Global Warming News

A coalition of 64 Illinois leaders, including scientists, mayors, aldermen, religious, environmental and civic leaders sent a letter today to state legislators asking them to support state policies to address global warming. Click here to see the full letter and signatories.

“We believe that global warming is the most significant environmental threat we face, that the tools to address this threat exist, and that solving the problem is not only a moral imperative, but will provide many valuable collateral benefits to Illinois’s economy,”  the letter stated.

The letter highlighted a number of states and cities that have established goals and a process for curbing their emissions of the pollution that causes global warming.  New Mexico, California, and New England all have economy-wide global warming pollution reduction goals, while 8 states have adopted caps on emission of CO2 from power plants, and ten states have adopted standards for automobile emissions of global warming gases.

“While the White House is obstructing federal progress on global warming, states and cities are developing their own global warming response plans,” said Rebecca Stanfield, Director of Environment Illinois.  “The sooner Illinois develops its own global warming response the better for our environment and our economy,” she concluded.

The letter called on legislators to support the following platform:

1. Illinois should adopt a near-term and long term goal for greenhouse gas reductions of 10% in 10 years, and 75-80% by 2050;

2.  Illinois should establish a commission to determine specific steps we will take to meet these targets.  The commission should, at a minimum:

·  Adopt a renewable energy standard that achieves the Governor’s goal of 8% of our power generated using clean, renewable energy sources by 2012, and further sets a goal of 20% renewable energy by 2020. 

·  Adopt energy efficiency standards for furnaces, appliances and residential buildings, and establish a dedicated funding source for cost-effective energy efficiency investments.

·  Adopt the standards that limit global warming pollution from automobile tailpipes.

·  Adopt a moratorium on the construction of new, conventional coal plants until such time as it can be determined whether any such plants are consistent with our global warming response plan.

Environment Illinois is a statewide environmental advocacy organization with 20,000 members across Illinois.

GW-Solutions-Coalition-Letter_Environment-IL.pdf