Debra Schrishuhn for the PDA National Team

CODE RED for Humanity

On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific body convened by the United Nations, released a major report based on some 14,000 studies concluding that the world cannot avoid some devastating impacts of climate change during the next 30 years. The window for avoiding the worst long-term effects of human-induced climate change is rapidly closing. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the report nothing less than “a code red for humanity.”

Yet, on Wednesday the Biden administration asked OPEC to increase oil production in order to combat rising gasoline prices that exacerbate inflationary pressures. Once again long-term goals lose when they collide with immediate politics and economic pain.

In this moment, the United States has a chance to lead by example. We can set in place policies that will move us toward energy sustainability and away from fossil fuel consumption. The climate crisis-fighting measures in both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the proposed reconciliation bill are not enough to meet the critical need to reduce our national carbon footprint to zero emissions, but they represent a start to that process.

We cannot let those provisions drop out of these two bills. And that’s where PDA comes into the picture.

As both bills have been formulated over the past seven months, we have joined with allies to push for aggressive climate crisis-reducing policies to be included. The battle has been unrelenting and at times excruciating. We will continue to exert pressure, both publicly and behind the scenes, to keep and expand the climate crisis-fighting elements in both bills as they move toward final passage. And then we will push for more stringent measures in legislation working through Congress.

To keep up these efforts, we need your help today and next month and the month after that. Please become a sustaining donor to PDA. Help us focus our time and resources on fighting climate change today and in the future.

We appreciate your monthly support, whether it is $9/mo for the roughly nine years left to change the global trajectory of carbon emissions or $30/mo, the amount of time it takes for today’s actions to be felt in regional and global climate patterns, or any amount you can afford.

Please support PDA today for a better tomorrow…for all of us.

Thanks for anything you can do.

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