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For Immediate Release, November 14, 2012

Contact: Rose Braz, (510) 435-6809

Nashville Joins National Campaign for Climate Change Action

After Hurricane Sandy, City Urges Use of Clean Air Act to Cut Greenhouse Gas Pollution 

NASHVILLE, Tenn.— Nashville has become the 42nd city to officially call on President Barack Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency to use the Clean Air Act to cut greenhouse gas pollution that is raising the risk of extreme weather events and worsening climate change. The Metro City Council passed a resolution Tuesday, joining cities such as Miami, Kansas City, Mo., and Gary, Indiana, as part of the Center for Biological Diversity’s national Clean Air Cities campaign.
 
“We are seeing swift and irreversible changes to the place we call home,” said Sommers Kline, one of the Center’s volunteer Clean Air Advocates and president of Students Promoting Environmental Awareness and Responsibility (SPEAR), which led the resolution effort in Nashville. “Climate change will bring us more heatwaves and changing precipitation patterns that could lead to flooding similar to what we experienced in 2010. I’m very proud that Nashville has joined the fight to protect our climate by supporting use of the Clean Air Act.”

Hurricane Sandy, dubbed the “Frankenstorm,” has drawn renewed attention to extreme weather concerns. Nashville has also experienced extreme weather events tied to climate change. In 2010, Nashville experienced the largest volume of rainfall from a single storm on record in the state of Tennessee, which led to devastating flooding. Scientists have found that global warming loads storms with more energy and more rainfall.

“To avert a climate catastrophe, we need to make full use of the Clean Air Act as quickly as possible,” said Rose Braz, the Center’s climate campaign director. “We recently suffered through the warmest eight months on record and a summer where drought blanketed four-fifths of our country. It’s clear that climate change is not an abstract problem for the future or one that will only affect distant places. Climate change is happening now, we are causing it, and the longer we wait to act, the more we lose and the more difficult the problem will be to solve.”

The Center’s Clean Air Cities campaign is working around the country to encourage cities to pass resolutions supporting the Clean Air Act and using the Act to reduce carbon in our atmosphere to no more than 350 parts per million, the level scientists say is needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Similar resolutions have been approved in Albany and Ithaca, N.Y.; Berkeley, Santa Monica, Culver City, Arcata, Oxnard, Santa Cruz, Richmond, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Calif.; Seattle, Wash.; Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pa.; Tucson, Ariz.; Boone, N.C.; Keene, N.H.; Minneapolis, Minn.; Milwaukee and Madison, Wis.; Cambridge and Northampton, Mass.; Cincinnati and Oberlin, Ohio; Santa Fe, N.M.; Kansas City, Mo.; Salt Lake City, Utah; Miami, Pinecrest, Tampa and Gulfport, Fl.; Chicago, Ill.; Teton County, Wyo.; Eugene, Ore.; Boulder, Colo.; Burlington, Vt.; and Detroit, Mich.; Wilmington, Del.; Providence, R.I.; Gary, Ind., and Woodbridge, N.J. Several other cities around the country will be considering resolutions over the next few months.

Learn more about the Center’s Clean Air Cities campaign and get the facts about the Clean Air Act.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 450,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.


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