On June 16th, three days from now, we will file with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) our Petition to Phase Out Greenhouse (GHG) Pollution to Restore a Stable and Secure Climate.

This is the product of 24-months of research, discussion, and consultation. The decarbonization demand is ambitious, but no more than is required to secure our children’s future. To get it done, we need your new or renewed support.

We proceed here under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and specifically, its Citizen’s Petition section.¹ The statute, as amended in 2016 is strong: it requires EPA to act where a chemical substance (here, GHGs) “presents an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.” By invoking TSCA, we aim to provide a secure legal basis for a long-overdue national decarbonization effort. At this stage, there is no good alternative.

The Petition is neatly divided. Part I covers the law and demands specific changes in policy. Part II outlines the relevant science. Executive summaries of both, along with a one-page fact sheet, are available now. See our Petition page here, and its Fact Sheet here.²

Thursday’s filing starts a 90-day period by law, within which EPA needs to accept or reject the Petition.³

Our summary of the relevant science overwhelmingly supports an unreasonable risk determination. Unarrested GHG pollution has pressed the concentration of GHGs into the danger zone, and we are beginning to reap the whirlwind: heightened wildfire; deadly heatwaves; extreme drought; severe flooding; rising seas; an increasingly acidified, shell-dissolving ocean.

But securing the proper determination and, even more, a strong rule, will not be easy. We anticipate over-weaning opposition from the fossil-fuel industry, likely marked by impressive disinformation. We must prepare – including by raising a war-chest sufficient to enable us to truly bring it before the Agency, in the federal courts, and in the Court of Public Opinion.

The fate of our climate implicates everything, while the prognosis under business as usual is intolerable. That is why we must place every significant viable legal tool to the purpose even, or perhaps especially, at this late hour.

Join us. Your full engagement and support will resonate in our work. Our Petition page is here. At its end you can endorse the Petition and also elect to contribute generously to this Campaign.

Only together can we make this happen. Together we must restore and protect a stable and healthy climate.

Sincerely yours,