Stop Denying Climate Change

Clicking here will automatically add your name to Rep. Simpson:

"Given the extreme weather across the country, and the danger it poses to our food security, it is astonishing that you voted to prevent the USDA from so much as preparing for climate change. Your denial is a threat to all Americans."

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Extreme floods, droughts, storms and fires seem to be everywhere. And among their many devastating impacts, is their threat to vital food crops.

Floods and droughts last year were responsible for massive crop failures across Russia, and Australia last year. This year, it's France, Germany and crops across the U.S. that are being wiped out.¹

As the New York Times reported earlier this month, climate change is literally contributing to the destabilization of our food system.²

So it's shocking that 238 members of the House of Representatives, including Rep. Simpson, were more concerned with casting a vote to deny that climate change is affecting our planet than to implement a new, common-sense policy to help prepare for global warming, and plan for ways to prevent disastrous disruptions in our food supply.³

Tell Rep. Simpson: Stop denying the reality of climate change and putting our food security at risk. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

Since getting elected last year, the extremist Republican majority in the House has been consistently, unconscionably, anti-science and anti-reality — including their notorious vote on April 6th against a resolution that simply said climate change was occurring, was caused largely by human activity and posed a threat to our health.⁴

Meanwhile, although the U.S. has been fairly insulated, growing demand for staple grains, along with significant crop failures from extreme weather, has caused major price spikes and grain shortages globally over the past few years.

Agricultural experts are feeling "a rising unease about the future of the world's food supply,"⁵as farmers from Texas to Tennessee to North Dakota lose crops to paradoxically simultaneous historic drought and floods.

It only makes sense that the Department of Agriculture would pursue a policy to protect our nation's ability to grow food. The three-page policy broadly states that the "USDA will develop, prioritize, implement, and evaluate actions to minimize climate risks and exploit new opportunities that climate change may bring."⁶

What makes no sense, is denying the pattern of extreme weather happening before our eyes, and being so determined in this denial to vote — as Rep. Simpson and his anti-science cronies did on June 16th — to prevent the Department of Agriculture from so much as planning for future extreme weather that is unfolding exactly how scientists have for decades said it would, posing a clear and present danger to our food supply.

Tell Rep. Simpson: Stop denying the reality of climate change and putting our food security at risk. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

As North Dakota's Souris River reached it's highest flood level in history over the weekend — breaking it's 1881 record — just weeks after the Mississippi river's historic flooding, and as Arizona fights to contain enormous wildfires, Texas contends with a drought worse than the Dust Bowl, and Missouri reels from it's recent tornadoes, we can no longer tolerate anti-science and anti-reality political posturing when it comes to votes on our food security.

Let's make sure that we send a strong message to congress that denying the reality of climate change is totally unacceptable.

Tell Rep. Simpson: Stop denying the reality of climate change and putting our food security at risk. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

Thank you for fighting dangerous climate denial.

Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager CREDO Action from Working Assets

1. "Climate of Denial," Rolling Stone, June 22, 2011
2. "A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself," New York Times, June 4, 2011
3. "BREAKING: Congress Votes Against Protecting Farms, Forests," Defenders of Wildlife, June 16, 2011
4. "GOP-led house Rejects Science, 240-184," Climate Progress, April 6, 2011
5. See reference 2
6. "U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Policy Statement on Climate Change Adaptation," USDA, June 3, 2011