PERREAULT Magazine JUNE 2014 | Page 35

2. Fighting for the Healthy

C Communities

Since our founding, Earthjustice has been at the forefront of safeguarding the fundamentals of human health—the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink. We are fighting for a future where children can breathe clean air, no matter where they live; where the food we feed our families and the products we use in our homes are free of toxic chemicals; and where communities everywhere are safer, healthier places to live and work.

3. Advancing Clean Energy a and Combatting Climate C Change

Earthjustice is committed to ending the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels, and working to secure a clean energy future. Climate change is the single greatest environmental threat facing the world today. At stake is nothing less than our children’s — and our planet’s— future.

The challenges ahead are enormous, and so we are forcing changes today that are laying the groundwork for the systemic change we can and must see in the future.

CLIMATE CHANGE is a serious concern among Americans. What is Earthjustice doing to combat climate change?

Climate change threatens the world as we know it. The chief culprit is fossil fuel burning, which is why Earthjustice is using the courts to force a shift from dirty energy sources like coal to clean, renewable energy. This will not only help our climate, it will also build a thriving, sustainable world. We’re already seeing this occur with the rapid growth in rooftop solar. In Hawaiʻi, our legal work facilitated a ground-breaking solar initiative that can serve as a model for the rest of the country. And in California, Earthjustice litigation helped secure a landmark decision that requires state utilities to meet consumer demand with clean energy first, before using fossil fuel power. We’re also in Washington, D.C., pushing for critical energy efficiency standards that can be applied nationwide, leading to cost savings for consumers and reduced emissions of climate warming gases for the planet.

Of course, the best way to make room for the growth in wind and solar is to break our addiction to fossil fuels. We’re achieving that goal by targeting dirty coal plant pollution, one of the main drivers of climate change. We’re making the fossil fuel industry finally pay for the costs of its products’ pollution, including climate pollution, which will also speed a transition to clean energy.

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