Local governments can help protect our coast from the threats of offshore drilling and climate change, increase public health, and save money all by accelerating the transition to clean electric vehicles. Local governments have been at the forefront of the surging movement to ward off oil and gas drilling off the Atlantic and Florida Gulf shores, with more than 250 local governments having passed resolutions or taken other official actions in opposition. This push by local governments against offshore drilling is underpinned by the understanding that healthy coastal ecosystems are vital economic drivers, primarily through the coastal tourism industry, which generates tens of billions of dollars in the Southeast.
The importance of protecting our coast from offshore drilling becomes even more important as experts say that oil demand for transportation is set to decline as electric vehicles hit the road en masse in coming years. To put this in local terms, SACE’s recent analysis found that electric vehicles can feasibly offset all gasoline that could be produced by opening the Atlantic, Pacific, and Eastern Gulf of Mexico combined, but good policy will be necessary.
Join us for a webinar on June 6th at 12pm ET as we launch our new campaign, Protect Our Coast: Drive Electric, to partner with local governments around Florida to advance policies that will proactively accelerate our transition to clean transportation, reduce oil demand, mitigate climate change pollution, and help ensure our coasts are not threatened by offshore drilling and the effects of climate change. Register for the webinar here to learn about how you, as an individual or organization, can help promote electric vehicle policies in the communities you are involved with.
Local governments have many policy tools available to help do their part to make the transition from oil to electric transportation, and some communities have already reaped success and provided lessons learned through enacting such mechanisms. To make the policy options easily navigable for consideration in your local community, we have assembled a Protect Our Coast: Drive Electric policy guide, or “toolkit, which is a catalog of local policies that can be enacted to facilitate the transition to electric vehicles in an effective, sustainable, and equitable way. The toolkit contains specific recommendations that are based on real-world examples that have been enacted around the country. The objective is not to suggest that every city must implement all of these policy recommendations, but rather that public officials are encouraged to use the catalog as a menu of options to best fit the needs of their communities as they develop their electric vehicle action plans.
By supporting electric transportation options, coastal municipalities will help their communities preserve and protect their coastal identity, reduce pollution, improve public health, and save money.
If you are interested in learning more about how your local community can protect our coast with electric vehicles policies, or if you are a group that would like to join our campaign, please contact Dory and Chris via the contact form here.
Learn more with the links below!
See our one-pager, “Electric Vehicles Protect Our Coasts From Offshore Drilling” here