PRESS INFORMATION
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – February 20, 2025
Contact: Karen Feridun, Better Path Coalition, 610-678-7726, betterpathpa@gmail.com
Environmental Advocates to Shapiro: Don’t Deal with a Would-Be Dictator
Joint Statement by the Better Path and No False Climate Solutions PA Coalitions
Harrisburg: Environmental advocates are calling on Governor Josh Shapiro to refuse Trump’s appointment to his Council of Governors. The long list of indefensible actions taken by the Trump regime in the past month have done incalculable harm to countless people across the globe and in his own country. He is dismantling our democracy. Our environment is just one casualty of his reckless actions. Governor Shapiro should not be normalizing any of this by engaging with him.
The phony “energy emergency” Trump declared as soon as he took office will have huge ramifications for communities that have already suffered for generations from fossil fuel extraction in Pennsylvania. We have called on the Governor many times to break his ties to the industry. This relationship will cement them.
We’ve never needed a champion more than we do right now. Pennsylvania prides itself in being the birthplace of American democracy. Our commonwealth should have no hand in ending it. We call on Governor Shapiro to put Pennsylvania and its people first in this unprecedented moment.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – January 31, 2025
Contact: Karen Feridun, Better Path Coalition, 610-678-7726, betterpathpa@gmail.com
Sometimes, the Devil Isn’t in the Details
Statement from the Better Path Coalition on Governor Shapiro’s Lightning Plan
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Pennsylvania: Natural gas production, data centers, and fossil fuel subsidies are among the features of Governor Josh Shapiro’s energy plan that are barely distinguishable from the Trump administration’s plan.
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“Sometimes, the devil isn’t in the details. Two things are impossible to miss - the president is an unabashed climate denier and climate change is already taking a devastating toll on our planet. Supporters of Governor Shapiro’s Lightning Plan will point to what they consider to be stark differences between his plan and the president’s call to “drill, baby, drill,” but, in this unprecedented moment, the differences are irrelevant. Any plan to continue and even expand fossil fuel production in Pennsylvania is absolutely unacceptable,” said Karen Feridun, Co-founder of the Better Path Coalition.
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Much of Shapiro’s Lightning Plan is a rehash of past economic proposals and a renewed commitment of his loyalty to bad actors like CNX and trade groups that lobby for the fossil fuel industry. Conspicuously absent from his plan is an environmental justice component, a facet of his proposal that aligns with the president’s attack on equity efforts.
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“He can keep repackaging his worn out fossil fuel agenda as much as he likes, but it won’t change the facts that fracking continues to do irreparable harm to Pennsylvanians and that, increasingly, the planet is quite literally burning. He has reneged on the oath he swore to uphold Pennsylvania’s Environmental Rights Amendment and on every promise he made to impacted communities as Attorney General after his Grand Jury investigation of the fracking industry,” continued Feridun. “His failure to take aggressive action to buck the federal government, put his constituents first, and transition the state from fossil fuels to renewable energy will be his legacy.”
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