Hello clean-air-and-climate friends:

We have our signature packets and have started collecting signatures! Volunteer Bob Cieri has already collected over 200 signatures, so he’s well on his way to being the first member of the 250 Club. Read more here about his experience and his advice, and stay tuned for more information about the prizes and recognition bestowed on members of the 250 Club (folks who gather 250+ signatures). FYI Bob is also co-ordinating teams of signature-gatherers for the 4th of July and other upcoming events; to volunteer please email your chapter leader and/or email Bob at bob@DarnAir.org and/or sign up directly here!

Launch of “emissionaries” program: Our “emissionaries” program, which connects sponsors who each contribute $500 with passionate young people who pledge to spend about 40 hours gathering signatures—that should translate to 1000+ signatures—in exchange for $500, is ready to go thanks to generous contributions from emissionary sponsors Charles Ashurst, David Ibarra (who is running for Salt Lake City mayor), and Betty Tanzey. We need more donors so please contribute if you can, and on the other side of the equation we need your help telling passionate young people who are 18+ and residents of Utah to email us at info@DarnAir.org to get involved and earn a little cash! (And, by way of coincide, the LDS Church just announced that supporting LDS missionaries will now cost families and supporters $500 a month… the same amount it costs to sponsor an emissionary! :)

KRCL 90.9FM RadioACTive interview and Tribune ed board meeting: Two of our fabulous young volunteers, Tim Woodruff and Ronan Carrier, did a great job in a KRCL 90.9FM RadioACTive interview; follow the link (and start at the 43:00 mark) for a recording of the interview, excerpts of which will be played in the days ahead on KRCL 90.9FM. Also in the news: Ronan and yours truly (Yoram Bauman) had a good interview with the Salt Lake Tribune editorial board; we don’t know if or when they’ll write an editorial, but we did get this news article by reporter Benjamin Wood. See also this LTE (letter to the editor) from Jean Lown in Logan, this Trib Talk podcast, two recent Tribune columns (“The free market wants a beautiful Utah. Not a coal mine” by George Pyle, and “Trump can try to prop up the coal industry, but rural Utah needs to start preparing for the future” by Robert Gehrke), and an interview with yours truly on Utah Public Radio.

Resources: The hosts at KRCL 90.9FM  were super-impressed with our new calculator tool that allows you to see how our policy (the carbon tax, the elimination of the state sales tax on grocery store food, etc.) affect your particular household, so kudos to our web gurus at WPSlopes for their terrific work on this (and the rest of our website!). Also check out our distributional analysis showing that pocketbook impacts will be (slightly) positive for the bottom two income quintiles, i.e., the lowest-income 40% of households in Utah. On the less wonky side, check out the Guide to Gathering The Darn Signatures and our list of events. And if you want stickers or yard signs please just donate just a few dollars (we’re asking $5 for stickers $20 for yard signs) or let us know if you can’t afford it and we’ll find other generous donors to cover you!

4th of July and other events: Parades and other outdoor events are a great place to gather signatures—especially early in the summer ,when it’s not yet too hot, when it’s not yet likely that you’ll hear “Sorry, I’ve already signed that”, and when our experience is that you might get up to 80 signatures per hour—and it’s not going to get any better than the 4th of July, with parades all around the state and many other events like the multi-day Freedom Festival in Provo. Please email your chapter leader and/or Bob Cieri at bob@DarnAir.org to help gather signatures around the 4th of July or other events coming up soon! (Or sign up directly here.) Together we can work to ensure that the 4th of July will also be known as Independence from Fossil Fuel Pollution Day!