“We trust the United States Forest Service to ‘speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.'” The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia quoted The Lorax last week in its decision to pull the permit on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The 3-judge panel said the U.S. Forest Service “abdicated its responsibility to preserve national forest resources.”
Since the launch of our Article 1, Section 27 campaign on Election Day, the Better Path Coalition here in PA has been quoting The Lorax quite a bit, too! We’re getting ready to deliver the 205 copies of the book we got with some help from the Dr. Seuss Estate. They’ll be delivered to every state legislator and Governor Wolf by children dressed as the Lorax. It’s all part of a petition delivery on January 28th.
On Election Day, volunteers at polling locations across Pennsylvania gathered signatures on paper copies of our petition, Uphold PA’s Environmental Rights Amendment and Act on Climate. It reads, in part, “We call on every newly-elected official and every elected official who returns to Harrisburg in 2019 to fulfill their Constitutional obligation to uphold Article 1, Section 27 by taking aggressive action to address the urgent environmental and climate challenges that confront us and establishing policies that prevent new sources of pollution from entering the Commonwealth.”
On Sunday 1/27, we’ll kick off two days of action in Harrisburg with a panel discussion called Opportunity and Obligation: Article 1, Section 27, PA’s Green Amendment featuring Franklin Kury, the former state representative who authored the amendment and other amazing speakers. The next day, our Team Lorax will deliver the petitions and books.
Some of you have already signed our petition. Thanks so much! If you haven’t signed it, please do. So far, we’ve gathered more than 2,600 signatures on the online and paper versions of our petition! Please help us grow that number by sharing the link with your networks or downloading the paper petition to circulate in your communities. Here’s the link to the online petition: https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/uphold-pas-environmental-1. And here’s the link to the paper petition: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nwiYeOtzRwUHUkX2mThZI-gEOj7CbNdi/view
There are lots of ways to participate in our campaign in addition to signing and sharing our petition. Of course, we invite everyone to join the coalition, but we’re also inviting non-member organizations to sponsor our campaign. We’re gathering names of children (and adults) who would like to be part of Team Lorax on the 28th. We’re collecting selfies of people holding Article 1, Section 27 signs that we’re using to promote the campaign on social media and create a banner to use in Harrisburg. We’re inviting everyone to reserve seats for the panel discussion on 1/27. Find out how to do any and all of these things and more on our website, betterpathcoalition.org.
As the Lorax says, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” Please join us!
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