Tell Senate to Cut Budget Elsewhere: “DON’T KILL THE EPA!”

The Wilderness Society reports, “Last week, the House Majority — on a virtual straight party-line vote — passed an extreme bill that terminated funding for dozens of important environmental programs. One example: the bill would block Interior Secretary Salazar’s new policy that restored protection to millions of acres of wilderness — quality public lands across the West.”

The Wilderness Society says, “If the bill becomes law, we will return to a Bush-era policy of degrading and even destroying America’s wilderness through oil and gas development, off road vehicle abuses, and other forms of development.”

In short, “[t]his radical legislation if passed in the Senate would:

(1) Cut EPA’s budget by 30 percent and cripple the agency’s ability to reduce greenhouse gases that endanger public health and contribute to global warming;
(2) Slash the Land and Water Conservation Fund by 87 percent;
(3) Eliminate $1.2 billion in science funding needed to move away from fossil fuels towards sustainable, non-polluting sources of energy;
(4) Prohibit EPA from enforcing Clean Water Act protections for thousands of American streams and wetlands, and eliminate all funding for the North American Wetlands Conservation Fund;
(5) Cut in half funding for cleanup efforts in the Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound, Long Island Sound, Great Lakes and Lake Champlain;
(6) Eliminate all funding for the Forest Legacy Program, which restores ecosystems damaged by logging and other forms of development;
(7) Cripple Endangered Species recovery efforts.”

WORSE STILL, The Wilderness Society NOTES, “the [insane] bill leaves untouched $4 billion in annual oil, gas and coal subsidies!”

The Wilderness Society notes that American Senators need to be contacted to save the destruction of almost all environmental oversight regulation in the USA.

TALKING POINTS FOR YOUR SENATOR:

In your contact with your senator, you might state:”I am appalled at what the Majority of the House of Representatives has attempted to do to our nation’s environmental laws. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s new Secretarial Order 3310 on Wild Lands would restore the importance of wilderness among the many values of our public lands. I fully support Secretary Salazar’s Wild Lands policy, and hope you will do all you can to prevent the House-passed language from being included in the final continuing resolution for this year.”and

“I also urge you to reject the Continuing Resolution passed by the House Majority. This is an extreme assault on conservation funding, not just for the Wild Lands policy, but for a host of America’s bedrock conservation laws. These cuts will do little to change the long-term deficit, but represent a radical abandonment of a century of bipartisan support for conservation and environmental protection in America.”