The Climate Crisis is a Threat to Our Lives and the Economy – Greenpeace USA Response to the Dollars and Degrees Senate Hearing

June 21, 2023

In the 2022 election cycle, the oil and gas industry funneled more than $50 million to support their back-pocket candidates in the closest races. These same candidates continually present a false choice between a healthy economy and a healthy planet. Today we saw that with fossil fuels - we get neither. 

© Tim Aubry / Greenpeace

WASHINGTON DC (June 21, 2023)–In response to today’s Senate Committee on the Budget Dollars and Degrees hearing, Alice Madden, Policy and Political Director at Greenpeace USA, said: “In the 2022 election cycle, the oil and gas industry funneled more than $50 million to support their back-pocket candidates in the closest races. These same candidates continually present a false choice between a healthy economy and a healthy planet. Today we saw that with fossil fuels – we get neither.

“Between 2010 and 2019, the United States experienced 119 climate disasters that each caused damages of $1 billion or more. That’s more than double the previous decade. The consequences of the climate crisis are wreaking havoc on our health and our economy. We have many options to tackle it by transitioning to a clean energy economy that will create up to 25 million good-paying jobs across every zip code in America, jump-starting the economic recovery and positioning America to compete in a world that runs on clean technologies, not fossil fuels.”

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Contact: Tyler Kruse, Greenpeace USA Senior Communications Specialist, [email protected], 808-741-2791

Greenpeace USA is part of a global network of independent campaigning organizations that use peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future. Greenpeace USA is committed to transforming the country’s unjust social, environmental, and economic systems from the ground up to address the climate crisis, advance racial justice, and build an economy that puts people first. Learn more at www.greenpeace.org/usa.

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