Here's what the Sierra Club, Hawai`i Chapter did for Hawaii's environment in 2007...
- The Sierra Club was the lead advocate behind the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2007. The Club played an active role in drafting, lobbying, and public education around the measure to cap Hawaii's greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by 2020--roughly a 30% reduction in climate-changing greenhouse gases.
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The Sierra Club was successful in working to expand Hawaii’s bottle law to include 2-liter containers and worked to ensure passage (and a veto override) of a measure to increase funding for invasive species inspections from a container import fee;
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We once again fought off attempts to weaken Hawaii’s land use law at the State Capitol;
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The Sierra Club coordinated thousands of hours of volunteer labor for service trips, educational hikes, and interpretive outings;
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Our Chapter Director, Jeff Mikulina, was selected to attend training from Al Gore in Nashville on his Nobel Prize-winning “An Inconvenient Truth” presentation. Jeff has since given over 45 Hawa‘i-specific climate change talks to thousands of individuals in groups and organizations statewide;
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We defended Hawaii’s three-decade old environmental review law at at State Supreme Court, winning a unanimous decision supporting a review of the Superferry project (a decision that was later overturned by the legislature);
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The Hawai‘i Chapter was quoted in the media hundreds of times, including global media outlets such as the New York Times, National Public Radio, CNN, USA Today, and others;
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We won a major clean water victory in Federal Court against the City & County of Honolulu for over 4,000 violations of the Clean Water Act. We are asking that improvements to the collection system and supplemental environmental projects be completed in lieu of any penalties; and
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We’ve increased our capacity by expanding our membership and number of “activist” members that we can call upon to pressure elected leaders to act.
©
Copyright 2005 Sierra Club, Hawaii Chapter