Lucas,
sign the petition from CREDO and Daily Kos: Pass the Wildfire Disaster
Funding Act… and repeal fossil fuel subsidies to pay for it.
For the first time this year the Forest Service is spending more than 50% of it’s budget on firefighting efforts, up from just 1/6th in 1995.
The present and future of wildfires is truly terrifying. Global warming is creating a vicious, amplifying cycle for fire destruction: drought and higher temperatures pull moisture out of the forest, leading to increasingly destructive megafires. These fires release massive carbon bombs into the atmosphere, amplifying the warming.
The rising cost of wildfires makes the $11 billion in subsidies we give to fossil fuel companies every year indefensible.
But a bipartisan group of senators has proposed the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, which would finally treat wildfires as disasters and adequately fund response.
The heads of President Obama’s Department of Agriculture, Interior, and Office of Management and Budget have called on Congress to pass the bill, and they should.
There is simply no excuse to continue giving billions of dollars a year in corporate welfare and tax breaks to the hugely profitable fossil fuel industry burning our country down. The need to transition away from fossil fuels couldn’t be more urgent, yet we are subsidizing the mature fossil fuel industry at nearly six times the rate of the emerging renewable industry.
We need to build momentum to address escalating wildfires and phase out the fossil fuels making them more destructive.
Sign the petition from CREDO and Daily Kos: Pass the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act… and repeal fossil fuel subsidies to pay for it.
Keep fighting,
Monique Teal, Daily Kos