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A MESSAGE FROM ROBERT REDFORD

Dear NRDC BioGems Defender,

Over the next few weeks, President Bush and his congressional allies will try
once again to ram their disastrous energy bill through the U.S. Senate. They
fell only two votes short in November and they've vowed to make passage of the
bill their top priority now that Congress has returned from recess.

This bill may be the worst piece of legislation you and I will see in our
lifetimes. It would pick your pocket, despoil your natural heritage, endanger
your family's health and smother your hope for a more secure energy future. We
ignore this bill at our own peril.

Let me tell you our simple plan for thwarting this shameless attack on our
environment and pocketbooks. If millions of Americans each took one minute to
protest this bill, it would cause every senator who is tempted to vote for it
to think twice about doing so.

You can make this happen within the next few hours by doing two things:

First, go to http://www.savebiogems.org/takeaction.asp?src=RR0401
and send your two senators an email or fax, telling them to vote against this
pro-polluter energy bill. Then, forward my email to at least four of your
friends, family members or colleagues.

I am emailing this message to 500,000 BioGems Defenders and other NRDC
activists. If each one forwards this message to just four more people, we will
generate a national tidal wave of opposition before this day is over.

And that won't be a moment too soon. This disgraceful bill would pick our
pockets to hand out billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to the oil, coal
and nuclear industries. That's their long-awaited reward for making big-time
contributions to the Bush-Cheney campaign. They profit while the rest of us pay
the price -- in tax dollars and environmental degradation.

This bill gives the energy giants a free pass to drill their way through our
last wild places, burn more dirty coal, build a new generation of risky nuclear
power plants and dramatically increase air pollution that would sicken the
vulnerable -- especially children and seniors -- for decades to come.

It would establish oil and gas development as the dominant use of our federal
public lands, open national parks to the construction of electricity
transmission lines, exempt polluters from core provisions of our clean air and
water laws and waive liability for the producers of the toxic gasoline additive
MTBE -- even though it has contaminated at least 1,500 public water supplies in
all 50 American states.

You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a more backward-looking, wasteful and
self-defeating energy "plan" than this one. At a time when the federal deficit
is soaring and we're going to war in the Persian Gulf oilfields, the White
House wants to stick us with the tab for prolonging our destructive dependence
on fossil fuels, foreign oil and dangerous nuclear technology.

This is not a national energy policy. This is corporate welfare, pure and
simple. Estimates of the bill's corporate tax breaks range from $23 billion to
well over $100 billion with loan guarantees included. No surprise there. Big
energy companies cooked up this raid on the federal treasury during hundreds of
secret meetings with Vice President Cheney's energy task force and their allies
on Capitol Hill.

It's one thing to gouge taxpayers. But to claim this rip-off is in the national
interest, as the White House would have us believe, is a slap in the face to
every working American.

Poll after poll shows that the vast majority of voters -- of both parties --
understand that we simply must reduce our out-of-control appetite for fossil
fuels if we ever are to secure energy independence. That means turning American
rooftops into the Persian Gulf of solar energy. It means producing cars that
get 40 miles per gallon. It means constructing efficient buildings that use
half the energy of the average American office without sacrificing comfort.

Making this transformation to a super-efficient, low-pollution economy would
save consumers upwards of a trillion dollars, spare our last wild places from
destruction, improve our health, slow global warming and reduce our dependence
on undemocratic regimes overseas. It's a no-brainer to anyone living outside
the White House.

But unless millions of Americans speak out right now, the enactment of the
president's energy bill will doom us to an apocalyptic future of blighted
wilderness, poisonous air pollution, devastating climate change and endless
wars over fossil fuels.

Please make your voice heard. Go to
http://www.savebiogems.org/takeaction.asp?src=RR0401
and tell your senators to obey the will of the American people, *not* the
dictates of giant energy corporations! Call on Congress to create a sustainable
and affordable energy path.

And please be sure to forward this message to at least four other people.
Believe me, millions of Americans are just waiting for a simple way to stop
this madness and lend their support to a sane and hopeful energy future.

Sincerely yours,

Robert Redford
Board of Trustees
Natural Resources Defense Council

. . .

BioGems: Saving Endangered Wild Places
A project of the Natural Resources Defense Council
http://www.savebiogems.org