Our most critical work – CPR Initiative

Dear Friends,

The election is over, but our most critical work has only just begun.

In full appreciation for the confidence you have invested to date in Climate Protection and Restoration Initiative, I reach out here for your continued support and to report an extraordinary development.

Less than three days post-election, CPR Initiative leadership determined to meet the coming tsunami of fossil fuel boosterism head on. In light of recent global warming acceleration and the rapid approach of global tipping points, merely playing defense will not suffice. As to our bedrock law, we need now to use it or lose it.

Playing defense will not suffice. As to our bedrock law, we need now to use it or lose it.

And so I write even as we craft our second major Citizens’ Petition – demanding an orderly phase out of oil, gas and coal in energy systems. The details matter but, before turning to them please recall with me a telling moment from the campaign.

*Deepwater Horizon fire. Unknown author* *US Coast Guard. Public Domain.*

On December 5, 2023, before a live audience, a Fox News host asked then-candidate Donald Trump an exceptionally leading question: “Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Trump replied, “Except for day one. . . I wanna close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”

Regrettably, truth-checking played little role in the election.¹ In particular, there was little discussion of the enormous risks to the nation presented by a vast expansion of fossil fuel pollution. As CPR Initiative Board Chair and 35-year veteran EPA scientist Donn Viviani put it, “No one voted for intensified wildfire, massive ice melt, accelerated sea level rise, and out-of-control superstorms, and no one sought a calamitous shut-down of ocean circulation patterns that transport heat around the globe.”

Fortunately, the President-elect’s campaign swagger does not determine US policy, for at least two reasons. First, for the next 65 days President Biden remains obliged to enforce the law. Second, the President-elect will need to swear allegiance to the Constitution on Inauguration Day, including its command to “take care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”²

What does this mean in practice? At least this: The President – indeed, every President – is obliged under law to “take action,” through the executive’s principal environmental agency, to protect the people from “unreasonable risk to health or the environment,” including especially from substances like fossil fuels that risk “serious or widespread injury.”³

As we documented in 2022, oil, gas and coal are covered substances because their excessive production, use, and distribution in commerce present an overriding risk of serious and widespread injury to health and our very way of life. Particularly where our nation still imposes no rising carbon price⁴ – allowing Big Oil, Big Gas and Big Coal to treat our common airshed as an open sewer – these substances need to be controlled directly, pursuant to law.⁵

We know that our “Big Green” allies will work hard in the days ahead to defend existing climate rules – and we will strategically join those efforts. But we aim also to galvanize affirmative pressure via a direct Citizens’ Petition, and forge a viable path.

In this initiative, we will demand redress for the central climate grievance⁶ in the form of a binding agency rule⁷ – one that implements the international consensus directing major emitting nations “to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner…in keeping with the science.”⁸

Your support to date has enabled us to develop a record of citizen-demand for such meaningful action. See, in particular, our archive of community-partnered public hearings – in Boulder, CO, Honolulu, HI, Santa Barbara, CA, and Hayward, CA – on the critical question, What More Should the U.S. Do On Climate?

Now is the moment to build on that strong record together: to protect and restore the climate system on which our children and their progeny of necessity will depend.

The unvarnished truth, however, is that we will not succeed without your continued partnership. Every cent of your contribution will resonate in our work as we join together to secure a viable future.

Will you convey your most generous, tax-deductible donation?

Donate today. Our Board will match the first $5,000 towards our $50,000 year-end goal!

Please use our online donation form, or send us a check to our address below.

With gratitude and determination,

Dan Galpern
General Counsel and Executive Director
Climate Protection and Restoration Initiative
2495 Hilyard St., Suite A Eugene, Oregon 97405, USA

Make a tax-deductible donation today!

A Special Note from Kelly

Dear Friends and Fellow CPR Initiative Supporters!

Clearly, we face daunting times — both politically and legally.

I cannot tell you how strongly I support the approach that CPR Initiative leaders have outlined in the enclosed appeal. As Dan there has written, “Playing defense will not suffice.” Indeed, we need to use our bedrock laws — or risk their loss.

I understand the temptation to hunker-down and wait things out, praying that the tide will turn on its own. But that path seems to me to be far more risky than principled and sustained action to enforce the letter and intent of existing law.

For that reason, then, I am going to respond to Dan’s call to action by making the most generous donation that I can, and also, as I have done each of these last two years, by hosting more house parties to benefit CPR Initiative.

Let’s press forward with everything we can muster, and support CPR Initiative’s efforts unsparingly. And then, of course, find other critically endangered causes to support and defend.

Yours in Peace and Hope,

Kelly O’Hanley
Portland, Oregon

Footnotes:

1
In truth, US production of oil and gas was at an all-time high in 2023. US Energy Information Agency, https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/.
2
Art. II, Section 3. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii
3
Pursuant to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), “It is the policy of the United States…to regulate chemical substances…which present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, and to take action with respect to chemical substances and mixtures which are imminent hazards.” 15 USC §2601(b)(2), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2601#b2
“If the Administrator determines…that the manufacture, processing, distribution in commerce, use, or disposal of a chemical substance or mixture, or that any combination of such activities, presents an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, the Administrator shall…apply one or more of the following requirements to such substance or mixture to the extent necessary so that the chemical substance or mixture no longer presents such risk.” 15 USC 2605(a) (emphasis added).
4
Fifty nations, though not the United States, retain either a nation-wide carbon tax or participate in a multi-national emissions trading system, or both. World Bank Group, State and Trends of Carbon Pricing Dashboard. https://carbonpricingdashboard.worldbank.org/compliance/instrument-detail
5
TSCA require, however, that in the establishment of such restrictions, care be taken to not undermine the economy system’s ability to deliver basis goods and services.
6
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” US Constitution, First Amendment. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/first_amendment
7
“Each agency shall give an interested person the right to petition for the issuance, amendment, or repeal of a rule.” 5 U.S.C. 553(e). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/553#e
8
Conference of the Parties to the Paris Agreement, Decision -/CMA.5, Outcome of the first global stocktake at §28(d). https://unfccc.int/documents/636584