Open Letter to John Tanton on Global Warming

Dear John Tanton,
Mark Krikorian,
Roy Beck, and
Dan Stein:

I write concerning the landmark legislation to combat global warming currently pending in Congress.  What is your position on the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) that narrowly passed recently in the U.S. House of Representatives?

You claim to oppose liberal immigration laws in part on the basis that they are bad for the environment.  Specifically, you have argued that immigration fuels population growth, which in turn harms the environment by transferring people from low-polluting nations to the high-polluting U.S.

The NRDC believes that ACES, also known as cap-and-trade legislation or the Waxman-Markey bill, "has the major ingredients to generate millions of jobs, break our dependence on oil and reduce the pollution that causes global warming."  To date, the U.S. is increasingly isolated among developed countries by its failure to pass national legislation to combat global warming.  ACES would change that.

Yet I couldn't find much about the bill on your websites: NumbersUSA doesn't mention it at all, and FAIR mentions it once, to condemn the bill for failing to include new immigration restrictions.

I analyzed the House vote on ACES and found that the Representatives who scored highest on NumbersUSA's Immigration Report Cards, with a grade of a "B" or higher, voted against ACES at a rate of more than 5 to 1 (168-31).  These numbers indicate that most House Representatives support either immigration restrictions or legislation to combat global warming, but not both.

So my question for you is this: Will you ask Congress to support ACES and other environmentally-friendly legislation?  Or will you continue to assert that policies that limit immigration, rather than those that limit carbon emissions, are the key to slowing climate change?

Regards,

Dave Bennion
immigration.change.org