To: The California State House, The California State Senate, and Governor Gavin Newsom

California Decision Makers: Take Action on Climate Change

Implement policy changes that prioritize an alternative clean energy economy, ban fracking, eliminate tar sands transportation and refining, and reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Why is this important?

California is facing a future of heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and sea level rise; all the while, big oil is planning a massive increase in fracking on the Monterey Shale formation and is also investing in rail terminals to ship in tar sands bitumen for refining. Not to mention, Southern California is the home to the worst air quality in the country which lends to negative human health effects including cancer, asthma, premature death and cardio-respiratory diseases.

On March 1st, SoCal 350, over 100 regional partners, and almost 1,000 people helped launch the Great March for Climate Action in the Port of L.A. Hundreds continued the march eastward, eventually covering 3,000 miles to Washington D.C. to deliver the message that we need immediate legislative and executive action to solve the climate crisis. See http://www.wilderutopia.com/?p=8110

To demonstrate the political will for a healthy planet, we prioritize these urgent climate-change-focused requests of local, state and global level elected decision makers:

- We demand that you, our representative, set a goal of a carbon-free economy based on clean, renewable energy, without fossil fuels in utility-provided energy and transportation, and set a date and timeline to accomplish it with minimum social disruption.

- We demand that you, our representative, establish a more ambitious program for energy efficiency and conservation, reducing overall energy consumption by 20% by 2020, at the same time expanding our renewable energy portfolio to 40% by 2020. In addition, the LA Department of Water and Power should be required to achieve 1,200 MW of local solar power by 2020.

- We demand that you, our representative, ensure the next scoping plan for California’s AB-32 [Global Warming Solutions Act] is strong, with attention toward environmental justice concerns, and that it fulfills the intentions of the legislation.

- We demand that you, our representative, institute rising fees on all use of dirty fuels to offset the significant costs incurred to our health, our climate, and our ecosystems.

- We demand that you, our representative, impose an immediate moratorium on the use of hydraulic fracturing, acidization, and gravel packing in oil and gas development, and the cessation of tar sands transportation and refining to protect public health, water supplies, air quality, agriculture, and private properties in California.

- We demand that you, our representative, reject multinational trade agreements that weaken environmental and public interest protections. We must support trade that prioritizes equal protection for the poor, people of color, and indigenous communities.