Get the Facts: How the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act Benefits You and the Wildlife You Cherish

• *The Basics


• *The Mechanics


• *The Benefits.


• *Why We Can't Delay.

*For further details, check out NWF's factsheets on the U.S. House and U.S. Senate climate bills.

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The Basics

The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act follows on the heels of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (the climate and clean energy legislation passed by the US House earlier this year).

The Senate bill includes programs to invests billions in clean energy solutions that will help to protect and restore our natural world. Once the Senate passes its version of climate and clean energy legislation, the House and Senate will go into joint committee to pass a single bill to be given to the President and signed into law.

Scientists say that even a 2 degree rise in global temperature could have disastrous consequences for our natural world. If we don't act now, up to 30% of our world's plant and animal species could face extinction.

The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act acknowledges that the best economic and energy solutions start with investing in our natural world.

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The Mechanics

The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act establishes a "cap-and-trade" (or "cap-and-invest) system that creates market-based incentives to reduce carbon pollution through the use of energy efficiency and clean energy technologies.

Companies that do not reduce their carbon emissions will have to pay more for 'allowances' to pollute. The revenues generated from these "pollution payments" will be used to help restore our natural world and invest in clean energy solutions.

Facts

• The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act sets a stronger emissions reduction goal, pledging to reduce America's CO2 emissions by 20% over the next 10 years.
• The bill protects the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate greenhouse gases, and the integrity of the Clean Air Act.
• By meeting these reductions, we will be able to prevent our ecosystems from passing multiple tipping points from which we may not be able to recover.

In addition to capping the pollution that threatens our natural world, the National Wildlife Federation calls on the Senate to dedicate 5% of the revenue generated by this cap and trade system to investing in wildlife management and conservations programs around the country.

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The Benefits

• The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act increases our country's access to renewable energy sources.
• This bill will put America in a position of economic and political leadership when our leaders arrive at the Copenhagen Climate Summit in late 2009.
• This bill will protect lower and middle-income Americans from rising energy costs.
• This bill will expand the growing clean energy industry, which already employs 3.7 million Americans.

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Why We Can't Delay

We are already seeing the impacts of global warming: melting sea ice causing vital hunting and breeding grounds for polar bears and other marine animals to disappear; the lose of our coral reefs and the fish that rely on them due to increased ocean temperatures; and more frequent and dangerous flooding and severe droughts, threatening critical habitats for migratory birds.

Send a message today, urging your senators to take swift action to pass strong climate and clean energy legislation now.

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NWF Factsheets

• NWF Overview: The 2009 Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act
• NWF's Full Analysis of the ACES Act (PDF)
• ACES: Fair and Affordable
• ACES Factsheet

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