Today marks a historic occasion. The House has just released a bill to address the climate emergency, called the 100% Clean Economy Act. It calls for sweeping, urgent action, starting immediately, to cut net US climate pollution to zero. 100% Clean.
Rep. Donald McEachin (D-Va.) with bill co-leads Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY), Rep. Debra Haaland (D-NM), Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI), Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) introduced the bill with over 150 original co-sponsors. The bill, 100% Clean Economy Act of 2019, is designed to complement other legislative proposals to address the climate crisis. It sets us on a path to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 across all sectors of the economy.
As the bill was being written, negotiated, re-written, and sent out to members of Congress for their participation in sponsorship, our Moms field team went into full action as well. Moms in dozens of states began to ask their lawmakers to join McEachin as co-sponsors.
Zero climate pollution across the economy by 2050 is an ambitious goal. To meet that goal, we need urgent action—and we need measurable benchmarks to know we are on target every step of the way. This bill heeds the advice of the world’s scientists who are telling us we need to be bold in stopping climate pollution to avert uncontrollable disaster.
This means that there are now two major climate bills in circulation. This means that lawmakers are hearing our demands for action on cutting the carbon and methane emissions that are perilously warming our world.
And — news flash just as the bill dropped from our Moms team — one of our field leaders went into labor and delivered her first daughter (and fourth child) safely into the world.
It took as long to birth the bill as it did to birth a baby. But that baby is why we are doing what we do. We cannot allow our leaders to do nothing in the face of climate pollution. It puts us all, all over the world, in mortal danger.