CCL Sept. 2015 Newsletter

Table of Contents: CCL lobby day in November National call: Jerry Taylor from Niskanen Center September action ties into Pope’s visit Let’s cover Texas! Update on Pathway to Paris Media hit of the month Regional conferences kick off We want CCL everywhere! CCL off to the races CCL Newsletter’s new look!

Thanks to the tireless efforts of hundreds of our dedicated volunteers, we continue to make progress towards climate action. To help us keep the momentum of our summer lobbying going, we’re holding a November Lobby Day on Monday-Tuesday November 16-17.

This 2-day event will focus on lobbying key congressional committees and key leaders in Congress, and includes an option for you to set up other meetings such as with your own member of Congress (MOC) or with other groups headquartered in DC to request endorsements. We would like you to come only if this makes sense for your time and budget!

Registration is now open! The deadline to register is October 24th.

Monday will consist of an in-depth dive into fine-tuning our lobbying skills and detailing the strategy for our requests on the Lobby Day (our focus for this event will be briefing our MOCs on what we learned from our June lobbying efforts). Tuesday we’ll head to the Hill for our meetings with offices. We’ll hold a post-lobby day reception Tuesday evening near Capitol Hill so you can share your experiences, and Wednesday is an optional day for meetings with advocacy groups and trade associations that you plan and schedule yourself.

See the schedule, details, FAQs, and register here.

Our guest for the call on Saturday, Sept. 12, will be Jerry Taylor, president of the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank developing and promoting proposals to legislative and executive branch policymakers. Prior to founding the Center in 2014, Mr. Taylor spent 23 years at the Cato Institute, where he served as director of natural resource studies, assistant editor of Regulation magazine, senior fellow, and then vice president. He is the author of The Conservative Case for a Carbon Tax, a paper published earlier this year by the Niskanen Center. The call begins at 1 p.m. ET and will be available onCCL’s podcast later in the day.

Pope Francis’ appearance before a joint session of Congress later this month will focus the nation’s attention on climate change, offering a great opportunity to press for effective action. The story is likely to be front-page news and will elicit commentary on editorial pages, providing us with an excellent opening to generate media. We’re suggesting that volunteers write letters to the editor responding to stories and commentary seen in local newspapers. For tips on writing these LTEs, visit our Current Actions page on CCL’s website. The Pope’s appearance also offers a great opportunity to communicate directly with your member of Congress. A suggested outline for those letters can also be found on theCurrent Actions page.

What do CCL volunteers do when they see a lack of political will? They build it!

That’s why more than 20 Texas CCL volunteers (and one from Washington state)are working together to plan the Texas Energy Freedom Tour, where several volunteers will be on the road for over four weeks to visit more than 30 cities and towns across Texas where CCL currently has little or no presence.

The TEF tour will give public presentations hosted by various groups (e.g. churches, local Republican and Democrat clubs, veterans groups, service organizations, environmental groups) and hold meetings to seek endorsements from local community leaders (e.g. farm bureaus, mayors, business leaders, Chambers of Commerce). They’ll also attempt to meet with the district offices of more than a dozen members of Congress.

There will also be three Group Starts along the way, including a new chapter in Dr. Katharine Hayhoe’s hometown of Lubbock, TX! Interestingly enough, the Group Leader for that Chapter will be Jordan Vogel who was interning with a Texas Republican Congressman’s office in DC this summer when he met some Texan CCL volunteers and decided he wanted to get involved!

Have friends or family in Texas who might be interested? Forward the tour’s homepage link to them.

In August, our Pathway to Paris team launched a Global Strategy Interns Program, activated the Adaptation Workstream, with a local working session in Bangladesh, and traveled to Bonn, Germany, for the latest round of global climate negotiations.

John Hansen, from the Carbon Pricing Workstream, joined Laughlin Artz, from the Media Team, and Joe Robertson, in Bonn. They met with representatives of other organizations, met with delegates from some of the national negotiating teams, and shared a streamlined draft text to establish universal principles for transparent effective carbon pricing that builds value for people where they live and breathe.

• You can see Laughlin’s on the ground reporting in a series of videos atpathwaytoparis.org/blog
• Joe’s report from Bonn, “The Bonn Conundrum,” is online at:geoversiv.net/conundrum

The UNFCCC Secretariat team agreed to support the official launch of our Citizens’ Climate Engagement Network during the COP21. On October 26, the CCEN Foundational Meeting will be a centerpiece of Minneapolis 2015. Learn more here.

The Pathway to Paris team now has more than 120 members working together through a dedicated Slack account, allowing for always-active contact and coordination across the world.

• Our Media Team will be starting weekly calls this month.
• During New York Climate Week, we will also start Pathway to Paris Intro calls.

If you would like to join CCL and the Pathway to Paris team in Paris during the negotiations, organize a local working session or support our policy workstreams from home, please use this sign up form.

When the Obama administration released the Clean Power Plan last month, it immediately came under attack by congressional opponents. It also presented us with a big opportunity to get our message out, and we invited our friend, former Congressman Bob Inglis, to co-author an op-ed with CCL Executive Director Mark Reynolds. Their piece, titled There’s a better response to EPA climate rules besides ‘Just say no,’ was submitted by our volunteers to newspapers all across the country and has been published in 23 papers so far, like the Philadelphia Inquirer. Here’s an excerpt from the op-ed:

“The problem is that congressional Republicans haven’t come to the table on the climate issue, and if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. By not being engaged, the GOP has ceded climate change policy to an executive branch that is imposing more government regulations, the least desirable solution Republicans can imagine.

“But just saying no to EPA regulations is not a viable option, either politically or environmentally. Why not, then, offer an alternative solution that adheres to conservative values? Tell the American people we have an effective solution that …

•  Uses the power of the free market, rather than the government, to drive both innovation and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
•  Does not increase the size and control of government.
•  Protects American businesses and grows our economy.”

The next round of regional conferences kicks off Sept. 26-27th in the Great Lakes region. The conference will be held at Camp Manitoqua Retreat Center near Frankfort, Illinois. This is a great opportunity to attend our introductory training workshop if you joined a chapter after it got started. CCLers from five states will converge for training, inspiration, planning and lots of fun (including the not-to-be-missed CCL Variety Show in which our members unleash their creativity!). Details and registration here.

CCL has supporters in almost every congressional district in the United States, and we are aiming for 100% by the end of the year. We just picked up supporters in three new districts (NV01, NV03 and TX34), so there are now only six districts left to go! CCL volunteers around the country are helping by contacting people they know in our targeted districts in Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Nevada. Now a new effort is underway to get letters to the editor published in those districts. Judy Weiss of Boston CCL was just published in the McAllen (TX) Monitor. You can read her letter here. If you have connections to people in these states who are concerned about the climate, please tell them about CCL and invite them to join us. And if you like to write letters, consider adopting a paper and writing to them. Here are the districts and the major towns in them:

AL05 (Huntsville)
GA08 (Valdosta)
LA03 (Lake Charles, Crowley, New Iberia, Abbeville, Morgan City)
MS01 (Tupelo)
TX13 (Amarillo, Wichitaw Falls)
TX15 (Seguin, Edinburg, McAllen)

Birchwood Wisconsin CCL supporter Aaron Telitz is on the Road to Indy and helping spread the CCL name. Aaron races in the USF 2000 series which is a step on the development track for Indy cars. He is currently 3rd place in the points championship and will be sporting four CCL stickers on his car during the season’s last races September 11-13 at the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey, CA. Aaron has a number of free race passes and would love to meet with other CCL volunteers and race enthusiasts. He also enjoys discussing awesome energy efficiency technologies developed by racing engineers and the latest sustainability efforts by Indy. You can contact Aaron for passes and meet-ups by email atlittle_t_11@hotmail.com or phone (717) 651-0455. Official race weekend website: http://www.usf2000.com/schedule/2015-championship/rounds-15-16