SWITCH! Campaign encourages switching to clean energy
by Chris Schweitzer, New Haven Healthy City/Healthy Climate Challenge
The New Haven Healthy City/Healthy Climate Challenge launched an eight week SWITCH!
Campaign to have hundreds of New Haven residents switch to clean (wind, solar, etc) electricity in their homes. Between Dec. 1 and Jan. 19 (MLK Day) the campaign will – with your help – result in a reduction of thousands of tons of green-house gas pollution in the coming years.
By switching residents will:
- Immediately cut greenhouse gas and other pollution by 3-5 tons per year per person.
- Send a message to the power industry that they need to move away from dirty fossil fuels to meet growing demand for clean healthy energy.
- Let the State government know that future investment in fossil fuel infrastructure is going the wrong way.
The SWITCH! Campaign is using public art, posters, PSAs (on WXPN), and tabling to get out the message that it’s very easy to switch.
Please join us and spread the word, get your organization to promote SWITCH! too! The directions are at healthyclimatechallenge.org, or contact Chris at [email protected] for more information or materials.
The campaign launched as the COP 20 [Conference of the Parties] meeting on climate change happened in Peru, where the future widespread use of fossil fuels is being questioned. Ahead of the talks, U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern made news by openly acknowledging that it was “obvious” that a proportion of what the coal, oil, and gas companies count as financial assets cannot possibly be dug out of the ground and burned if the world hopes to meet global targets. The solution, Stern said, will ultimately be one that leaves “a lot of fossil fuel assets in the ground.”
