OUR WHY
The Problem
For more than a hundred years, fossil fuel companies — oil, coal, and natural gas — have rigged the system so they collect handouts at every level of government to extract our resources, pollute our communities, and keep the profit for their addictive and destructive fuels. From pipelines and refining to exploration and extraction, corporations and their billionaire CEOs receive some type of government handout for every aspect of the fossil fuel industry. Expected to cost $170 billion in our hard-earned tax dollars over the next decade, these giveaways increase pollution, pad corporate profits, and do nothing for consumers.
Dirty energy sickens people with conditions such as asthma, heart disease, and cancer. In the U.S. in 2018, 350,000 people died prematurely because of fossil fuel-related pollution. Globally, that number is 7 million to 9 million a year, as many deaths as from the tobacco industry. Poor communities and communities of color are disproportionately impacted where companies have dumped, extracted, and emitted dangerous pollutants with impunity.
As much as 60% of future oil and natural gas development would not be economically viable without government handouts. Meanwhile, clean sources of energy such as solar, wind, and battery storage are increasingly cheap and available -but anti-renewables policies are often the law of the land ensured by the policymakers whose campaigns are funded by fossil fuel companies.
"Americans are not only dying because of the climate crisis, but also paying fossil fuel companies to kill us. Their business plan literally means a death sentence for our communities.
Your tax dollars are going to go to those who are rich and are killing our communities. Do you want that?"
–Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr., President and CEO of Hip Hop Caucus
Speaking at the Sanders Institute, June 1, 2024
While the rest of us pay taxes, the wealthiest billionaires and oligarchs don’t pay their fair share.
As of recently, the 400 richest Americans paid a lower overall tax rate than almost anyone else. In fact, many don’t pay taxes at all.
Enough is enough.
“United to End Polluter Handouts is a coalition of local, state and national organizations campaigning to end more than 100 years of corporate handouts to the oil and gas companies and prioritize investments in our communities. Working together, we are building a movement that will finally divest state and federal tax dollars from an industry that is polluting our planet and emptying our pocketbooks.”
–Erich Pica, President, Friends of the Earth
The Solution
Our hard-earned tax dollars are the public’s money. What if the government stopped sending our tax dollars to fossil fuel billionaires and the dangerous companies they lead? What if instead our government invested in a future focused on providing healthcare, helping people achieve self-sufficiency, ensuring workers earn a living wage, improving education, and protecting our environment? What if our elected officials served the needs of working people and communities, not fossil fuel companies and billionaires?
United to End Polluter Handouts is a campaign representing dozens of economic justice, environmental, faith-based, youth, and anti-corruption organizations that count millions of Americans among our constituents.