Update: We met our goal! Thanks to all those who gave, we have raised more than $75,000 and succeeded in securing the $30,000 matching challenge presented by a group of dedicated donors.
Our country isn’t broke, and budget deficits can be solved without harming the public and the environment. Instead of cutting essential services for the poor and middle class, we can find sensible ways to ensure adequate funding for government. We can end subsidies for polluting industries like billions handed out to Big Oil. We can make polluters pay by putting a price on pollution with mechanisms like a carbon tax.
This will protect the environment, 
cut the deficit, and equip our government to advance the public good.
Since the launch of our campaign, thousands of activists have shown support for a carbon tax and pressured the new super committee to end handouts to Big Oil and other polluting industries. More than 3,000 people downloaded our grassroots action kit.
We recently released our 2011 Green Scissors report, in which we call attention to $380 billion in polluter giveaways and other subsidies that harm the environment and waste taxpayer dollars.
Friends of the Earth's Earth Budget Campaign seeks to:
Since 1993, with the publication of our Earth Budget report (the first comprehensive analysis of federal environmental spending), Friends of the Earth has worked to reform federal tax and budget priorities. Our Green Scissors campaign has eliminated more than $26 billion in environmentally harmful federal spending and subsidies, while our longstanding work to transform public finance seeks to make our tax dollars work for the environment.
Corporate polluters have had their way in Washington for too long. It’s time to start prioritizing people and the planet for a change. Help us by taking action today!
Send a message to the 12 members of the budget super committee: Eliminate giveaways to corporate polluters and raise revenue by taxing their pollution.
Urge your member of Congress to tax Wall Street speculators. Find out more about the Robin Hood tax, which would raise billions per year to fund global needs.
Download the action toolkit: 5 ways you can help put an end to oil and gas subsidies.
Read Friends of the Earth's Ben Schreiber on Grist.org, "Could a carbon tax help solve our budget woes?."
Read Friends of the Earth president Erich Pica on Huffington Post, "An Environmental Response to the Budget Debate (Part 1): Sharpening the Green Scissors."
Learn more about our campaign and ways to take action by listening to our phone briefing held with activists on August 10. Click here to download the audio file.
Watch Ben Schreiber's interview on CSPAN.
Opinion-Editorials and Letters to the Editor in the Record Searchlight (Redding, CA), Observer-Reporter (Washington-Greene, PA), Post and Courrier (Charleston, SC), Seacoast newspapers (NH), among others.
Spending Cuts are Great When the Spending is Stupid, Time online:
There’s a tired fight raging in Washington between anti-government people who want spending cuts and pro-government people who don’t. Here’s a crazy thought: Maybe we should spend more on good things and less on dumb things.
Welcome to the United States of Austerity, Mother Jones:
Ben Schreiber, a tax analyst with Friends of the Earth, a national environmental advocacy group, says the Obama-GOP debt ceiling deal could also drive a stake through the heart of investments in wind, solar, and other clean-energy technologies... "Polluters are getting off scot-free," he says. "We're basically turning the environment over to the industry."
Debt and carbon taxes: Obama's last chance for climate redemption is just after the 2012 election, Climate Progress.
Debt deal, promising energy budget cuts, appears to chill hopes for a carbon tax, New York Times.
Green energy: California poll finds overwhelming support, Los Angeles Times:
"While 79% favor greenhouse gas regulations, they are split between a cap and trade system (54% in favor) and a carbon tax (60% in favor)."
Learn more about Earth Budget campaign, and read a good summary of our Earth Budget vision as expressed in our 2010 testimony to the House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means.
Watch The Story of Broke, a video by Annie Leonard, and read our blog on the Story of Broke site.
Learn more about subsidies and the environment, and visit our Green Scissors coalition website.
Read more about oil subsidies, including those slated for elimination in Obama's budget, and download our oil subsidies action guide.
Read our primer on environmental taxes and our guide to environmental tax shifting.
Recent Advocacy
Read an August 9 letter from environmental groups with recommendations to the Super Committee.
Read our August 1 news release urging opposition to the draconian de
al to raise the debt ceiling.
Read our July 19 letter to Speaker Boehner opposing the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011.
Read our June 15 letter to Representatives Smith and Conyers opposing a balanced budget amendment.
Read our July 13 letter to Congress opposing a balanced budget amendment.
Learn about our work on the "Robin Hood tax," a micro-tax on Wall Street currency trades.
Read our testimony to the National Academy of Sciences on their carbon audit of the tax code.
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