The 2020 presidential election is days away, and on the ballot is the course of the nation. Americans will choose whether they want to remain on the path plotted by the incumbent or whether it’s time for a sea change and a new captain at the helm.
The effects of climate change, like rising temperature averages, increased precipitation and more frequent natural disasters, are being felt in Indiana and throughout the U.S., bringing environmental policy to the forefront.
With those issues on the ballot, the Indiana Environmental Reporter asked the leaders of several environmental organizations what they hoped would be the environmental priorities for the next four years.
Gabriel Filippelli
“A return to the Paris Climate Treaty is priority number one, as it allays concerns of our international partners that we are not leading on climate change action. With China and Europe both forwarding ambitious plans, the US now has no national plan whatsoever. We need to get back into Paris and work hard this decade to achieve our emission reduction priorities.
The second environmental action is to phase out subsidies for fossil fuel production and use. These subsidies are huge, and they continue to prop up a polluting industry that we need to transition away from, and quickly.
A third action is to effectively abolish all of the environmental rollbacks of policies that have occurred in this administration. Scores of environmental policies developed and implemented under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts have been removed from the books, or at least have been temporarily lifted, resulting in the potential for significant environmental degradation. Corporations had already learned to live with the protective policies -- rolling them back only resulted in market uncertainty.”
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