Peter Roskam Continues Showing True Colors, Fails to Defend Environment From Trump

(Downers Grove, IL)  September 20, 2018 – This week, the Trump Administration announced it’s roll back of limits on methane gas emissions. In response, Sixth District Congressional Candidate Sean Casten, Jack Darin, Director of the Sierra Club Illinois Chapter, and Ted Bordelon with 314 Action released the following statement:

“You can’t claim to be a defender of the environment when you won’t stand up to Donald Trump’s continued attacks on clean air,” said Casten. “We have to look at the data and the data tells us methane is dangerous to our climate and that there is more methane in the atmosphere than there used to be.  This rule endangers all of us and Peter Roskam is sitting by doing nothing.”

“Conservation and environmental protection have long been bipartisan priorities for all of us here in DuPage County.  After all, we all breathe the same air and drink the same water,” said DuPage County resident and Sierra Club, River Prairie Group Chair Jeff Gahris.  “Unfortunately, Peter Roskam goes along with Donald Trump’s rollbacks of clean energy and environmental safeguards, and that is a radical departure from what our communities need and how our elected officials used to vote.  Peter Roskam can’t claim to be an environmentalist when we get a glimpse of him here at home while he’s voting with Trump and big polluters back in Washington.”

“Peter Roskam proved last year that he is a rubber stamp for industry interests and the Trump Administration’s war on science. The science shows methane is nearly 30 times more powerful than carbon at trapping greenhouse gases and capping it would curb other pollutants like Benzene and Toluene as well. Public health and climate change should be the top priority of our representatives, but Roskam showed he’s more concerned with keeping his corporate backers satisfied,” said Ted Bordelon with 314 Action, the nation’s largest resource for scientists running for office.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change and concentrations of methane in the atmosphere have increased by every scientific measure. The Obama Administration tried to limit the large amount of methane lost into the atmosphere at energy production sites on public lands. This week the Trump Administration finalized a rule to roll back these methane limits which follows a previous move to relax the methane limit on private lands.

The non-partisan League of Conservation Voters has given Roskam a lifetime score of voting for the environment only seven percent of the time. Since Donald Trump’s election, his score has dropped to three percent.

Sean Casten is a scientist and clean-energy entrepreneur. He has been endorsed by the Sierra Club, 314 Action, and the League of Conservation Voters as well as by many leading climate scientists and former government environmental officials.