AFGE National Council of EPA Locals #238

Save the Environment – Save the EPA Campaign Launch

Clean Air

• The EPA estimates that 160,000 early deaths — including 230 infants — were prevented by the Clean Air Act in 2010. Don’t let Congress strip the EPA’s authority to implement clean air standards that limit air pollution. Clean air saves lives.

•  The American Lung Association released the Red Carriage television advertisement in an effort to thwart Congressional attempts to weaken the Clean Air Act. This lifesaving law has protected public health for more than forty years.

Climate Change

• Air pollution, infectious disease, extreme heat, drought, and flooding are all on the rise. NRDC Senior Scientist Kim Knowlton explains how these climate-related effects can threaten health.

• Glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula are melting away at an alarming rate.

• Disappearing alpine glaciers are an ominous sign of global warming.

• Global warming could do more than just melt polar ice. It could change our maps, and displace people from cities and tropical islands. 

  How It All Ends: Nature of Science Part I

• How It All Ends: Nature of Science Part II

• How It All Ends: Nature of Science Part III

• We have to believe what we are witnessing with our own eyes — floods, fires, melting ice and feverish heat. From smoke-choked Moscow to water-soaked Pakistan, to soaring temperatures in the US and a deteriorating landscape in the High Arctic, our planet seems to be having a breakdown. It’s not just a portent of things to come but real signs of very troubling climate change already under way.

EPA Budget

• Senator Boxer speaks against the threats to public health and the environment, including the repeal of the Clean Air Act, in the House Republican budget.

• April 13, 2011: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), talks about the new details of the spending cuts  to EPA.

• Energy attorney Luis Martinez from the Natural Resources Defense Council, explains how those cuts will particularly impact low income and minority communities. Under the recently signed budget deal, the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, was cut $1.6 billion.

• Brent Blackwelder and Bill Drayton discuss the history of the EPA over the past four decades and the EPA’s role in the US economy.

• The Subcommittee on Energy and Power and the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy held a joint hearing on Friday, March 11, 2011, at 10:00 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn House Office Building. The hearing is entitled ”The FY2012 EPA Budget.”