We urge you, President Biden, to declare a National Climate Emergency under the National Emergencies Act and take executive action to stop all new fossil fuel and petrochemical project development on the Gulf Coast.

Please take our concerns and demands into serious consideration. Our lives and future depend on it. These demands align with the #BuildBackFossilFree Climate President and Break Free From Plastic Plastic Free President demands, and we support the advancement of the Gulf South for a Green New Deal policy platform. We strongly encourage that action from the Federal government align with all of these interrelated demand sets to protect the people and ecosystems of the Gulf Coast and the entire nation.

Thank you. We are counting on you.

Signed,

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Demands for a Fossil Free Gulf Coast

1. Declare a National Climate Emergency under the National Emergencies Act
a. Restructure the power grid and industrial permitting process to ensure adequate preparation including nationalizing the grid, weatherization, and requiring climate change modeling and mitigation measures to prepare for extreme weather events.

b. Evaluate existing infrastructure to assess vulnerabilities that would result in breaches, ruptures, or system failure in extreme weather events.

c. Protect fragile environments and critical habitats for endangered species (sea turtles, waterfowl, birds, fish, and marine mammals) to prevent mass extinction events.

d. Recognize and treat Gulf residents, animals, and ecosystems as valuable and deserving of critical protections, not as sacrifice zones for the energy needs of the country and world. Evaluate and publish the true cumulative impacts on human health, animal welfare, and the environment of all existing fossil fuel infrastructure.

e. Clean up the 7,000 mile dead zone of the Gulf of Mexico caused by human activity and industry in urban and agricultural areas.

f. Reinstate the science-based executive order intended to make infrastructure more resilient to future flooding events.

g. Protect Gulf health by enacting legislation to assess and clean up superfund sites and deny new project construction in those areas.

h. Demand immediate action to strengthen current requirements to reduce ground-level ozone to healthy levels in Gulf Coast Communities

2. Keep remaining fossil fuels in the ground.
a. Manage the decline of fossil fuel production to actual zero by 2030.

b. Mandate a moratorium on the construction and permitting of all new fossil fuel-based energy or derivative projects until a formal review of air emissions, air quality, power and water supply, water treatment, emergency preparedness, greenhouse gas generation, and critical coastal area and community impacts can be completed and reviewed by regulators, State and local leadership, and all potentially affected communities.

c. Employ a local workforce to cap and decommission all orphaned oil and gas wells.

d. Refuse false solutions proposed by industry that perpetuate the injustices of our current energy economy. Solutions must end our reliance on fossil fuels and ensure no community is sacrificed.

3. Stop fossil fuel exports and related infrastructure (including petrochemicals).
a. Ban exports of crude oil, LNG, and petrochemicals.

b. Mandate a permitting and construction moratorium on all related export infrastructure for fossil fuels and petrochemicals.

4. Shift financial flow from fossil fuels to climate solutions
a. Eliminate subsidies to fossil fuel infrastructure and industries, including petrochemical producers.

b. Prioritize the creation of incentives for renewable energy solutions (especially wind and solar).

5. Use the Clean Air Act to set a science-based national pollution cap for air pollutants including PM 2.5, NOx, & VOCs.
a. Employ all CAA programs to drive carbon and air pollution emissions toward actual zero, economy wide.

b. Prioritize the mitigation of cumulative harms to human health, animal welfare, and the environment from all existing fossil fuel infrastructure.

c. Require all new proposed energy infrastructure projects to assess and plan for mitigation of potential cumulative harms to human health, animal welfare, and the environment.

6. Power electricity sector with 100% clean and renewable energy by 2030 and promote energy democracy
a. Require all new energy infrastructure to be renewable (preferably wind or solar) and non-toxic to local communities and residents.

b. Make immediate investments in clean, safe, and renewable energy technologies, to ensure renewable energy is available to meet the region’s needs over the next decade while fossil fuel production and consumption is intentionally declined to zero.

c. Develop and prioritize inclusive community decision making processes in the development, permitting, and construction of new infrastructure.

7. Launch a just transition to protect our communities, workers, and economy.
a. Provide stipends for training and alternative green jobs for oil and gas workers that want to transition or lose their jobs as a result of banning fossil fuels

b.Create jobs and paid job training programs for the development and construction of new renewable infrastructure, prioritizing the training and hiring of local people, especially those previously employed in fossil fuel and petrochemical industries.

c. Initiate the construction of new renewable energy infrastructure nationwide in partnership with renewable energy companies.

8. Advance climate and environmental justice.
a. Direct federal agencies to assess and mitigate environmental and social harms to disproportionately impacted Indigenous peoples, people of color, low weath communities, and migrants.

b. Address environmental racism by ensuring that all existing and proposed energy infrastructure and development in the Gulf are evaluated for disproportionate impacts on low income or communities of color.

c. Stop pollution hotspots.

d. Integrate the principles of landback, reparations, and the consultation and consent of both original un-recognized peoples and federally recognized peoples of the land into federal policies.

e. Recognize indigenous self determination and sovereignty.

f. Ensure language justice by requiring that all communications and outreach to people and communities be done in the language they are most comfortable speaking, using vocabulary and concepts that can be widely understood by average working people.

g. Ensure that all communication after a chemical disaster including incident report, press updates and vital communication is translated into dominant languages of the affected area.

h. Establish a toxic alert system similar to Amber Alert to notify adjacent communities within a 10 mile radius.

i. Evaluate vulnerability zones and conduct environmental justice analysis when making plans to approve expanding existing facilities and projects that expose further vulnerable populations such as federal housing development.

9. Make polluters pay: investigate and prosecute fossil fuel polluters for the damages they have caused. Commit to veto all legislation that grants legal immunity for polluters, undermines existing environmental laws, or advances false solutions
a. Set higher fines for polluters that match the true costs of their impacts on communities and the environment.

b. Require oil, gas, and petrochemical companies to fully internalize all costs to human health, animal welfare, and the environment of their operations.

d. Require the fossil fuel industry to pay for effective and timely monitoring

e. Require the fossil fuel industry and regulatory agencies to record and report the releases that occur as a result of weather, storms and other sudden shutdowns.

10. Ensure through science-based commitments that the US contributes its fair share and advances climate justice, as the world’s largest cumulative historical emitter.
a. Require regulatory agencies to regularly review lists of hazardous chemicals, using chemical characteristics and basic thresholds as triggers, and add new chemicals as appropriate through a rule-making process on a short schedule, such as every two years.

b. Develop accessible national data on alternatives based on companies’ assessments and lessons learned by facilities that have successfully removed chemical hazards.

11. Restore full federal environmental protection of all streams, wetlands and other water bodies to the Clean Water Act.
a. Use every mechanism possible under the Clean Water Act to ensure that all Gulf waters are either cleaned of or remain free from pollution from fossil fuels, plastics and petrochemicals.

b. End new offshore oil drilling leasing and permitting and reduce offshore oil operations by 50%.

c. Eliminate the USACE NationWide Permit 12 and any rulemaking that rubber stamps permitting for industrial projects that impact American water bodies.

d. Review and revise the Clean Water Act to protect all water bodies based on current, accurate, non-biased hydrologic studies, cumulative impacts data, and holistic relationships between water bodies and their impacted ecosystems.

e. Protect public water. Ensure that any industrial use of water does not threaten the clean water supply to local residents, wildlife, or ecosystems.