Right now we face the greatest threat in human history -- catastrophic global climate change. The deeply flawed global warming bill passed by the House in June 2009 gave us at best only a 50/50 chance of avoiding cataclysmic runaway global warming. And it gutted the Clean Air Act, one of our most powerful tools for reducing greenhouse gases.
The good news was that the Senate bill retained the Clean Air Act's authority to curb greenhouse gas pollution. The bad news is that the Clean Air Act is still in jeopardy, and now the Senate has moved to eliminate the Clean Air Act's authority to set a cap on the amount of greenhouse gas pollution that may exist in the air. Asked why the Senate bill didn't gut the Act in its entirety, Senator Kerry responded: "Because I think that we need to have some negotiating room as we proceed forward here."
And the worse news is that the Senate bill won't cut carbon dioxide emissions deep or fast enough to prevent runaway global warming. It requires only a 20-percent reduction in carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 2020, while climate science shows that we need to slash emissions by at least 45 percent of 1990 levels by 2020 to have a real chance of ratcheting back atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million.
Our time to act is now -- the Center for Biological Diversity needs your help to pass a strong global warming bill.
Sign our petition urging the Senate and President Barack Obama to pass a strong global warming bill that doesn’t jettison the proven successful Clean Air Act in favor of a deeply flawed cap-and-trade proposal. Share it with your friends and family and post it on your Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter pages by clicking the "share" button under the coal-fired power plant photo.
