Thanks to the tireless efforts of EDF members, in the last year alone:
- Congress overturned the Trump administration’s reckless rollback of common-sense Obama-era regulations limiting easily avoidable methane pollution from oil and gas industry operations. EDF members sent thousands of messages to their Congressional representatives advocating a return to critical pollution safeguards, and Congress listened.
- President Biden announced historic goals to ensure that by no later than 2030, half of all new cars sold in the U.S. will be zero-emitting. Nearly all of the world’s largest automakers have announced plans to ramp up electric vehicle production - a transportation revolution that will spur the creation of high-paying new jobs for workers who will build these vehicles, and save motorists thousands in avoided fuel costs.
- With your financial support, our forest policy experts helped establish a new Emergent Forest Finance Accelerator. Emergent’s LEAF Coalition recently secured a commitment of more than $1 billion worth of forest carbon credits to protect tropical and subtropical forests. These forests are critical carbon sinks, and vital to slowing global warming.
These successes are only the beginning. Your Membership Month donation will support our top climate action priorities, including:
1. Set ambitious vehicle pollution standards for all vehicles to put the U.S. on a path to 100% zero pollution new cars by 2035, and new trucks and buses no later than 2040. Clean truck standards can help reduce hundreds of millions of metric tons of climate pollution and hundreds of thousands of tons of local health harming pollutants. And clean school buses are equally urgent. Today, 99% of our nation's school buses emit harmful pollutants. Those pollutants contribute to asthma, cancers and other ailments - with disproportionate harm done to children and disadvantaged communities.
2. Secure federal funding for thousands of new jobs to plug “orphan wells” — oil and gas wells that the industry simply walked away from when they ceased to be profitable, without bothering to properly seal them to prevent air, water and climate pollution. There are tens of thousands of orphan wells in the United States alone. And there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, more inactive and unplugged wells that also need to be addressed.
3. Ensure that a low-carbon future will bring benefits to all people by prioritizing investment in communities that have historically suffered the worst climate and air pollution. One such current project is designing and implementing community-scale, low-carbon microgrid systems in rural Puerto Rico. People living in these remote locations have sometimes gone weeks without power in the wake of a hurricane. These new microgrids will bring the reliable, affordable energy these communities need to survive and thrive in a warming world.
Your 2022 membership contribution can make these top climate priorities - and so many more - become a reality.
And don’t forget: your support will go twice as far when you choose to spread your gift out over the year with a monthly contribution, because you’ll unlock a $1-for-$1 match on your first 12 gifts.
Thank you for all you do,
Emily Stevenson
Manager, Online Membership
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