Senator Toomey's home in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley is only about three hours from Washington, D.C., but judging from the senator's voting record the past few weeks, it seems a world away. Toomey has cast one vote after another designed to block action on climate change, undermine clean energy growth, and weaken protections for air and water.
Meanwhile, back in Pennsylvania, the vast majority of residents have been calling for the exact opposite.
A full 72 percent of Pennsylvania voters, for instance, support the Environmental Protection Agency's plan to limit climate change pollution from power plants, according to a survey from Hart Research Associates. Even in western coal-producing regions, 63 percent say the EPA should limit this dangerous pollution. And a large majority of Pennsylvanian Republicans--58 percent--feels the same.
Toomey hasn't gotten the message. The NRDC Action Fund gave him a Dirty Denier award last year for voting against every piece of environmental legislation except one in 2013. Now he is siding with the GOP leadership's Big Polluter Agenda instead of his state's own interests.
Perhaps it has something to do with the $445,966 Toomey has received from the oil and gas industries. Or the $865,283 he's gotten from the conservative Club for Growth, an organization which consistently opposes climate action and where Toomey served as president from 2005 through 2009.
It's time to bring the news home. Washington, D.C., is not Las Vegas, and what happens here shouldn't stay here. People deserve to know what Toomey's polluter-friendly votes could mean for Pennsylvania.
The nation's leading experts report that, if we fail to reduce climate change pollution, stronger heat waves and smoggier air will pose significant threats to Pennsylvanians' health. They also will be hit by more intense storms and floods, like those that came with Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Irene.
You wouldn't know it based on Toomey's votes when the Senate took up the GOP's Keystone XL bill.
Climate Denial: Toomey voted to acknowledge that climate change is not a hoax and that humans play a role in the crisis, but he opposed an amendment stating that humans "significantly" contribute to climate change. That's like refusing to say gravity "significantly" contributes to falling objects. Overwhelming evidence confirms that pollution from human activity causes climate change. To shy away from these facts in any way is to deny scientific reality. And to fail to offer any solutions is to leave Americans vulnerable to harm.
Clean Energy Blockade: More than 57,000 Pennsylvanians currently work at 4,200 clean energy businesses across the state. Yet Toomey voted down two amendments that would help solar and wind industries expand--even as he supports giving dirty fossil fuels a free pass from cleaning up their pollution.
Dirty Air: Toomey and his colleague from Pennsylvania, Democratic Senator Casey, introduced an amendment that would give power plants that burn "waste coal" a free pass on clean air safeguards. These protections reduce acid rain pollution and sulfur dioxide linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Pennsylvania has 14 of these plants, and though many similar plants already meet the standards, this amendment would exempt the Keystone State's polluters--leaving residents to breathe dirtier air.
It's disappointing to see Casey co-sponsor this dirty amendment, especially when he is usually a champion of clean energy and climate action.
Lawmakers of both parties would be wise to refocus on building a sustainable energy future for their state. Most Pennsylvanians want to tackle climate change and clean up pollution. And those same voters will be going to the polls in 2016 when Senator Toomey is up for reelection.