You might be wondering what the four things in the headline to this post have to do with each other. Frogs? Deforestation? SOS? and NRDC's Leaders????
Excellent question!
They are connected in a very simple way: NRDC's President Frances Beinecke and Executive Director Peter Lehner just did a video for the Prince's Rainforest Project where they had frogs sitting on their laps and they (Frances and Peter not the frogs) were calling for action to stop global deforestation. An SOS for the world's tropical rainforest!
Don't believe me check out the video (see it here).
While this video had a bit of a light-hearted nature to it, NRDC takes this issue very seriously. The loss of the world's tropical rainforests is resulting in 20% of the world's global warming pollution -- roughly the amount of the world's entire transportation emissions -- untold loss of biodiversity, etc. (as I've discussed here).
And that is one of the key reasons why we joined a coalition of environmental groups and companies (now called the Tropical Forest & Climate Coalition) in an agreement to push for strong incentives for reducing deforestation emissions in the US clean energy and global warming legislation. We had great success in convincing Members of the House of Representatives as the bill passed in June contained most of the Coalitions recommendations (as I discussed here).
And we aren't resting on our laurels, we are strongly advocating for these provisions (with some changes) to be included in the Senate bill. We need to secure these provisions in the bill that President Obama signs into office.
So I hope you'll join us (and the many others) in sending an SOS to world leaders (by clicking here). And I hope you'll support us in our effort to make sure the Senate includes the key elements to address deforestation in the clean energy and climate bill.
We need all the help we can get!