Progressive congressional lawmakers seek a 'Green New Deal' to mitigate climate change, protect health and create jobs

                                                                                                                        ji sub jeong/huffpost

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, diverse lawmakers prioritize climate change with 'Green New Deal'
'Our lives are on the line,' says Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez regarding climate change.
NBC News - 11.30.2018: click here
 

CLIMATE: Sanders plots Green New Deal-style bill

Senate bill would include a transition to 100 percent renewable energy and big investments in clean energy technology and green infrastructure.

E&E News - 12.03.2018: click here

Environmental Group to hold Public Event for Endorsed Political Candidates

Sierra Club Niagara Group is holding an Endorsed Challengers Meet & Greet Rally which will be FREE and OPEN to the general public.

The Meet & Greet Rally is an opportunity to hear each candidate briefly describe their platform and views on a variety of environmental topics.

Candidates to be featured at the Rally, along with the offices they are seeking, are shown below:

The Rally will be held on Friday, October 12, 5 PM - 7 PM, at UAW Region 9 Hall, 35 George Carl Boulevard, just off Wehrle Drive near Transit Rd. [Map]

Food & Drink will be provided

This will be one of the most important elections of our time. Control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the New York State Senate is up for grabs. 

We need to elect strong leaders who will stand up for the people and for justice, who will fight to cut pollution and protect public health, and who will help create new, well-paying jobs in a clean energy economy.

Rise Up for Climate Justice! Rally at Niagara Square on THURSDAY

All are invited to attend a CLIMATE RALLY in Buffalo: 

 Rise Up for Climate Justice! 

WHEN: Thursday, Sept. 24 at 5pm; *Festivities at 4pm
The same day Pope Francis meets with the U.S. Congress and is expected to call for moral action to address the injustice of human-caused Climate Change as laid out in his recent Encyclical.

WHERE:  Niagara Square in Buffalo, NY 
MAP with Metro Rail stations & Bus routes, Click Here 

SPEAKERS include members of: Physicians for Social Responsibility, WNY Interfaith Climate Justice Community, Buffalo Common Council, Sierra Club Niagara Group, PUSH Buffalo, Seneca Nation, and other groups.

SIGN UP for RALLY: 
- Facebook: Click Here - Invite your Friends! 
- Not a Facebook user? Sign up Here

*Pre-RALLY FESTIVITIES: Live Music, Song, Dance and Fun!

SCIENCE tells us we must stop burning fossil fuels to curb greenhouse gas pollution that causes global warming and drives Climate Change. 

JUSTICE for People and our Environment demands that we act in earnest NOW. 
 
WE THE PEOPLE call on President Obama and elected officials to back a global, legally-binding agreement to combat Climate Change and provide the necessary support for a Just Transition from fossil fuels to Clean, Sustainable Energy.

Please sign the Climate Justice Pledge  petitioning Obama for bold Climate Action.

For more information visit:
- facebook.com/riseupforclimatejustice
- twitter.com/SierraNiagara
- niagarasierraclub.com
- twitter.com/RU4CJBuffalo

CLIMATE ACTION: A 'Hail Mary Pass' to Protect People and the Planet

'Rise Up for Climate Justice' Rally in Niagara Square
Rally will follow the Pope’s speech to Congress Thursday, September 24 on the road to the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Paris, December 2015

by Larry Beahan

A hundred and fifty nations are meeting at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015. Let us pray that they will come to a workable and binding agreement that will put us on a path to zero greenhouse gasses before New York and New Orleans are totally inundated and California is scorched beyond habitability.

Agreed, church and state should be well insulated from one another, usually.  But with our planet on a deadly track for carbon-fueled climate disaster and with our politicians fumbling the ball, a prayer or two, maybe even a Hail Mary Pass is in order.

On TV the other night eleven presidential candidates vied for that quarterback-slot.  These eleven apostles of doom, one after another, washed their hands of the climate warming crisis. Meanwhile the religious leaders of the world have all dropped their prayer books and demanded that we quit strangling this God-given planet with fossil fuel fumes.

In August, Muslim leaders from twenty countries called on the 1.6 billion Muslims to phase out greenhouse gas by midcentury.

But Florida Senator Marco Rubio says, “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.” His teammate, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, said “We shouldn’t be destroying our economy in order to chase some wild, left-wing idea that somehow, us, by ourselves, are going to fix the climate.”

Yet the leaders of the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox churches urge in a letter to the NY Times, that the nations of the world craft a clear and convincing course of decarbonization at the Paris Conference.

President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency issued its CO2-reducing Clean Power Plan that delivers the death blow to coal as a source of electric power, yet the President has authorized drilling for oil near the dwindling Arctic ice cap.

In May, three hundred and forty Jewish rabbis released a Rabbinic letter on Climate Crisis calling for, “spiritual leadership of the Jewish people in this deep crisis in the history of the human species.”

And Donald Trump says, “I consider climate change to be not one of our big problems. I consider it to be not a big problem at all. I think it’s weather.”
The Dalai Lama disagrees. He calls on governments around the world to stop deforestation and stop burning fossil fuels. He says, “It is not sufficient to just express views, we must set a timetable for change in the next two to four years.”

Jeb Bush brushes off climate change, “I don’t think it’s the highest priority. I don’t think we should ignore it, either.

Good Pope Francis is coming to the US on September 24^th to deliver what is expected to be a “Dutch Uncle” lecture to the US Congress. He will likely remind us that the United States has pumped carbon into the skies for generations, to profit this country but at great cost to poorer nations.  He needs to say that if climate change is to be curbed the United States will have to lead with a war-time, Manhattan Project-style total mobilization away from coal and gas and on to solar, wind and geothermal energy.

So here goes a Hail Mary that Pope Francis will succeed in persuading our politicians to go to the Paris UN Climate Change Conference in December and come away with binding agreements to cut greenhouse gasses by at least 40% in 2025 and 85% in 2050.

The environmental, social justice and religious communities of Western NY are united in the “Rise up for Climate Justice” campaign.  Join them at 5pm in Niagara Square on September 24 to demonstrate Buffalo’s support of Pope Francis on his Hail Mary mission to Washington.

This article was originally published in The Public. 

For more information on the Rise Up for Climate Justice Rally, click here.

Rise Up for Climate Justice! Rally at Niagara Square on September 24

GETTING TO PARIS AND A SANE CLIMATE AGREEMENT

Mobilizing Western New York for Climate Action and Social Justice 

(September – December 2015) 

Rise Up for Climate Justice

JOIN US 

Rally at Niagara Square on September 24 at 4:00pm

 The day Pope Francis speaks to the U.S. Congress

As President Obama said, “Climate Change is not a problem for another generation.” 

Failure to act would constitute a grave injustice to all future children of the Earth as well as to poor people and poor countries that contribute the least to global warming pollution.

SCIENCE TELLS US WE MUST STOP BURNING FOSSIL FUELS TO CURB GLOBAL WARMING, AND JUSTICE DEMANDS THAT WE ACT IN EARNEST NOW.

WE CALL ON THE PRESIDENT AND LEADERS OF ALL NATIONS
TO SIGN AND ENFORCE A UNIVERSAL, LEGALLY-BINDING AGREEMENT 

TO COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE AND SUPPORT A JUST TRANSITION 
FROM FOSSIL FUELS TO CLEAN ENERGY SOURCES.

"A true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor." -- Pope Francis

To learn more about CLIMATE JUSTICE, Click Here.   

For more information and opportunities to participate/volunteer as organizations or individuals,
visit the Sierra Club website: www.NiagaraSierraClub.com
Contact us at: niagarasierra@gmail.com