Important Critical Climate Actions to Report to You

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On Tuesday, August 29th a hundred people including our congregation members showed up at the community input meeting at Austin Energy Headquarters to give their input to the new Austin Energy Resource Generation Plan Update. Renewables are cheaper and healthier they will help our rates go down, reduce climate over heating and increase our planet’s chance to thrive. People brought signs and voiced their request for renewables and their deep concern that the Fayette Coal Fired Power Plant continues to pump millions of tons of deadly toxic waste polluting our life giving Air, precious dwindling water and sacred Earth. Here is our Green Sanctuary Ministry’s Members terrific testimony: FAYETTE POWER PLANT RANKED 14TH DIRTIEST IN THE NATION.

 

Air pollution from coal-fired power plants is linked with asthma, cancer, heart and lung ailments, neurological problems, acid rain, global warming, and other severe environmental and public health impacts.

 

It’s not just air pollution, it is also ground water pollution. The Fayette Plant is among the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s list of potential damage cases, indicating that it has potentially polluted groundwater or surface water at levels which threaten human health and the environment. Our Utility, Austin Energy, is making it’s customers sick.

 

Of coal’s many environmental impacts, none are as harmful, long term, and irreversible as global warming. Global warming is driven by emissions of heat-trapping gases, primarily from human activities, that rise into the atmosphere and act like a blanket, warming the earth’s surface.

 

(Fayette is responsible for 72% of AE’s carbon emissions but only generates 13% of AE’s total power.) Whenever this is brought up, the response is usually what about China and India. I can’t do much about those countries but I will continue to try to do something about the utility that I feel responsible for.

 

YOU CAN HELP: If you, your friends, and family would email and or call the Mayor & Austin City Council, tell them what you think about Renewables, Rates and the Fayette Coal fired Power Plant. If a hundred or more folks connect we can get their attention.

 

On another climate front: several church members have been working on a Nation Wide & Texas strong Team to stop the planned dumping of High Level “HOT” nuclear waste from every nuclear power plant in the USA  into west Texas. This a money grabbing scheme to capture the millions of dollars in decommissioning trust funds by shipping this deadly forever waste by rail to Allen county. This is the edge of the Ogallala Aquifer (A Shallow Aquifer) and the Permian Basin.

More here on Texas Nuclear Waste Storage Permit.

 

To stop the accelerated heating of our planet we must stop burning heat dome creating fossil fuels. Join with the Sierra Club & Green Sanctuary – Climate Crisis Committee on (Zoom) or in person. Held the first Tuesday of every month from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. in Howson Hall.