|
Friend,
Last night, President Barack Obama delivered his last State of the Union Address, and in a big change from all seven previous addresses, he made action on climate change a central pillar of his agenda (one of four big themes in his speech) and called out climate denial and delay in no uncertain terms.
Last night the President said "Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didn’t deny Sputnik was up there. We didn’t argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight, and twelve years later, we were walking on the moon."1
But Obama himself has been ignoring the massive, climate-polluting leak of fracked gas in California's Aliso Canyon. Six months after the disaster started, he's never mentioned it! And his EPA is still moving at a snail's pace to clamp down on methane leaks all over the country. Fortunately, key members of the White House staff are taking questions and suggestions online about how to deliver on the promises the President made during last night's SOTU.2 We need your help to make sure they get the message that talk is all well and good, but what we need is environmental action.
Can you click here to tell Barack Obama's team to quit looking for sputnik, and plug all the fracking leaks, staring with the massive Aliso Canyon spill in California?
It's a big deal to have the President touch on some of our biggest challenges, but change isn't made in a speech (as the president well knows), it's made by hard work, advocacy and a public demand for action. And that's why, as good as last night's speech was to hear, today it's up to us to turn up the pressure even more.
And since we already know that Obama's top cabinet officials - including the leaders of the Department of Interior, EPA, special advisers on climate change and more - are all listening to us online today, why not use the power of our collective voice to show them that we heard the President, and now it's time for them to hear us, and take some action.
Thanks again for speaking up on short notice,
Drew and the plug the leaks crew at Environmental Action
P.S. - You can watch a replay of the whole speech, including live commentary from fracking fighters, by clicking here.
1 - The White House, President Obama’s 2016 State of the Union Address, Medium.com January 12, 2016
2 - Laura Miller, It's That Time of Gruyère: Big Block of Cheese Day Is Back, White House Blog, January 8, 2016 |
