Open letter to U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi

December 7, 2005

Dear Congressmember and House Minority Leader Pelosi:

Currently, 10,000 delegates from 189 countries, and 15,000 climate activists, including 55 US organizations, are meeting in Montreal for the 11th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Nov 28—Dec 9). Hundreds of solidarity actions to stop global warming have been happening around the globe, attracting up to one million participants, from Arctic Inuit elders to thousands of Londoners converging at the U.S. Embassy. At this crucial moment in history, we, the undersigned groups and individuals of the San Francisco Bay Area, urge you, as House Minority Leader, to make global warming and climate change a top priority in Congress.

We thank you for rejecting the President’s regressive energy policy and for supporting higher auto emission standards. Breaking scientific reports over the past month reveal that the climate crisis is much more severe, and worsening at a much faster rate, than previously understood. At the same time, scientists are reporting that the Amazon rainforest—that great 'carbon sink' and stabilizer of the earth’s climate—is being depleted at twice the rate than previously believed. This alarming news, coupled with the links that meteorologists are making between global warming and increased severity in hurricanes like Katrina, clearly mandate implementation of a much stronger, more comprehensive, and pro-active U.S. energy policy that dramatically reduces green-house gasses.

The City of San Francisco, already a signatory of the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, is poised to become the world leader in renewable energy with the adoption of Community Choice Energy, a plan that will power the city on 50% local renewable energy sources by the middle of the next decade. We urge you to make this a reality for all your constituents living in San Francisco, and to make the United States, which is currently responsible for 25% of green-house gas emissions, the world leader in green-house gas reduction.

Now that Democrats have regained their voice in Congress ("gotten their groove back," as Senator Boxer recently quipped), we hope that you will show strong leadership on this issue, in particular, we recommend that the U.S. Government do the following:

• join the world in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol

• take action to achieve 70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions—the amount necessary to stabilize the climate.

• shift its annual $25 billion in subsidies from coal and oil to equivalent subsidies for clean, safe, non-nuclear energy alternatives

• dramatically strengthen energy conservation and fuel efficiency standards

• plan for a just transition for workers, indigenous communities and others affected by a change to clean energy to actively defend the world's forests and support community-run tree planting campaigns.

• actively defend the world's forests and support community-run tree planting campaigns.

• enact tax-shifting legislation to decrease the amount of taxes taken from a worker's salary and to raise the same amount via a tax on the use of carbon-based fuels--oil, coal and natural gas--which cause global warming.

• support an international proposal for a 5% Progressive Fossil Fuel Efficiency Standard in which every country would start at its current baseline of energy use and increase its energy efficiency by 5% every year until the necessary 70% reduction of greenhouse gases is attained (a proposal made by, among others, Margot Wallstrom, former Environmental Commissioner of the European Union, and Sir Crispin Tickell, former British Ambassador to the United Nations).

• support establishment of an international fund, of about $300 billion a year for about a decade, to jump-start renewable energy infrastructures in developing countries--possibly financed by a tax on international airline travel or by a miniscule tax (0.025 percent) on international currency transactions; in other words, a tax on global commerce to fund the transfer of clean energy to poor and developing countries.

We thank you for your attention to this vital issue. For the good of the country, the planet, and future generations, we call upon you to push the United States into the 21st Century and help make our city and our country the world leaders in energy policy that we know we can be, and that, in all justice, and in good conscience, we should be.

Sincerely,

Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters

Berkeley East Bay Gray Panthers

Circle of Life Foundation

Energy Action
Environmental Justice & Climate Change Initiative

Global Exchange
Greenaction for Health & Environmental Justice
Greenwood Earth Alliance

International Socialist Organization

Northern California 9-11 Truth Alliance
Our City

Pacific Environment
Rainforest Action Network

San Francisco Green Party Energy Working Group

TUC Radio

Pending: Sacramento Green Party, San Francisco Green Party

Mary Bull
Greenwood Earth Alliance
Save the Redwoods - Boycott the Gap Campaign
252 Frederick, San Francisco, CA 94117 http://www.gapsucks.org
415-731-7924 chalicenew@earthlink.net