I got this in my email today, and will be making a call. If this issue matters at all to you, please take a minute and do the same — all that you need to do is say that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be kept wild and free from oil exploration. One person won’t make a difference, but thousands will:
This week, September 22-26, citizens across the country will join together in the fight to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling. The goal: to generate hundreds of thousands of calls to members of Congress letting them know that Americans will not stand silent while the nation’s largest and wildest refuge is sacrificed for a mere six months of oil.
As we speak, politicians are holding backroom secret negotiations. They want to add an Arctic drilling scheme to the massive Energy Bill being negotiated by House and Senate conferees. The House version mandates drilling in the Arctic Refuge, doles out billions of dollars in new subsidies and seeks more drilling on public lands across the Rocky Mountain West. To make matters worse, some members of Congress are trying to exploit the recent blackouts in New York, Ohio and elsewhere as another reason to drill for oil in the Arctic – even though almost none of America’s electricity comes from oil!
Please take a moment and call your members of Congress TODAY and tell them to reject any efforts to pass legislation that allows drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Tell them to oppose any energy conference report that includes Arctic drilling. Simply call the Capitol Switchboard Number at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to your senator and/or representative’s office. (To find out who your senator or representative is, check out NWF’s new “Find Your Elected Officials” feature at http://action.nwf.org/nwf/leg-lookup/search.tcl)
The reason that drilling has never been approved is entirely due to the millions of people in every state telling their elected officials that they oppose drilling. Thank you again for your continued support of wildlife and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge!