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CCL Newsletter, May 2015
7 WEEKS UNTIL #CCL2015
 Meet our Keynote Speaker: Dr. Katharine Hayhoe
Named to TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World list for 2014, Katharine Hayhoe, CCL’s Keynote speaker for our International Conference in June, is an atmospheric scientist who studies how climate change affects us now. While Dr. Hayhoe’s work at Texas Tech University is making a huge impact, she may be best-known for her effort in bridging the broad, deep gap between scientists and Christians — work she does in part because she’s a Christian herself.
Together with her husband Andrew Farley, a professor of applied linguistics, pastor of Church without Religion, and best-selling author, Katharine wrote A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions. Her book untangles the complex science and tackles many long-held misconceptions about global warming. Her work as a climate change evangelist has been featured on the Emmy award-winning documentary series “Years of Living Dangerously” and “The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers.” In 2012, she was named by Christianity Today as one of their “50 Women to Watch,” while in 2014, she was awarded the American Geophysical Union’s Climate Communication Prize, and also named as one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers and “20 Women Making Waves in the Climate Change Debate.” Dr. Hayhoe was a lead author for the Second and Third National Climate Assessments and has served on the panels for the National Academy of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and many other professional organizations devoted to understanding and communicating climate change.
Dr. Hayhoe’s talk on Monday, June 22nd promises to enlighten and inspire us to search for common ground when we communicate about climate change. You will not want to miss it, so register today! Planning to lobby in DC? If so, you’ll want to register fast. We plan to schedule 900 people for meetings on the Hill. We hit 650 registrations this week, meaning there are only 250 lobbying slots left.
— Ashley Hunt-Mortorano
CCL national coordinator for Nepal, Aryan Uprety (right), helps with relief efforts in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Nepal.CCL Nepal’s national coordinator helping with relief
As the tragedy in Nepal unfolds, CCL’s Global Strategy Director, Joe Robertson, has been checking in with our people there:
I messaged to check on our CCL national coordinator for Nepal, Aryan Uprety, while the quake was happening early Saturday morning. He explained how bad it was just minutes into the quake, and was already on his way out to assist with the Red Cross rescue and first aid effort. We heard through others that he was OK, but didn’t hear from him directly till Tuesday.
Aryan was working to help search for and treat victims of the quake. At Durbar Square in Bhaktapur, he helped remove 57 bodies from the rubble. He has been helping to provide emergency first aid, and is organizing emergency blood donations and delivery. I think it is moving and important to see the gravity of what he is doing.
Aryan is so unquestioningly heroic in this work that he actually stops amid all of this to show gratitude for the work we are doing on behalf of the climate. Nepal is one of the most seriously and immediately vulnerable countries in the world with respect to climate change. Glacial melt is creating very dangerous conditions for many Himalayan communities, and the landslides we are now seeing as a result of the earthquake and aftershocks are made worse by the ongoing unprecedented rate of glacial melt.
And though Gary Horvitz, one of our co-authors on the winning MIT proposal, is in Nepal, he is safe. He has been visiting Aryan, and is joining him in the rescue and recovery effort.
Please keep Aryan and all the affected Nepalese people in your thoughts.
May 2 Guest: Tony Leiserowitz, Yale Project on Climate Change Communication
 Our friends at the Yale Project for Climate Change Communication have produced some outstanding work of late. In March, the Yale Project found that exposure to the 97 percent consensus among climate scientists about human-caused global warming increased a person’s acceptance of climate change as well as their support for policies to address the problem. The study referred to this as a “gateway belief” for climate change. In April, the Yale Project released its Climate Opinion Maps, providing climate change opinion estimates on the national, state, district and county level. Joining us for the May 2 conference call will be Tony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project, who will walk us through the Yale Climate Opinion Maps and how we can communicate the “gateway belief” about the climate science consensus. You can listen to the call live at 1 p.m. EDT this Saturday by joining a group near you, or you can listen to a recording of the call later in the day. A link will be provided on CCL’s home page.
Carbon pricing bills in current Congress
There are two carbon-pricing bills in the current (114th) Congress, both submitted by Democrats. One is a carbon fee, the other is a cap-and-trade bill. The Managed Carbon Price Act (H.R. 972), submitted by Rep. McDermott (WA07) is a fee, close in details to CCL’s own proposal. The biggest difference is that it would require fossil fuel emitters to buy permits (as opposed to simply calling it a fee), which we think will not be effective in avoiding the claim that this is a tax. Furthermore, Mr. McDermott is unabashedly liberal. The closeness of this proposal to our own from that side of the political spectrum raises concerns that if it were to get too much attention, Republicans would find our proposal toxic. As a result, CCL is in the awkward position of trying not to draw too much attention to a great bill because it doesn’t have the needed messenger.
The second bill, the cap and trade bill, is the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act (H.R. 1027), submitted by Rep. Van Hollen (MD08). We whole-heartedly applaud the revenue neutrality of this bill, as well as the decision to return the revenue as a dividend. However, CCL chose in 2009 to support a fee instead of a cap-and-trade program for reasons that are as true today as they were then. Cap-and-trade is our second-favorite solution, but we continue to believe a straightforward rising fee is a more efficient mechanism for reducing emissions than a declining cap, and that it has a better chance of garnering bipartisan support.
— Danny Richter
Photo by Sarabeth Brockley
CCL’s Joe Robertson with Patrick Verkooijen of the World Bank Group’s climate policy team, discussing a strategy to mobilize carbon pricing policies around the world.
CCL’s Pathway to Paris at World Bank forum
On April 15, at the Civil Society Policy Forum, during the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF, CCL hosted a Pathway to Paris working session, to focus on the role of direct citizen engagement in building political will for serious climate action. Joe Robertson was accompanied for the session by Jim Parks, Susanna Cafaro, Bruce Parker, Sarabeth Brockley and Kaia Rose. Sarabeth supported CCL’s work for two days of meetings, including a roundtable with the World Bank’s president Jim Yong Kim.
On Friday of that week, Joe was invited to represent CCL at a meeting of finance ministers, business leaders, and policy-makers, to discuss the building of a coalition of governments and civil society organizations to promote pricing carbon at the national level, around the world. During that meeting, it was suggested that an INDC (the national climate plans to be adopted in Paris in December) cannot be considered complete if it did not include some form of “economic instrument,” or carbon price.
Media Hits: A plethora of Earth Day op-eds
 In our April action, we encouraged our volunteers to submit op-eds to their newspapers for Earth Day, and their response was phenomenal. Among media reported thus far, we’ve counted 22 Earth Day-related op-eds in newspapers like the San Jose Mercury News, The Times of Trenton, The Sacramento Bee, The Denver Post, and Syracuse Post-Standard.
It’s hard to single out one piece, but Tim Reckmeyer in Prior Lake, Minn., did a nice job with his op-ed in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune – Earth Day: Free-market solutions to pollution. He opened with the Earth Day theme and history and then transitioned into our message:
Today the EPA is in the process of implementing President Obama’s clean-power plan. This plan builds on the legacy of two Republican presidents by reducing the pollution that comes from dirty energy such as oil, gas and coal. According to a recent Yale study, 75 percent of Minnesotans support regulating pollution from dirty energy sources. However, in this case, is regulation the best choice?
A carbon-fee-and-dividend plan pushed by George P. Shultz, a former secretary of state (under President Ronald Reagan), is a free-market plan with a fee on dirty energy that recycles 100 percent of revenue back to American households. It would speed the transition from our dirty past and into a clean-energy future. Within 20 years, wind and solar will power the majority of our homes, businesses and automobiles, thereby reducing levels of harmful pollutants while creating jobs and growing the economy.
Tim gets extra points for calling on his representative and senators by name to support Carbon Fee and Dividend.
Mr. Saunders goes to Iowa
Iowa, with its first-in-the-nation presidential caucus, will be the center of the political universe between now and the end of the year, and CCL Founder and President Marshall Saunders saw this as an opportunity to put climate change on the top of the national agenda. During April, he spent a week in Iowa on a jam-packed speaking tour arranged by CCL volunteers Greg Franck and Rick Smith.
The Des Moines Register covered Marshall’s visit in this story. In addition to speaking at college campuses, Marshall met with editorial boards of newspapers in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. As candidates parachute into Iowa, they will seek editorial endorsements, putting newspapers in the position of pressuring candidates to talk about solutions to climate change. Marshall said he wanted to make sure the newspapers “lit a few fires under them.”
The stars appeared to be aligned for Marshall’s visit. While he and a group of CCL volunteers were in a coffee shop in Cedar Rapids, Republican Congressman Rod Blum dropped in to meet constituents, and Marshall talked to him for a few minutes. Blum had nice things to say about the impromptu meeting in this Twitter Post:
CCL Canada to lobby in Ottawa for carbon fee
Our Canadian colleagues are going back to lobby in Ottawa for the eighth time as a collective since November 2011. This is not a conference. It is a training followed by lobby sessions. The registration cost of $30 reflects the difference. The training session will run from 1 to 6 p.m. on Sunday, May 31, 2015. The main purpose of the training is to prepare volunteers for election 2015.
Online registration opened for CCL Canada’s training and lobbying days in Ottawa on Earth Day. Registration closes Monday, May 25, 2015. Registration is separate from meals and lodging. To get CCL’s special rate at our hotel, you must book by April 30, 2015. Our hotel venue is the Courtyard Marriott in the Byward Market. Stay abreast of developments and bookmark this page HERE.
— Cathy Orlando
CCL growing Down Under
In April, Rod Mitchell, national coordinator for Citizens’ Climate Lobby Australia, conducted the Group Start Workshop for our new group CCL Curtin, in Perth, Western Australia. The Group Start was held at the home of Claire Spencer, the Group Leader. Curtin is the constituency of Julie Bishop, Australia’s foreign minister. Claire has been coordinating with Joe Robertson and Rod Mitchell, planning the first local group meeting with Foreign Minister Bishop, who will play a role in representing Australia at the global climate negotiations in Paris.
— Rod Mitchell
Launching of Citizens’ Climate Legacy Club
A big thank you to everyone who submitted possible names for our planned giving society. “Citizens’ Climate Legacy Club” was by far the most popular choice, and that’s what we’re going to run with!
You can join Citizens’ Climate Legacy Club by including either Citizens’ Climate Lobby or Citizens’ Climate Education as a beneficiary in your will, retirement plan, or insurance policy (please consult with your accountant regarding which option makes most sense for your estate).
Sisters Judy Berlfein and Davia Rivka (at left) have already chosen to make a planned gift to our work. To read about what motivated them to make this commitment, see the Q&A here. Benefits of joining Citizens’ Climate Legacy Club include:
1. A certificate, suitable for framing if you so choose, that celebrates your planned gift commitment.
2. An invitation to the annual planned giving and major donor luncheon in DC at our June international conference.
3. And, most importantly, the knowledge that your commitment to a stable climate will go beyond your lifetime, providing support for this great work for generations to come.
If you’re interested in joining the Citizens’ Climate Legacy Club, or have any questions about planned giving, please contact me at 785-331-5556 or lynate@citizensclimate.org. Thank you! — Lynate Pettengill
There’s no place like home… EarthToo.org
In concert with Earth Day and providing an alternative to signing up to go to Mars – have fun and sign up today as a Citizens’ Climate Lobby Earth Too change agent! After you watch the EarthToo video, you can “Like” it on Facebook and share this fun action with your friends. Upload your own selfie video on why YOU want to commit to securing a vibrant future for those of us still living on Earth.
By the Numbers
There are now 265 active CCL chapters in the U.S. and around world, and a total of 15,172 supporters.
CCL New Member Orientation
Held monthly on the third and fourth Wednesdays
Do you want to be a more effective volunteer?
The Intro call is held weekly on Wednesdays at 8pm ET, 5pm PT
The May New Member Orientation dates are:
May 21 and May 28, 8pm ET, 5pm PT
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Citizens Climate Lobby Chapter in Seattle, WA 
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