September 15, 2021
After watching a panel with Dr. Leah Stokes of Evergreen Action and Ari Matusiak of Rewiring America, I was inspired to write my congressperson with my concerns about climate change.
Apparently politicians do keep track of the calls and emails they receive about specific topics and they use these to influence their priorities.
This is a particularly critical time because there is a climate bill making its way through the budget reconciliation process. This bill will sets the budget and priorities for climate action for the next couple decades. If it's not ambitious enough, we stand to face catastrophic climate consequences. :'(
If you want to send your own letter to your congressperson feel free to copy mine and swap out my local information for you own! You can find your congressperson's contact information here.
Representative Auchincloss,
I live in [my private town name] and I'm very concerned about climate change.
To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and stave off some of the most catastrophic effects of climate change, I need America to act quickly with a war-time level of ambition and effort. My future and our country's future depends on you, and specifically your action in the climate budget reconciliation process.
The bad news
- If we let every current fossil-fuel machine continue emitting greenhouse gases until the end of their natural lives and then perfectly replace them with clean electric machines then we're still expecting about 1.7-1.8 degrees of global warming increase. This is already dangerously close to the 2.0 degree limit after which extremely bad things start happening much more frequently. We need even more perfect execution than most people think.
- The IPCC report's model of global temperature increase is unrealistically optimistic. It includes a huge amount of "negative emissions" based on carbon-capture and storage technology which is unproven and unscaled. This late in the game we can't rely solely on unproven technology to squirrel away greenhouse gases — we have to just stop emitting them. So the situation is even more dire than the IPCC model reports.
- The total number of fossil fuel machines we need to replace nationally with clean electric machines to stop emissions (both industrial and residential) is around 1 billion. Coal plants, natural gas plants, internal combustion engine cars and trucks, home furnaces, gas hot water heaters, gas stoves and ovens, gas clothes dryers, electrical panels to handle increased load — they all must be replaced as soon as possible to stop emissions. Simply having more efficient fossil fuel-powered machines isn't good enough. That's a lot of machines to replace and requires huge coordination from government, industry, and consumers — even more than our stunning production of war materials in World War II.
The good news
- Electrifying the economy rapidly presents HUGE opportunities. Electrification eliminates emissions, creates millions of jobs, boosts American industry, improves air quality and health, and if financed right saves most households in Massachusetts hundreds of dollars a year on their energy bills.
- Electrifying our economy reduces our energy needs by more than half of what we use right now with fossil-fuel-powered energy. Electric machinery is just inherently more efficient AND can be generated from non-polluting renewable sources.
- Utility-scale solar and wind are already some of the cheapest forms of electricity generation and they'll only get cheaper — both utilities and consumers will win from a rapid transition.
- 98% of households in Massachusetts 04 Congressional district (273,000) will collectively save $96 million per year if using electrified furnaces and water heaters (utilizing heat pumps). 33% of these households are low- and moderate-income and would save an average of $369 per year. (Source: https://map.rewiringamerica.org/.../congressional.../04)