USA Today featured PSR this morning in a news article announcing the release of More Extreme Heat Waves: Global Warming’s Wake Up Call, a new report on the dangers to health from extreme heat. 

Heat waves increase the rates of potentially lethal heat stroke, asthma attacks and other respiratory problems, and heart disease.  And heat waves are on the rise, largely as the result of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, produced by burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil. 

Global warming is one of the gravest health emergencies facing humanity. It’s life-threatening, and it’s affecting us now.

Tell your senators that the nation’s health and safety require that we stop global warming.  If you haven’t added your name to the PSR letter calling for strong climate and energy policy, sign on today. 

Four elements are key to effective climate and energy legislation:

Make strong, early cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. Preserve the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. End dependence on coal for electrical generation. Prevent unlimited loan guarantees or additional subsidies for new nuclear reactors.

PSR partnered with the National Wildlife Federation on the Heat Waves report, and I and some of our chapter representatives participated with NWF in press conferences in several of the high-risk cities.  I hope you’ll read the report, then add your name to our urgent letter to Congress.

Sincerely,
Peter Wilk, MD, Executive Director

From: "Physicians for Social Responsibility" psrnatl@psr.org
Subject: USA Today features PSR-NWF report on heat waves
Date: 25 августа 2009 г. 14:40

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You can use the editable petition text here:
https://secure2.convio.net/psr/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=387

and/or use the embedded petition below and add your comments in the text box at the lower right.
This is the identical text with the addition in bold face about forest destruction.
Both will go to your Senators.

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Petition Text:
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Pass Strong Climate Legislation to Protect Human Health

Dear Senators,

We are deeply concerned about the serious consequences for human health posed by climate change.  Already we are seeing the symptoms of climate change in the form of more intense heat waves, worsening air quality, pest and water borne diseases and extreme weather events. Scientific consensus is that in order to mitigate climate change, we must act quickly and definitively to stabilize greenhouse gas pollution.  We are writing to urge you to pass climate change and energy legislation that supports solutions that will reduce greenhouse gases with the most cost-effective, cleanest, and fastest approaches.  New coal-fired power plants and new nuclear reactors do not meet those criteria. 

Because the imminent threat of global warming poses challenges to human health, PSR urges you to support four cornerstone principles in the development of national climate policy.

1.  U.S. climate and energy legislation must make strong, early cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

In order to prevent the worst impacts of global warming, the United States must achieve deep, long-term reductions in its emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. Failure to do so would risk subjecting our planet to damaging, even catastrophic global warming and endanger the lives of all its inhabitants. 

Climate policy passed by the House of Representatives in June would set the United States on a path to reducing carbon emissions.  PSR calls for robust action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, starting at the earliest date possible and requiring a substantial reduction by 2020. As indicated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007), significant and timely emission cuts are crucial to assure the stabilization of greenhouse gas emissions and the return of atmospheric carbon concentrations to 350 ppm, the safe, upper limit that provides a greater than 90% probability of staying within 2°C of preindustrial global average temperatures.
 
2.  U.S. climate and energy legislation must preserve the US Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. 

Proposed climate policy passed by the House of Representatives would remove the US Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act (CAA).  This deprives the nation of a dedicated, reliable and effective federal entity to monitor and enforce the limits placed on global warming emissions. Regulation of air pollutants under the CAA has historically acted as a significant technology driver.  Without the pressure to push for new technology (to avoid violating the CAA), industry will likely invest less in anti-pollution technologies, leaving us unlikely to meet targets for carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction.

The CAA has proven effective in reducing air pollution and improving health and welfare in cost-effective ways. Its programs have reduced a wide variety of air pollutants, from nitrous oxides to volatile organic compounds, and have done so across a wide variety of sources.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) already has the authority under the CAA to regulate air pollutants, including CO2. Its power to regulate CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act  should be preserved under new climate and energy legislation.

3.  U.S. climate and energy legislation must significantly reduce dependence on coal for electrical generation.

Coal combustion today generates roughly half of the nation's electricity.  That power comes at an unacceptable cost.  First, coal combustion is the source of approximately a third of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions.  That in itself is reason enough to shift U.S. energy generation to a non-carbon-based source.  Yet there are several reasons why the nation should move away from coal.   Coal combustion creates unacceptable toxic emissions.  The deadly pollutants emitted by coal include but are not limited to mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter.  These pollutants cause severe damage to the human cardiovascular system, respiratory system, and nervous system, provoking heart attacks, asthma, respiratory diseases and cancer.  As many as 24,000 adults die prematurely each year due to particulate matter pollution alone coming from coal plants.
Mountaintop Removal is also destroying forests that are needed to heal our atmosphere.
Forests are one of Nature's most effective carbon capture and sequestration mechanisms.
470 forest covered mountains have been destroyed already.

For all of those reasons, PSR opposes subsidies that would further the nation's continued reliance on coal-fired power plants.  This includes subsidies for the extraction and combustion of coal.  Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is an unproven technology that will not be deployed nationwide on a commercial scale, if at all, until at least 2030  too late to avoid dangerous climate change. CCS has intrinsic severe health risks associated with large CO2 releases, wastes energy, runs the risk of deteriorating ground water and soil, is very expensive and diverting investment resources away from solar, wind, and other clean renewable energy solutions. For these reasons US climate and energy legislation must limit research and development subsidies for CCS.  PSR supports an immediate moratorium on the construction of new coal-fired power plants. Finally, we call for bringing all existing (as well as proposed) coal plants under stringent regulation for toxic emissions, under New Source Performance Standards.

4.  U.S. climate and energy legislation must not provide unlimited loan guarantees or additional subsidies for the construction of new nuclear reactors.
 
New nuclear reactors are extremely expensive and risky investments.  Electricity produced by new reactors would cost two to three times more than renewable energy and efficiency measures.  The nuclear industry is asking for over $100 billion in loan guarantees.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, the likelihood that a project to build a new reactor will default is over 50 percent.

Nuclear energy is also polluting. Uranium miners experience higher rates of lung cancer, tuberculosis, and other respiratory diseases. In addition, nuclear reactors create enormous quantities of radioactive waste each year.  More than 58,000 metric tons of spent fuel has already accumulated at reactor sites around the U.S., for which there is currently no permanent solution.  Reprocessing is not a viable solution: it is polluting and a public health threat, a proliferation risk, and extremely expensive. 

Nuclear reactors also require large quantities of water for cooling. During droughts, which are expected to become more frequent and intense due to global warming, nuclear reactors are forced to reduce output or even shut down. Reactors may need to discharge hotter water during heat waves, which can be harmful to river ecosystems. During the heat wave of 2003, 17 French reactors were forced to power down or shut down completely as river water temperatures rose. 

Finally, given the urgency of global warming threats, new nuclear reactors cannot provide an appropriately rapid to climate change.  Each new reactor would take approximately 10 years to construct  much longer than efficiency and renewable projects, which can be deployed in the near term and have immediate beneficial impact. 

Conclusion
The task of dealing with climate change is formidable, but we must respond decisively and we must not delay:  The cost of inaction is too great.  Only sound investments in economical, expedient, and truly green technologies will allow us to avert the pending public health crisis.  Given the immediacy of the climate crisis we face, we should not waste our limited resources to subsidize new coal-fired plants  or new nuclear reactors , which are expensive, slow to construct, and polluting. Investing in carbon-free, non-polluting renewable energies is a safer, cleaner and faster way of addressing the climate crisis.

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