Act Against the Worst Ideas Ever

Please write your California and U.S. leaders to stop these worst ideas ever: Federal Gas Rebate Act of 2022, and Newsom’s California Gas Cards, aka taxpayer subsidy for Putin’s war and climate catastrophe.

Stimulating gas use during a war with a petro-dictatorship, while Antarctica is 70° warmer and the Arctic 50° hotter than usual? Sounds like a Governor Abbot idea, or an Onion article; shortsighted political maneuvering when we need visionary leadership.

We need less fossil fuel use, to:
avert climate catastrophe
defund warmongering autocrats
improve air quality/ health
slow the giant truck-driven spike in pedestrian/ cyclist deaths

Better leadership would be to take this teachable moment to instead appeal to Americans higher natures to adopt a wartime footing for energy conservation and production.

Immediate, deep conservation would substantively advance a sustainable climate future, immediately lower prices, and free up supply globally to help Europe cut off Russian fossil fuel imports; the surest way to stop war in Ukraine.

Increased renewable energy production would be great medium- and long term, increased production of fossil fuels is an appropriate sacrifice of the future for this wartime footing, and a nod toward political expedience.

Increased oil production from existing leases is the opposite of what the climate needs, but it would make this bipartisan and is defensible short-term for the immediate need to defund aggression in Ukraine.

Instead of gas money for Putin, how about dollars to anyone who sells their car and buys an electric bike, who sells their gas car and gets an electric car, public transport vouchers, more carpool and bike lanes, weather stripping, kits to take your washing machine off hot water, and so on.

Don’t undermine Zelensky by doing the cravenly political wrong thing; follow Ukraine’s inspiring example to lead us away from funding war and climate catastrophe.

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