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For Immediate Release, Oct. 23, 2012

Contact:  Rose Braz, (510) 435-6809, rbraz@biologicaldiversity.org

Culver City Joins Dozens of Other Cities Calling for National Action on Climate Change

Community Threatened by Fracking Takes Stand for Healthy Climate

CULVER CITY, Calif.— Culver City became the 39th city to urge national leaders to use the Clean Air Act to reduce greenhouse gas pollution to head off catastrophic climate change. The Culver City Council passed a resolution Monday night, joining cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and Miami that are part of the Center for Biological Diversity’s national Clean Air Cities campaign.

“Climate change will bring more extreme heat days to Southern California and with them more ground-level ozone, which is linked to increased asthma and other respiratory illnesses,” said Meghan Sahli-Wells, the councilmember who introduced the Clean Air Cities resolution. “The Clean Air Act is a powerful tool in our toolbox to address this crisis now. But we need to use it urgently and ambitiously.”

A UCLA study released earlier this year projects that climate change will triple the number of days above 95 degrees in downtown Los Angeles. The number of high-temperature days will quadruple in portions of the San Fernando Valley and rise fivefold in an area of high desert in Los Angeles County. The projections are for 2041 to 2060.

Higher temperatures are expected to cause more heat-related deaths and an increase in ground-level ozone, linked to increased incidence of respiratory disease and death. Approximately 1.25 million children and adults in L.A. County have been diagnosed with asthma, according to data from the California Health Interview Survey.

Earlier this year Culver City, a community threatened by fracking, passed a resolution calling on the state to ban fracking until regulations ensuring the protection of public health, safety and the environment are enacted. Fracking exacerbates air pollution, threatens to contaminate water supplies, and adds to global warming pollution both through the release of methane, an extremely powerful greenhouse gas, and by opening up previously inaccessible oil formations to extraction and combustion.

The Center’s Clean Air Cities campaign is working around the country to encourage cities to pass resolutions supporting the Clean Air Act and using the Act to reduce carbon in our atmosphere to no more than 350 parts per million, the level scientists say is needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Similar resolutions have been approved in Albany, N.Y.; Berkeley, Santa Monica, Arcata, Oxnard, Santa Cruz, Richmond, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Calif.; Seattle, Wash.; Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pa.; Tucson, Ariz.; Boone, N.C.; Minneapolis, Minn.; Milwaukee and Madison, Wis.; Cambridge and Northampton, Mass.; Cincinnati and Oberlin, Ohio; Santa Fe, N.M.; Kansas City, Mo.; Salt Lake City, Utah; Miami, Pinecrest, Tampa and Gulfport, Fl.; Chicago, Ill.; Teton County, Wyo.; Eugene, Ore.; Boulder, Colo.; Burlington, Vt.; and Detroit, Mich.; Wilmington, Del.; Providence, R.I.; Gary, Ind., and Woodbridge, N.J. Several other cities around the country will be considering resolutions over the next few months.

Learn more about the Center’s Clean Air Cities campaign and get the facts about the Clean Air Act.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 450,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.


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