Protect Our Environment: Defend The EPA

The Sierra Club is rallying at the office of Senator Casey (20^th and Market Streets) at 5:30 PM on Tuesday, September 27. Guest contributor Steve Harvey explains the importance of this event:

Attack On Environmental Regulations

As you may be aware, extreme right wing Republicans in Congress have declared war on the Environmental Protection Agency. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor last week sent a memo to House Republicans that identifies ten supposedly "job-killing" regulations that he wants to target this fall and winter. Can you guess how many of these regulations involve the EPA? 7 out of 10. (Two involve the NLRB and one involves health care.)

Attack On The EPA

These same extreme right wing Republicans have declared that they want to drastically cut funding for the EPA. Their strategy is to underfund the EPA so it will not be able to do anything about regulating greenhouse gases. And several of the Republican presidential candidates have proudly and loudly boasted that they want to all but eliminate the EPA. And of course they deny that human activity is causing climate change, despite all the science to the contrary.

Jobs vs. Economy Is False Choice

This is a radical agenda that is being driven by Tea Party politics. The war on the EPA won't save jobs or help the economy. It will hurt jobs and hurt the economy while at the same time making people sick and damaging our most important natural resources -- air, water, and soil (no, not coal, gas, and oil). This war on the EPA is not about protecting jobs; it's about protecting the profits of corporate polluters who donate large sums of money to extreme right wing Republicans. War on the EPA may be good for the profits of corporate polluters, but it's bad for the economy. It's bad for our quality of life. It's bad for our children.

Bowing To A Minority

What bothers me most about all of this is that it is being driven by a minority of citizens. An extremely vocal minority of Americans with a bunch of really bad ideas can make their voices heard and can shape government policy in a very bad way, while the majority of us sit by and wonder why this is happening. This has got to change and I believe we can change it.

Fighting Back

Right now we are planning a rally to be held in Philadelphia on September 27 at 5:30 p.m. at Senator Casey's office at 2000 Market Street (at the corner of 20th and Market) in downtown Philadelphia. The title of the rally is Protect Our Environment: Defend the EPA. It's being coordinated by Sierra Club organizer William Kramer. We will also be doing a delegation visit up to Senator Casey's office at 4:30 pm so if you are available to join us for that please let us know. We want Senator Casey to know that we will stand behind him and other responsible elected officials as they stand up and defend the EPA.

Support The Rally

Will you please do two things: (1) put the date on your calendar and plan on joining us for one hour to attend the rally, and (2) help with some phone banking to convince others to join us? Our goal is to get at least 30 people to attend the rally. Wouldn't it be great if we had far more than that? The objective is to get press coverage of the rally to bring attention to the extreme right wing Republicans' war on the EPA.

We plan to phone bank on September 21, 22, and 26 from 5:30 to 9. You can do it any or all of those nights. We are going to meet at a location in downtown Philadelphia to make the calls (Clean Air Council, 135 S. 19^th Street) or YOU CAN EVEN DO IT FROM YOUR OWN HOME. Last week I made calls from home while watching the Phillies game. It's really easy to do. We can train you how to make the calls in about 5 minutes.

Let Us Hear From You

If you can attend the rally on September 27, contact William Kramer, william.kramer(at)sierraclub.org. If you can help with the phone bank, contact Steve Harvey, steve.steveharvey.harvey(at)gmail.com.