Action Item: Keep Fracked-Gas out of Climate Change Bill
/ACTION ITEM: CALL YOUR REPS, SENATORS, AND GOV. BAKER
Keep Fracked-Gas (“Natural Gas”) out of Governor Baker’s Climate Change Adaptation Bill
Background: Governor Baker recently introduced a bill to the legislature that would provide money and other resources to help mitigate the impacts of climate change, such as funding to build sea walls in coastal areas. You can read more about the bill, “An Act Promoting Climate Change Adaptation, Environmental and Natural Resource Protection, and Investment in Recreational Assets and Opportunity," here. Though mitigation is needed to combat some of the effects of climate change (i.e. rising sea levels), we can’t rely solely on band-aid fixes; we must reduce our reliance on fossil fuels to prevent climate change from worsening. That is why we are concerned about language in this bill that could be used as a way to institute a pipeline tax or otherwise allow the gas industry to say that natural, or fracked-gas, is a form of clean energy.
Action Item: Contact your representatives, senators, and Governor Baker’s office and ask that they make sure there is language in the bill to exclude gas, and all fossil fuels, as an option for clean energy. You are welcome to use the sample call script and email template below.
Governor Baker’s office: (617) 725-4005; click here to send Gov. Baker an email
Find your state senators and representative here.
To access a PDF version of the call and email scripts, click here.
Call Script:
Hello,
I’m calling to speak with Senator ______’s / Representative ______’s / Governor Baker’s office regarding the Governor’s recent climate change adaptation bill. Although I applaud Governor Baker’s efforts to mitigate the inevitable effects of climate change, I am concerned about language in the bill that could be used as a way to institute a pipeline tax or otherwise allow the gas industry to say that natural, or fracked-gas, is a form of clean energy. That is why I am calling to ask that the legislature make sure there is language in the bill to exclude gas, and all fossil fuels, as an option for clean energy. We must dispel the narrative that natural gas is a “bridge fuel”. It is a dirty fossil fuel with a toxic history. Natural gas is not a sustainable, clean source of energy, and any language in this bill that could allow gas or any other fossil fuel to be labeled as clean energy must be removed.
Email template:
Dear ______,
This winter has been one for the books. Three major storms in less than two months have destroyed homes, cars, and left thousands without power. Though winter storms are not a novel occurrence, we are beginning to see a significant change in the impact of these storms due to climate change. To address some of the inevitable effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels, Governor Baker recently introduced “An Act Promoting Climate Change Adaptation, Environmental and Natural Resource Protection, and Investment in Recreational Assets and Opportunity.”
Though it’s important to make efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change, I am concerned about language in the bill, specifically the “clean peak standard” in Sections 27 and 28, that could be used as a way to institute a pipeline tax or otherwise allow the gas industry to say that natural, or fracked-gas, is a form of clean energy.
We must dispel the narrative that natural gas is a “bridge fuel”. Natural gas is a dirty fossil fuel with a toxic history, and any language in this bill that could allow gas or any other fossil fuel to be labeled as clean energy must be removed. That is why I am writing to ask that the legislature make sure there is language in the bill to exclude gas (as well as all other fossil fuels) as an option for clean energy.
Sincerely,
NAME, City/Town