SAMPLE EMAILS FOR YOUR COUNCIL MEMBER
The best email to your Council Member to stop coal is written in your own words. Here are five sample emails, written from different perspectives that may help you to find your own words to convince your Council Member to stop coal.
1. Local Health Impacts
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Dear Council Member _________________,
My name is _________________ and I live in your District. I’m writing to you for a coal free Oakland.
Exporting coal through Oakland will have disastrous health impacts on residents across the East Bay, and especially in West Oakland community.
I’ve learned that trains transporting coal between Utah and Oakland can lose up to sixty-thousand pounds of coal dust into neighboring communities. Coal dust contains mercury, arsenic, uranium, and hundreds of other toxins. It can cause asthma, cancer, heart and lung disease. .
If this terminal brings in 9 million tons of coal per year, that would be up to 12 trains per week through our communities spewing coal dust and diesel exhaust on our homes and schools.
Please protect our communities and keep coal out of Oakland. Please vote no on coal.
Thank you,
[Signature]
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2. Public Funding on Public Land
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Dear Council Member _________________,
My name is _________________ and I live in your District. I’m writing to you for a coal free Oakland.
Of the $500 million already invested in the Oakland Global project at the former Oakland Army Base, almost two-thirds is public money. Some of this money was specifically earmarked for use to reduce harmful emissions from the goods movement industry – not to do further harm to these communities plagued for decades by diesel emissions and fine particulate matter.
The proposed coal export terminal is on public land owned by the city of Oakland. Exporting dirty fossil fuels that endanger our health and poison our climate is not an appropriate use of public land. Only powerful developers and corporations who are trying to push through this deal behind closed doors without any public input stand to benefit.
Please vote to make sure that public money and public land are used for public good — not private gain.
Please vote no on coal.
Thank you,
[Signature]
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3. Worker Health and Safety
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Dear Council Member _________________,
My name is _________________ and I live in your District. I’m writing to you for a coal free Oakland.
Exporting coal through the proposed bulk export terminal would expose longshoremen and other workers at the site to tons of airborne coal dust. Prolonged, direct exposure to coal dust is linked to heart disease, black lung, and cancer.
Oaklanders need good, safe, and healthy jobs. The bulk export terminal could ship other bulk commodities — such as grain or metal ore — and still provide well-paying jobs. I support this project moving forward to provide economic benefits to Oakland, and to bring our goods movement industry into the twenty first century. There are no jobs on a dead planet.
Please protect the health and safety of Oakland workers and prohibit the coal exports in Oakland.
Please vote no on coal.
Thank you,
[Signature]
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4. California and Oakland are climate leaders
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Dear Council Member _________________,
My name is _________________ and I live in your District. I’m writing to you for a coal free Oakland.
Coal exports would also be a disaster for the global climate.
The extraction, transportation, and burning of up to 9 million tons of coal — whether it’s burned here or abroad — would result in tens of millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions. This would set California back on the emissions reductions targets announced last year by Governor Brown by as much as 10%.
But California is already reeling from the effects of a destabilized climate, and that is why California and the Bay Area are becoming global climate leaders.
Please help California lead the way in fighting global climate disruption by stopping the export of coal and other fossil fuels through any of Oakland’s ports.
Please vote no on coal.
Thank you,
[Signature]
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5. Coal Exports are not who we are
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Dear Council Member _________________,
My name is _________________ and I live in your District. I’m writing to you for a coal free Oakland.
If you do nothing to stop this, you maintain the status quo which puts corporations’ profits and the will of the fossil fuel industry before people’s lives and families and the right to good jobs that don’t take years off their lives.
This is Oakland, arguably the most politically progressive city in the nation. Our people shop & eat local, believe in trying innovative solutions for education like restorative justice. Last year Oakland convinced you to give us all equal access to composting. We have the highest percent per capita anywhere in the country that believe we must take action to stop the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, and are building community resiliency and local clean energy solutions.
We must not allow profit hungry coal mine owner and developers to put decades of progressive leadership and our people’s futures at risk for their own gain.
Please join us in the fight for a beautiful, diverse, thriving, secret sauce producing, coal free Oakland!
Please vote no on coal.
Thank you,
[Signature]
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