Energy Program News

TALLAHASSEE – Senator Bill Nelson and Representatives Brown, Castor, Hastings, Wasserman-Schultz and Wexler of Florida’s Congressional delegation voted for the environment 100% of the time in the 110th Congress, according to the annual Congressional Scorecard on major environmental issues released today by Environment Florida. 

Environment Florida is distributing the individual Congressional scorecards to tens of thousands of households in Florida as part of its door-to-door campaign to pass legislation in Congress requiring a minimum amount of electricity come from clean, renewable energy sources.

“These six members of Congress have again and again put the environment ahead of special interests.  In the 110th Congress they successfully fought to keep our beautiful coasts free of off-shore oil drilling, defend protections for endangered species like the polar bear and the recently recovered bald eagle, and make polluters pay to clean up contaminated groundwater,” said Environment Florida Field Director Holly Binns. “These scorecards are an important tool to educate the public about the voting records of their elected officials and to honor public officials like this that have a record of putting the environment first.”

In addition to tracking such key environmental votes as protecting the purity of our air and water; reducing global warming pollution; promoting alternative energy use; and increasing mileage standards for vehicles, the scorecards also list information about campaign contributions, biographical data, past Environment Florida scores, and telephone numbers for citizens to contact their elected officials.

“We applaud Senator Nelson and Representatives Brown, Castor, Hastings, Wasserman-Schultz and Wexler for being heroes for the environment.  These six were the only members of Congress from Florida to receive a 100 percent score for consistently voting to protect the environment,” said Binns.  Other members receiving scores of 85% or higher include Congressman Ron Klein, Kendrick Meek and Tim Mahoney.

With the help of these members of Congress, the 110th  Already, the House of Representatives has voted to cut billions of dollars in subsidies to big oil and the Senate has voted to raise gas mileage standards for the first time in over 20 years. Congress is making progress in several key areas.

“We urge other members of Florida’s congressional delegation to join with Senator Nelson and Representatives Brown, Castor, Hastings, Klein, Meek, Mahoney, Wasserman-Schultz, Wexler and work to strengthen our environmental laws—to stop global warming pollution, move America towards a cleaner energy future, and clean up America’s most treasured waterways,” concluded Binns.

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The scorecard and key to the votes scored within can be viewed online at www.EnvironmentFlorida.org.   Environment Florida is a nonprofit, nonpartisan environmental advocacy organization.