Target: Shelley Moore Capito, Chair of U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
Goal: Support restoration of protections for endangered species and limits on power plant pollution.
U.S. leadership is far from finished with taking the cuffs off of habitat destroyers, polluters, and wildlife killers. In just a week’s time, the Trump administration has gutted clean air protections and taken another hatchet to the Endangered Species Act. While big business makes bank, vulnerable communities and animals will pay the price.
The Environmental Protection Agency repealed a 2024 rule from its predecessors that drastically cut the level of carbon emissions coming from power plants. The rule was forecast to curb the toxic pollution by well over one billion metric tons. While the special interest-backed EPA head crowed about savings (largely for the administration’s donors), scientists and public health experts warned about the tremendous costs that will be inflicted on people in the form of illnesses ranging from respiratory distress to cancer.
Not done yet, the administration also stripped endangered gray wolves of their protections, largely to serve the interests of ranchers. But the hits would keep coming for the country’s most at-risk species when U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service leadership informed employees that unless a critically endangered animal was killed intentionally, then those responsible for their deaths would not be held accountable or liable in any way. As such, companies that infringe on and destroy crucial habitats (the source of most endangerment) will no longer have to weigh or consider the devastating toll their actions have on vulnerable animals. Theoretically, even a hunter who did deliberately target a protected animal could claim the death was accidental and therefore suffer no consequences.
Sign the petition below to demand the people’s representatives act in the interests of all this nation’s inhabitants and clearly codify vital environmental protections into law.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Senator Moore Capito,
In 2024, the Supreme Court set a key precedent that was supposed to curb the executive’s power to rewrite and reinterpret Congress’ environmental laws. Yet time and again, this administration thumbs its nose at these important checks and balances. In the course of a week, executive agencies have taken direct and deadly aim at the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act. Deregulating power plant emissions and empowering individuals and companies to forego any considerations for the welfare of imperiled animals may provide financial boosts for the powerful, but it will harm the people you and your colleagues represent. Once lives – human or animal – are lost, they cannot be restored.
Make the parameters of the Clean Power Plan official law. Clarify and strengthen language in the Endangered Species Act to ensure the gravest fundamental threats to these at-risk animals are neutralized. Save lives before the clock runs out.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Sharath G.
