Please read thoroughly and consider, even if you're a Bush supporter!

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Redford [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 9:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Message from Robert Redford

Dear NRDC BioGems Defender,

Over the next few weeks, President Bush and his congressional allies
will try
once again to ram their disastrous energy bill through the U.S. Senate.
They
fell only two votes short in November and they've vowed to make passage
of the
bill their top priority now that Congress has returned from recess.

This bill may be the worst piece of legislation you and I will see in
our
lifetimes. It would pick your pocket, despoil your natural heritage,
endanger
your family's health and smother your hope for a more secure energy
future. We
ignore this bill at our own peril.

Let me tell you our simple plan for thwarting this shameless attack on
our
environment and pocketbooks. If millions of Americans each took one
minute to
protest this bill, it would cause every senator who is tempted to vote
for it
to think twice about doing so.

You can make this happen within the next few hours by doing two things:

First, go to http://www.savebiogems.org/takeaction.asp?src=RR0401
and send your two senators an email or fax, telling them to vote against
this
pro-polluter energy bill. Then, forward my email to at least four of
your
friends, family members or colleagues.

I am emailing this message to 500,000 BioGems Defenders and other NRDC
activists. If each one forwards this message to just four more people,
we will
generate a national tidal wave of opposition before this day is over.

And that won't be a moment too soon. This disgraceful bill would pick
our
pockets to hand out billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to the
oil, coal
and nuclear industries. That's their long-awaited reward for making
big-time
contributions to the Bush-Cheney campaign. They profit while the rest of
us pay
the price -- in tax dollars and environmental degradation.

This bill gives the energy giants a free pass to drill their way through
our
last wild places, burn more dirty coal, build a new generation of risky
nuclear
power plants and dramatically increase air pollution that would sicken
the
vulnerable -- especially children and seniors -- for decades to come.

It would establish oil and gas development as the dominant use of our
federal
public lands, open national parks to the construction of electricity
transmission lines, exempt polluters from core provisions of our clean
air and
water laws and waive liability for the producers of the toxic gasoline
additive
MTBE -- even though it has contaminated at least 1,500 public water
supplies in
all 50 American states.

You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a more backward-looking, wasteful
and
self-defeating energy "plan" than this one. At a time when the federal
deficit
is soaring and we're going to war in the Persian Gulf oilfields, the
White
House wants to stick us with the tab for prolonging our destructive
dependence
on fossil fuels, foreign oil and dangerous nuclear technology.

This is not a national energy policy. This is corporate welfare, pure
and
simple. Estimates of the bill's corporate tax breaks range from $23
billion to
well over $100 billion with loan guarantees included. No surprise there.
Big
energy companies cooked up this raid on the federal treasury during
hundreds of
secret meetings with Vice President Cheney's energy task force and their
allies
on Capitol Hill.

It's one thing to gouge taxpayers. But to claim this rip-off is in the
national
interest, as the White House would have us believe, is a slap in the
face to
every working American.

Poll after poll shows that the vast majority of voters -- of both
parties --
understand that we simply must reduce our out-of-control appetite for
fossil
fuels if we ever are to secure energy independence. That means turning
American
rooftops into the Persian Gulf of solar energy. It means producing cars
that
get 40 miles per gallon. It means constructing efficient buildings that
use
half the energy of the average American office without sacrificing
comfort.

Making this transformation to a super-efficient, low-pollution economy
would
save consumers upwards of a trillion dollars, spare our last wild places
from
destruction, improve our health, slow global warming and reduce our
dependence
on undemocratic regimes overseas. It's a no-brainer to anyone living
outside
the White House.

But unless millions of Americans speak out right now, the enactment of
the
president's energy bill will doom us to an apocalyptic future of
blighted
wilderness, poisonous air pollution, devastating climate change and
endless
wars over fossil fuels.

Please make your voice heard. Go to
http://www.savebiogems.org/takeaction.asp?src=RR0401
and tell your senators to obey the will of the American people, *not*
the
dictates of giant energy corporations! Call on Congress to create a
sustainable
and affordable energy path.

And please be sure to forward this message to at least four other
people.
Believe me, millions of Americans are just waiting for a simple way to
stop
this madness and lend their support to a sane and hopeful energy future.


Sincerely yours,

Robert Redford
Board of Trustees
Natural Resources Defense Council

. . .