney asserts that while “…the movement tasked with helping save the earth is as divisive as anything else, addressing our differences is the only way to create discourse—and solutions.”
- Columba Sainz recently took part in a community-focused discussion “The Right to Breathe: Surviving dirty air in Phoenix” that caught the eye of AZ Big Media, an online outlet. Sainz who lives in a county with failing “F” grades for air, spoke up about the power of advocates like herself to find common cause with like-minded mothers: “In the eyes of Sainz, ‘the true power lies within us.’ The Ecomadres Team of Moms Clean Air Force is a collaborative effort between GreenLatinos and Moms Clean Air Force that provides ‘an inclusive community that empowers and lifts up the voices of comadres for the benefit of our communities.’”
- Industry publication E&E acknowledged Moms Clean Air Force’s work in sharing news that Congressman Schrier, joined by Reps. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), is rounding up support for a separate letter to House and Senate leaders urging them to ensure that the next fiscal 2020 spending bill for EPA bars the agency from weakening our Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS): “[…] one day before the deadline for signing on, 16 lawmakers had joined the effort, according to a Schrier spokeswoman. A copy of the letter was provided to E&E News by Moms Clean Air Force, an advocacy group affiliated with the Environmental Defense Fund.”
- Molly Rauch’s testimony given at the District of Columbia Councilmember Robert White-led public meeting on playground surfacing materials and lead exposure was quoted in the Greater Washington blog: “During her testimony, Rauch called upon the District to “..install heat friendly infrastructure that does not exacerbate the effects of climate change.’ Synthetic materials like PIP, she explained, intensify the surface temperatures of public spaces and contribute to DC’s urban heat island effect.”
- Meanwhile, Heather McTeer Toney’s remarks at the annual Society for Environmental Justice continue to reverberate in the media. Below are two examples:
– The Bulletin’s contributing editor, and established science writer, Dawn Stover penned this engrossing blog post entitled “Declining US greenhouse gas emissions: a Republican fairy tale” in which she accepts Toney’s direct challenge to let the facts about emissions speak for themselves despite misinformation from co-panelist Mandy Gunasekara at the plenary moderated by Lisa Friedman of the New York Times. Gunasekara founded the pro-Trump Energy 45 Fund, a nonprofit “dedicated to informing the public about the environmental and economic gains made under the Trump administration.”
– Also, at this plenary was a DeSmog contributor who mentioned the heated exchange between Toney and Gunasekara in her reporting here: “‘The empowerment alliance’ and other new dark money groups sound a lot like the natural gas industry: The Empowerment Alliance is known to be run by two top figures and lobbyists for the Republican Party.”
*Incidentally, this was a week in Washington in which we heard a lot about the undue influence of “dark money” in politics from Senator Whitehouse at two Hill hearings.
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TELL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE: IT’S BEYOND TIME FOR CLIMATE SAFETY