Tell our Members of Congress & President Biden: Commemorate Earth Day by Fighting FOR a Livable Planet and AGAINST Price Gouging

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Call Script

My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.

For President Biden: When you campaigned in the New Hampshire primary you said: "No more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period." Now you are offering new leases to Big Oil on federal land, when you should be using this emergency to accelerate a crucial Democratic goal since the days of the Carter administration: to shift away from fossil fuels towards green, renewable energy.

To combat Ukraine-war-related inflation, call the heads of all the oil companies to the White House and demand that they explain why their profits are at record levels. When the price of oil goes up, we see immediate increases in the price of gas, but when the price of oil goes down, we don’t see gas prices decrease. If they won’t meet with you, then go after them on the stump. Go out to Exxon headquarters and talk about it. If they refuse to stop their price-gouging, use the Defense Production Act to impose price controls.

For the Members of Congress: Please make it plain that you, as Democratic legislators, understand the urgency of definitive action to curb human-driven global warming. Don’t let the deal-making on the climate emergency happen behind closed doors—a majority of Americans want to see you fighting to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and accelerate our transition to a green, renewable-energy-based economy. The best way to fight inflation is to push for price controls to combat the greed of corporate titans on behalf of We The People.

Background

The first national Earth Day was established by a Democrat. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin inaugurated the holiday in 1970 as a nationwide environmental teach-in. Earth Day has grown since then; the twentieth anniversary event was celebrated by 200 million people in 141 countries. Every year on this day we recommit to protecting our planet for ourselves and for generations to come.

President Carter, in his famous national address about the energy crisis in July 1979, called upon Americans and Congress to overcome their crisis of confidence and create “ this nation’s first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.” He also noted, “These efforts will cost money, a lot of money, and that is why Congress must enact the windfall profits tax without delay. It will be money well spent. Unlike the billions of dollars that we ship to foreign countries to pay for foreign oil, these funds will be paid by Americans, to Americans. These will go to fight, not to increase, inflation and unemployment.”

But Big Oil had other ideas. They threw their support behind Ronald Reagan, who said we were fully confident and didn’t need Carter’s renewable, sustainable energy. The press dubbed Carter’s famous address “the Malaise Speech,” and the rest is history. A brutal history of wars and continuous global warming.

Big Oil has been relentless in pursuing its war against environmentalists. These companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to salt the public discourse with denial of climate collapse and denigration of alternatives. For a century they have seduced Members of Congress with campaign funding to thwart climate action and maintain subsidies for fossil fuels. Our nation has lost so much in environmental disasters and in fighting wars to prop up Big Oil dominance.

As we have watched human-driven global heating devastate our own communities, we have watched the federal government falling short of the effort needed to save our environment from collapse. Republican legislators in the pocket of Big Oil have managed to seduce a few Democrats to vote their way and defeated repeated efforts to take bolder climate action.

Broad majorities of the public—including more than half of Republicans, in addition to an overwhelming share of Democrats—say they would favor a range of initiatives to address the problem, from large-scale tree planting efforts (to capture carbon dioxide) to tax credits for businesses that capture carbon emissions and tougher fuel efficiency standards for vehicles, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Consistent with public concerns over climate and the environment, 79 percent of Americans agree that the priority for the country’s energy supply should be developing alternative sources of energy, such as wind and solar; far fewer (20 percent) want to cling to oil, coal, and methane. A majority (58 percent) also recognizes that government regulations will be necessary to encourage businesses and individuals to rely more on renewable energy.

We cannot wait any longer. We need action and we need it now. It’s necessary and popular. President Biden and our Members of Congress need to get it done.