Action Alert (UPDATED) - Ask Elected Officials to Ensure No New Fossil Fuel Infrastructure

Dear allies in the fight against new fossil fuel infrastructure,

First, a huge THANK YOU  to those who have signed on to our petition calling for an end to new fossil fuel infrastructure on the West Coast! We are making progress! Our endorsers, which can be found on our front page of our website include: Van Jones, Winona LaDuke, Tom Goldtooth, Bill McKibben and many 350.orgs, Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and many more. But it's not too late to add your name and organization as an endorser.

In terms of elected officials, we have three mayors endorsing (Portland, Hood River and Milwaukie, OR), another mayor of a major west coast city expressing "strong interest" to our allies in Paris in endorsing our petition, and another mayor--Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland, CA-- being strongly lobbied by friends and allies in California and in Paris to sign our petition. Here is a news article which suggests that she, like Portland Mayor Hales, sees the opportunity to constrain coal exports based on health and safety:  http://katu.com/news/local/portland-mayor-charlie-hales-takes-center-stage-at-paris-climate-talks

And here is Mayor Hales' latest report from Paris, where he discusses the key role mayors have to play in acting on climate change: http://katu.com/news/local/portland-mayor-charlie-hales-takes-center-stage-at-paris-climate-talks

Here are the list of elected officials that have signed our petition as of today. Thank you to each and every one of them!

·         Charlie Hales, Mayor of Portland, OR

·         Amanda Fritz, Portland City Commissioner

·         Steven Novick, Portland City Commissioner

·         Dan Saltzman, Portland City Commissioner

·         Nick Fish, Portland City Commissioner

·         Paul Blackburn, Mayor of Hood River, OR

·         Peter Cornelison, Hood River City Commissioner

·         Mark Gamba, Mayor of Milwaukie, OR

·         Eric LaBrant, Commissioner-Elect, Port of Vancouver, WA

·         Gayle McLaughlin, Councilmember. Richmond, CA

·         Richard R. Pennant, Councilmember, Hoquiam, WA

Although Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy was quoted as endorsing our petition in the Eugene Weekly, we are awaiting confirming on her endorsement.

As you may know, the mayors of LA, San Francisco, Eugene, and Seattle are coming to Portland on Dec. 10-11 to discuss climate change.

What can you do to help? In addition to sending around our website for more sign-ons via social media and other means, please send a short note to your elected officials--mayor, city commissioner, etc.--if they aren't on our list already and ask them to put add their name to our short one-sentence statement on our website which reads:

"The following local, state, and provincial leaders have endorsed the principles expressed in Portland's Fossil Fuel Resolution — that fossil fuels pose inherent health and safety dangers throughout their entire life cycle  — and commit to creating similar restrictions on new fossil fuel infrastructure in their jurisdictions."

The sign-on statement can be found here: http://www.nonewffi.org/elected-official-sign-on/

If they have questions about what this statement means, please refer them to the bottom of the front page of our website, where Columbia Riverkeeper's Brett VandenHeuval answers frequently asked questions about the resolution, and dispels the Fox News lie that this means, for example, no new gas stations.

The sooner you can do this, the better. If you can get endorsements by Thursday, Dec. 10, awesome!! Our press conference announcing mayor endorsements is Friday morning. But after that is OK, too. We're in it for the long haul, along with you.

Thanks for all you do!

Oh, and if you have a few dollars to spare to help defray the costs of building our website (about $1000), we would love any and all contributions.  You can do so here.

Many thanks!

Daphne Wysham
Director, Climate and Energy Program
Center for Sustainable Economy
Advisor, National Climate Justice Strategy Group, Unitarian Universalist Association