Environment New York and Environment America Launch Multi-Million Dollar Outreach Effort to Defend our Environment Environment New York

Media Contacts
Heather Leibowitz

Environment New York

New York, NY — Today, Environment New York and Environment America announced a $7.5 million public education campaign to convince a majority of U.S. senators to stand up for a cleaner, healthier future, and oppose a return to a dirtier, more dangerous past. 

Here in New York, we’ll be talking to almost 65,000 people about threats to special places like the Catskills and Adirondacks, as well as beloved waterways including the Hudson River and the Long Island Sound. Across the country, with 30+ campaign offices in 22 states and the District of Columbia, the summer-long effort will educate over 1 million Americans face-to-face, over the phone, and online about the need for our senators to stand up for our core environmental and health protections. 

“Since the first Earth Day nearly 50 years ago, our air has gotten cleaner, our waterways have become less polluted, and more of our treasured landscapes have been protected. But we’re still not close to having the clean and healthy environment we need or deserve. We need to keep moving forward, not backward,” said Heather Leibowitz, Director of Environment New York. 

Recent research from The Frontier Group and the Environment New York Research & Policy Center, as of 2015 (the last year for which data is available) reveals that Americans in nearly every state still breathe polluted air. Too many beautiful ecologically and culturally sensitive areas are threatened by destructive activities, while too many of our waterways are polluted. And of course we have only a brief period of time left to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stave off the worst of sea level rise, extreme weather events, and other impacts of climate change. 

Unfortunately, President Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement along with his many proposals that weaken existing climate and clean air safeguards, fail to solve our environmental problems and jeopardize the progress we’ve already made to reduce pollution. So far, Congress also has failed to champion clean air and clean water this session. Thankfully however, New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have received a perfect 100% score on Environment New York’s federal scorecard, released earlier this week. 

“To give our families and future generations a great chance at a healthy environment, we need to stop environmental rollbacks. It is essential that we move quickly to ensure clean air and water and a livable planet. We need a funded and functioning EPA and we need to strengthen–not weaken–our core environmental, conservation and public health protections,” noted Leibowitz.

Environment America’s outreach campaign, reaching from Maine to California, is calling senators to be part of a Green Line of Defense, voting to stop any rollbacks of current law and instead push the nation towards 100% renewable energy, fully protected waterways, and increased federal protection of sensitive lands. In addition, the organization’s outreach teams will collect hundreds of thousands of petitions, help generate 10,000 calls to senators, and organize visibility events encouraging each congressional delegation to take strong environmental action.  

“We’re living in challenging times,” added Leibowitz. “On the one hand, special interests, the Trump administration and some in Congress are stuck in old ways of thinking, as if environmental protection was a luxury we couldn’t afford. On the other hand, the science has never been clearer. There’s never been as much mobilized public support as there is today for a clean and healthy environment. The means for achieving it are well within our reach. I’m confident our campaign will help galvanize the public, and make sure people’s voices are loudly heard. Together, I know we’ll find the way to protect the environmental values we share. Our families and our future depend on it.”