The Clock Is Running: One Week Left to Write Your Letter in Support of Limiting Climate Change
There’s a tick, tick, ticking sound in the air this week.
Ticking One: It’s mid-June, meaning we’re almost exactly halfway through 2012. And, like last year, as the clock ticks through this year, extreme weather records are being broken left and right. For example, heat records:
- This spring's heat wave gave us the hottest March since US record-keeping began back in 1895.
- April 2012 marked the end of the warmest 12-month stretch ever in the US; that is, until June 2011-May 2012 became the warmest 12-month period of any 12 months on record for the continental United States.We just keep breaking records this year.
- The spring of 2012 was the culmination of the warmest March, third warmest April, and second warmest May. This marks the first time that all three months during the spring season ranked among the ten warmest, since records began in 1895.
With records breaking so fast, NRDC is launching a new Extreme Weather Ticker Tool to help keep track of record-breaking weather in the U.S. as it happens in 2012. Every month, we’ll update the tallies to-date for record-breaking heat, rainfall, and snowfall.
The weather last year saw so many extreme events NRDC had to create an online map of the US to track them and the destruction they caused across the country. There were 3,251 monthly weather records broken across the nation last year. So far this year, there have been 1,835 records broken --1175 heat, 562 rainfall, and 98 snow -- so we just might break 2012’s overall total.
Scientists tell us that our warming climate is causing more of these extreme weather events, and warn that if we don’t seek solutions to climate change, it could get much, much worse. Climate change is fueling some of the worst of these weather extremes – but there’s something you can do about it:
Ticking Two: The clock also says there’s under one week left to write the EPA a public comment on their proposed new carbon standard. You have until Monday June 25, 2012 to send EPA your written feedback on this first-ever national limit on carbon dioxide emissions from new fossil fuel-fired electric power plants - - and power plants produce the lion’s share of the carbon pollution that’s causing climate change. Take a minute to read about the proposed standard which, by limiting carbon pollution from new industrial power plants, is a milestone on the road toward protecting the nation’s health from the effects of climate change.
Join the movement to safeguard against this top source of climate change–causing pollution.
Add your name this week in support of health-protecting limits to carbon pollution. NRDC makes it easy to write a letter; just click the orange TAKE ACTION NOW link at the top of this page.
You can’t stop time; but you can act now. You and more than a million others who have already written to EPA in support can be vocal this week about the need to stop climate change’s worst effects-- on our health and our children’s health. Your letter helps protect their future.