Message from Redford

[Guest guest]

Dear NRDC BioGems Defender,

Over the next few weeks, President Bush and his congressional allies will try

once again to ram their disastrous energy bill through the U.S. Senate. They

fell only two votes short in November and they've vowed to make passage of the

bill their top priority now that Congress has returned from recess.

This bill may be the worst piece of legislation you and I will see in our

lifetimes. It would pick your pocket, despoil your natural heritage, endanger

your family's health and smother your hope for a more secure energy future. We

ignore this bill at our own peril.

Let me tell you our simple plan for thwarting this shameless attack on our

environment and pocketbooks. If millions of Americans each took one minute to

protest this bill, it would cause every senator who is tempted to vote for it

to think twice about doing so.

You can make this happen within the next few hours by doing two things:

First, go to http://www.savebiogems.org/takeaction.asp?src=RR0401

and send your two senators an email or fax, telling them to vote against this

pro-polluter energy bill. Then, forward my email to at least four of your

friends, family members or colleagues.

I am emailing this message to 500,000 BioGems Defenders and other NRDC

activists. If each one forwards this message to just four more people, we will

generate a national tidal wave of opposition before this day is over.

And that won't be a moment too soon. This disgraceful bill would pick our

pockets to hand out billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to the oil, coal

and nuclear industries. That's their long-awaited reward for making big-time

contributions to the Bush-Cheney campaign. They profit while the rest of us pay

the price -- in tax dollars and environmental degradation.

This bill gives the energy giants a free pass to drill their way through our

last wild places, burn more dirty coal, build a new generation of risky nuclear

power plants and dramatically increase air pollution that would sicken the

vulnerable -- especially children and seniors -- for decades to come.

It would establish oil and gas development as the dominant use of our federal

public lands, open national parks to the construction of electricity

transmission lines, exempt polluters from core provisions of our clean air and

water laws and waive liability for the producers of the toxic gasoline additive

MTBE -- even though it has contaminated at least 1,500 public water supplies in

all 50 American states.

You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a more backward-looking, wasteful and

self-defeating energy " plan " than this one. At a time when the federal deficit

is soaring and we're going to war in the Persian Gulf oilfields, the White

House wants to stick us with the tab for prolonging our destructive dependence

on fossil fuels, foreign oil and dangerous nuclear technology.

This is not a national energy policy. This is corporate welfare, pure and

simple. Estimates of the bill's corporate tax breaks range from $23 billion to

well over $100 billion with loan guarantees included. No surprise there. Big

energy companies cooked up this raid on the federal treasury during hundreds of

secret meetings with Vice President Cheney's energy task force and their allies

on Capitol Hill.

It's one thing to gouge taxpayers. But to claim this rip-off is in the national

interest, as the White House would have us believe, is a slap in the face to

every working American.

Poll after poll shows that the vast majority of voters -- of both parties --

understand that we simply must reduce our out-of-control appetite for fossil

fuels if we ever are to secure energy independence. That means turning American

rooftops into the Persian Gulf of solar energy. It means producing cars that

get 40 miles per gallon. It means constructing efficient buildings that use

half the energy of the average American office without sacrificing comfort.

Making this transformation to a super-efficient, low-pollution economy would

save consumers upwards of a trillion dollars, spare our last wild places from

destruction, improve our health, slow global warming and reduce our dependence

on undemocratic regimes overseas. It's a no-brainer to anyone living outside

the White House.

But unless millions of Americans speak out right now, the enactment of the

president's energy bill will doom us to an apocalyptic future of blighted

wilderness, poisonous air pollution, devastating climate change and endless

wars over fossil fuels.

Please make your voice heard. Go to

http://www.savebiogems.org/takeaction.asp?src=RR0401

and tell your senators to obey the will of the American people, *not* the

dictates of giant energy corporations! Call on Congress to create a sustainable

and affordable energy path.

And please be sure to forward this message to at least four other people.

Believe me, millions of Americans are just waiting for a simple way to stop

this madness and lend their support to a sane and hopeful energy future.

Sincerely yours,

Redford

Board of Trustees

Natural Resources Defense Council

.. . .

BioGems: Saving Endangered Wild Places

A project of the Natural Resources Defense Council

http://www.savebiogems.org

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