Climate of Our Future

I received this in my email this morning.  Please take action today!!!

Deborah,

The Bush Admin. has proposed a rule to encourage mountaintop removal mining — and public comments might be disregarded! Tell Congress to make sure our comments count. Note that we will be taking on coal in a number of upcoming alerts, as part of our global warming campaign’s first phase. Thanks to those who donated to our coal work; after you take action consider making a donation here.

On this issue, we need you to resist the influence of “Bush fatigue” - that biological defense mechanism shielding us from the full brunt of warranted outrage over the actions of this president. Late last Friday the Bush administration issued a proposed new rule for coal mining that not only sanctions the most ecologically unsound form of coal mining, but may also be adopted with disregard to public comments solicited under law.

According to The New York Times, the rule “will be subject to a 60-day comment period and could be revised, although officials indicated that it was not likely to be changed substantially.”

Mountaintop-removal mining literally blasts the top off mountains. It is devastating to mountain communities, uprooting families, filling streams with poison, and turning pristine mountain territory into rubble. With this rule, mountaintop-removal mining will proliferate, when it should be banned by law. That means we must fight the rule on the merits, but before we do that we must ensure that the process for adopting the proposed rule is not a sham.

Send all of your members of Congress a message with one click: Tell them to make sure that public comments are respected by ensuring unbiased oversight of the rule change process.

After we alert Congress to the Bush administration’s tactics with this rule, Friends of the Earth will then provide you with opportunities to weigh in officially through what we hope Congress ensures will be a functioning comment process.

This rule change by the Bush administration is egregious on many levels, but particularly as a parting gift to the coal industry that the administration believes it can just slip through in the middle of the night without taking public input into account. What’s more, the “Environmental Impact Study” issued with the proposed rule rejects some alternatives out of hand, for reasons like it would make it harder for the companies to mine coal. I kid you not.

Prove the Bush Administration wrong. Show them that you haven’t been so worn down by constant wrongdoing that you won’t stand up for the people and natural treasures living in the mountains Bush would have blown away.

Write Congress now and demand oversight and investigation into this rule change. If you don’t raise a stink now, the rule will go through as is, and states like West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia will be irrevocably changed for the worse.