Earthjustice

Campaigns

• Help us defend GMO labeling laws!

  Last year, Vermont passed a law requiring most genetically engineered foods to be labeled…and soon, industry attacked. Earthjustice has now gone to court to defend Vermont’s law and stand up to these attacks. But now an extremist segment of the food industry is pushing to prohibit GMO labeling anywhere in the country. You have a right to know what’s in the food you eat. Take action now to defend that right. The House has already passed a bill prohibiting any and all state and local GMO labeling requirements. We need more food transparency, not less! Tell your senator you oppose this legislation now! The bill goes far beyond labeling—it would preclude not only labeling, but also all state and local regulation of GMOs. We’re defending communities in Hawai‘i that have chosen to restrict the growing of GMO crops to protect conventional and organic farmers from contamination and the public from associated pesticide use. In fact, Earthjustice has litigated for years to protect people and the environment from dangers associated with genetically modified food crops. More than 99% of GMO crops are created to withstand toxic chemical applications or produce their own pesticides, leading to greater pesticide use. Increased use of pesticides and the emergence of pesticide-resistant weeds are just two of the problems GMO crops create, not to mention possible long-term health effects and risks to biodiversity. GMO crops also reduce consumers’ ability to avoid GMO-contaminated food and farmers’ ability to protect their non-GMO fields from contamination. More than 60 countries already require GMO labeling. Today, we’re asking you to stand up for food transparency in the United States!

  433 of 500 Signatures

  Created by Trip Van Noppen
• Thank President Obama for Leadership in the Clean Power Plan

  It’s official! The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized the president’s Clean Power Plan—the first-ever federal limits on carbon pollution from power plants. The president deserves our thanks for taking the biggest step any president has yet taken on climate change. The Clean Power Plan provides a foundation for states to build on to achieve a transformational shift away from fossil fuels to clean energy. None of this would have been possible without your support. Earthjustice has been pushing hard for strong limits on carbon pollution over the past few years, and activists like you have been making climate action a top priority. From the record-breaking 8.7 million comments submitted to the EPA in support of climate action to the largest climate march in history in New York City last fall, support for climate action is simply undeniable. Power plants are America’s single largest source of carbon pollution—the pollution that’s fueling climate change, intensifying extreme weather and threatening public health. The Clean Power Plan starts us down the path to achieving real pollution reductions from this sector while pivoting to clean energy solutions to power our future. Take a moment to thank President Obama for this major action on climate change. Climate change is an undeniable threat to our health and our environment. We owe it to our kids and grandkids to support the Clean Power Plan, which lays the foundation for even greater action by every state in the country. Decisions about clean energy should be in the hands of the people, not the fossil fuel industry. The Clean Power Plan was designed to address these challenges head-on. The overwhelming support we have seen from you is making a crucial difference in spurring the most meaningful climate action by the United States to date.

  360 of 400 Signatures

  Created by Trip Van Noppen
• Stop the Illegal Injection of Oil Industry Wastewater into California Aquifers

  We’re facing a clean water emergency in California. Regulators recently admitted that for years the oil industry has been illegally dumping millions of gallons of wastewater, including waste from fracking, into our state’s protected aquifers. Yet—in an outrageous move—the state is allowing the contamination to continue. Join thousands of other Californians who are telling Governor Brown to put an immediate stop to this illegal water pollution. The oil and gas industry has been injecting wastewater and other fluids into protected aquifers through about 2,500 injection wells, in direct violation of federal and state law. Yet despite acknowledging the threat to our water supplies, the state has shut down only 23 of the wells. And now, in order to avoid “inconvenience” to the industry, the state is giving drillers up to nearly two more years to contaminate aquifers that could be used for drinking water. Earthjustice is challenging this outrageous action in state court, but we need your help to put additional pressure on the governor. Tell Governor Brown to put the public first and protect our aquifers from further contamination now. In the midst of a massive drought, we should not be catering to the oil industry at the expense of our dwindling fresh water supplies.

  51 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Stacey Geis
• Get Toxic Chemicals Out of Our Homes

  Many of us fear trace amounts of pesticides in our food, but sit on sofas every day that contain pounds of toxic flame retardants. These chemicals migrate out of our sofas and other household products and are released into the air in our homes. As a result, 97 percent of U.S. residents have measurable quantities of toxic flame retardants in their blood. Take action today to urge the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to protect the public from toxic flame retardants. These chemicals have been associated with reproductive impairment; neurological impacts, including learning deficits and decreased IQ in children; endocrine disruption; cancer; and immune disorders. Children’s products in particular are likely to contain flame retardant chemicals, putting kids at risk during critical periods of rapid growth and brain development. And for reasons that are not fully understood, low-income communities and communities of color bear a higher body burden of these chemicals than others. To make matters worse, household products containing toxic flame retardants can still burn, and when they do, they tend to produce more smoke, soot, toxic gases, and carcinogenic combustion products. This puts building residents, firefighters, and other first responders at greater risk of harm in the event of a fire. Earthjustice and Consumer Federation of America, representing a broad coalition of organizations, just submitted a legal petition to the CPSC, asking it to protect the public by prohibiting the sale of any children’s product, piece of furniture, or mattress if it contains a toxic flame retardant, and any electronic product with toxic flame retardants in the plastic enclosure. Please let the CPSC know that you stand with the firefighters, pediatricians, consumer advocates, and scientists in asking for household products free of toxic flame retardants!

  2 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Eve Gartner
• Stop a Dangerous Chemical Law

  Recently the chemical industry got exactly what it wanted—again. A new Senate bill was introduced that would not only fail to protect us from dangerous chemicals but also restrain state governments from taking action. Together, we can fight back against business as usual. We must reject the chemical industry’s reprehensible approach and strengthen protections against toxic chemicals. Chemical companies have spent millions lobbying for a free pass to continue putting Americans at risk from chemicals like flame retardants, formaldehyde in flooring, asbestos in dozens of products, and thousands of other chemicals that contaminate our air, water, food, and everyday products. We need you to voice your opposition now to a proposed chemical policy bill introduced by Senators David Vitter and Tom Udall that would leave dangerous holes in our toxic chemical laws.

  555 of 600 Signatures

  Created by Andrea Delgado, Earthjustice
• Wolves Under Attack in Congress

  Right now, members of Congress are working on legislation to remove existing Endangered Species Act protections for wolves across some—and possibly almost all—of the lower 48 states. These anti-wolf legislators could succeed, unless we fight back now. Wolves have just begun to recover in some areas of the United States after being nearly wiped out by centuries of ruthless hunting, trapping, and poisoning. Despite fragile successes that have brought wolves back to the northern Rockies and the Midwest, they are still missing from a vast majority of their former range and are subject to mounting persecution even where they have been restored. Urge your senators and congressional representative to stand up for wolves! Federal protections for wolves in the lower 48 states are critical to securing the recovery of existing populations and allowing wolves to expand into other suitable habitat in places like Northern California, the Pacific Northwest, the southern Rocky Mountains, and the Northeast. Now the House and Senate are poised to take up legislation to strip wolves of their federal protections in states including Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. If anti-wolf legislators get their way, the result will be more state-led killing of wolves and a blow to the Endangered Species Act, our nation’s safety net for imperiled species. Urge your senators and representatives to oppose any anti-wolf legislation put forth in this Congress.

  2,552 of 3,000 Signatures

  Created by Marjorie Mulhall, Earthjustice
• STOP KEYSTONE XL NOW!

  Tell your representative to stand with Americans across the country and vote NO on the Keystone XL pipeline bill. Recently, what will undoubtedly be one of the most environmentally hostile Congresses in history took office. Its first item of environmental business? Voting to mandate the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, putting campaign contributors ahead of the American public and our environment. Don’t let them get away with this! We need everyone to raise their voices NOW to reject this destructive project. Tell your representatives that you stand with more than 1 million Americans who are against the pipeline. Big polluters spent more than $721 million to get their cronies elected to Congress, and now they expect payback. The only way we can stop this destructive project is if everyone—including you—takes a stand. The Keystone XL pipeline would be disastrous, hurting communities, polluting our water and environment, and undermining our ability to stabilize climate change. If constructed, the pipeline would transport highly polluting Canadian tar sands crude to U.S. refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, where it would be processed and shipped overseas. Conservation groups, Native American tribes, farmers, and ranchers have opposed the project because it poses a threat to groundwater and surrounding lands. Despite this, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has made approving the Keystone project one of his very first priorities in 2015. The President just threatened to veto this ill-founded legislation but it’s critical that enough representatives register their opposition to show his veto can be upheld. We are facing our toughest battle yet. Help stop this disaster once and for all. Tell your representatives to vote NO.

  51 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Martin Hayden
• Help Make Recycling Healthy

  Everyday, millions of Americans, particularly in communities of color and low-income communities, face danger from hazardous waste recycling and reclamation. The Bush administration exempted thousands of these facilities—predominantly located in the nation’s most vulnerable communities—from safety requirements mandated under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The safeguards protect all Americans from exposure to toxic chemicals, and with your help can be reinstated by a new EPA rule under review by the Office of Management and Budget. Tell President Obama to protect those living just miles or even yards away from refineries, scrap metal yards, chemical plants, smelters, battery recyclers, mines and other facilities that reclaim and recycle hazardous waste. Ask the President to finalize the rule proposed by EPA to reinstate safeguards against dangerous recycling of hazardous waste. The 90-day review period has passed. Now it’s time for the EPA to act. Please ask President Obama to finalize a rule so strong that it doesn’t just change lives, but saves them.

  30 of 100 Signatures

  Created by Debra Mayfield, Earthjustice
• Make Climate Polluters Clean Up After Themselves

  The fossil fuel industry is rising up against the strongest limits ever proposed to end the worst climate change polluter: dirty coal plants. But, the industry doesn’t have the public’s support. We do. Dirty power plants are the single largest source of carbon pollution that is driving climate change. Right now, these plants are dumping as much carbon as they want into the atmosphere, and we and our children are stuck with the costs. It's time to adopt common sense limits on carbon pollution from power plants. Tell the EPA you support these limits on carbon pollution and to make them as strong as possible. The polluters and their allies will be doing everything they can to stop it. So let’s give this everything we can.

  112 of 200 Signatures

  Created by Trip Van Noppen, Earthjustice
• The Next Keystone XL?

  Prediction for 2014: the next flash point in the global fight against the fossil fuel industry will take place on the quiet shores of the Chesapeake Bay. Virginia-based Dominion Resources wants to build a massive export facility in Cove Point, MD that would pipe fracked gas from Pennsylvania, supercool and liquefy it, and ship it halfway across the globe to be burned. The dangerous consequences of this fossil fuel export scheme? Increased climate-disrupting pollution, a whole lot more fracking, and a big threat to one of our national treasures. Act now to stop this project! That’s why Earthjustice is part of a coalition of state, regional and national environmental groups that have joined together with Maryland nurses, watermen, and local business owners to fight this project. Our coalition is turning out hundreds of people to town hall meetings and persuading elected officials to oppose and raise questions about the project. But one voice has been missing from the conversation: Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. Gov. O’Malley is positioning himself as a national leader on climate change and environmental issues, and also has reported ambitions for higher office. He needs to know that people all over the country are watching how he handles the Cove Point export project.

  651 of 800 Signatures

  Created by Kathleen Sutcliffe, Earthjustice