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Winter 2010 Edition
Published February 17, 2010
LWVUS Selects Global Climate Change As 2010 Legislative Priority
by Joyce Lanning, LWVAL Environmental Chair
The LWVUS Board of Directors has adopted the following Legislative Priorities for 2010: Global Climate Change, Health Care Reform, and Money in Elections (campaign finance reform). The LWVUS Climate Change Task Force will host a caucus at the National Convention in Atlanta in July to present the new Climate Change Toolkit and discuss ways to use and refine it. Joyce Lanning, LWVGB and LWVAL Natural Resources Chair is a member of that Task Force.
The LWVUS sent a letter to members of the U.S. House of Representatives urging members to oppose legislation from Representatives Moran and Pomeroy which would overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) scientific finding that global warming pollutants endanger public health and welfare. This would block the agency’s implementation of the Clean Air Act to protect our health and welfare from global warming from greenhouse gases (GHGs).
Another letter was sent to U.S. Senators opposing Senator Murkowski’s attempt to overturn the EPA’s scientific finding that global warming pollution is dangerous to Americans’ health and to their environment. She introduced a “resolution of disapproval” that, if passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president, would void the Supreme Court’s landmark 2007 global warming decision and also prohibit using the Clean Air Act to cut the carbon pollution that endangers our health and our environment.
Contrary to the LWVUS position, the Acting Director of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management has sent a letter to the state Attorney General on behalf of a Commissioner of the Alabama Environmental Management Commission. The letter requests that Attorney General investigate the possibility of appealing EPA’s GHG rule on behalf of the State, seeking to overturn it. The state board will monitor the results of that request and consider submitting information to the Alabama Environmental Management Commission in support of the EPA’s ability to protect us from excessive GHGs under the Clean Air Act.