flwyd: (1895 USA map)
I wrote previously asking people to write or call their Senators to include carbon pricing in the reconciliation bill. Now it's crunch time. If you're willing to do me a favor, please go to cclusa.org/take-action and make a couple calls to your elected representatives. It will take less than five minutes and help the U.S. achieve a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030.
(Please do this now even if you did it earlier this year. We're hoping for a really big showing.)


Since July, supporters of carbon pricing have made nearly 160,000 contacts to Congress and the White house on this topic. There's been lots of talk about carbon pricing in negotiations on The Hill, and lots of folks have endorsed the idea. It's not currently part of the reconciliation bill framework that Joe Biden announced last week or that the House is working with, but there's still an opportunity to get it in the Senate bill. Anyone who lives in a state with a Democratic Senator can help this happen: the more support (say) Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper hear for carbon pricing, the more they'll be willing to push for it in negotiations with Senators like Joe Manchin who are on the fence. Democratic Representatives also need to hear that it's popular in their district so they're on board if a carbon price is part of the final bill.

Republicans unfortunately don't have a seat at the table in the reconciliation bill process, but there's encouraging news there too. 72 Republican members of the House have joined the Conservative Climate Caucus and Senate Republicans just announced a climate plan with a target of 40% emission reduction by 2050. During a meeting for volunteers this evening, Citizens' Climate Lobby's government affairs leader used the metaphor that many in the GOP are now walking in the right direction and it's our job to encourage them to walk faster, which is a lot easier than convincing them to turn around and walk the opposite way.
flwyd: (1895 USA map)
I’d like to ask you for a favor. Feel free to say no :-)
Please take five minutes to email or call your two U.S. Senators and ask them to support carbon pricing. If you don’t have your senators on speed dial, a group I volunteer with has a tool to make this an easy contact. Just visit cclusa.org/senate

If you’re contacting a Democratic senator, please ask them to put a price on carbon in this year’s budget reconciliation. This is the most likely path for ambitious climate legislation this year, and Democrats are in the driver’s seat.
If you’re contacting a Republican senator, please ask them to support putting a price on carbon this year, because it will address climate change while strengthening the U.S. economy. While the Republican party is a little behind the Democrats on bold climate action, several GOP senators have voiced support for carbon pricing. It’s a policy they can support without losing their conservative credentials.

If you’re feeling unsure about calling Congress, I’ve shared a video of me making the call. I’ve always felt awkward on the phone, and if I can do it so can you! Pro tip: if you call after business hours you can leave a voicemail, and your support will still be noticed.

If you’re able to send two emails or make two calls, THANK YOU! If you’d like some extra credit, ask at least three friends to call their senators. Feel free to forward this post to them if you’d like.
Support from constituents gives senators and representatives the reassurance they need to do what’s right, and I’ve spent a lot of energy in the last five years focused on demonstrating to Congress that carbon pricing is popular. Your email or call to your Senator means a lot to me. You rock!


If you’d like to learn a little more about carbon pricing, here’s my quick explainer:

When historians write the history of the 2020s, how America responded to climate change at the beginning of the decade will play a big role. We face big challenges associated with the climate, and big action is needed to stop greenhouse gas pollution. The current U.S. Congress is in the best position in over ten years to ensure the biggest emitters shift course and drastically reduce their use of fossil fuels.

A price on carbon is one effective way to quickly reduce greenhouse gas pollution. A carbon fee would be assessed on coal, oil, and natural gas; low at first, but getting bigger every year. This will create an incentive to switch to cleaner forms of energy; companies that switch to clean power will be able to outcompete those who pollute more. The impact of higher fossil fuel prices on lower income folks can be offset by a carbon dividend: the collected fees are divided into equal amounts and distributed to every American each month. Since folks with lower incomes usually have a much smaller carbon footprint than people and companies who can afford to consume more, the carbon dividend is an effective way to make polluters pay to solve the problem while protecting folks who would otherwise have trouble with higher energy prices. Finally, to prevent businesses from just shipping carbon pollution (and jobs) to other countries, a carbon border adjustment can apply the carbon fee to imports from countries which don’t have a carbon price, and rebate the fee paid by U.S. exporters shipping to those countries. This incentivizes other countries around the world to adopt a carbon price to stay competitive. In fact, the E.U. just announced details of their carbon border adjustment, which has inspired China to step up the pace of their own carbon pricing plans. That’s right, the U.S. is currently lagging China in adoption of the most effective solution to climate change.

This idea has broad support: IPCC scientists report that a strong price on carbon will be necessary to keep the world below 1.5 degrees warming. Over 3500 economists—liberal, conservative, progressive, and libertarian—have endorsed the carbon fee & dividend plan, the biggest joint statement in the history of the profession. Recent editorials in major newspapers have called on Congress to pass a carbon price. More than 1000 businesses, plus hundreds of nonprofits, faith groups, and local governments, have endorsed the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, which could be the language used in a budget reconciliation bill.

For the past four and a half years I’ve volunteered with Citizens’ Climate Lobby, the largest carbon pricing advocacy group in the country—and probably the world. We educate the public and community leaders about the benefits of the carbon fee & dividend approach and the importance of climate action, and have gathered support from over 200,000 people around the world. CCL organizes several meetings each year with every Congressional office. In the last year and a half, thousands of people have been empowered to lobby their own Member of Congress via videoconference or over the phone. I’ve found lobby meetings with Congressional staff to be very personally rewarding. I truly believe that action on climate change can help bring a politically fractured America closer together so that we can collaborate on the big challenges of the 2020s. Behind closed doors there’s more interest in tackling these problems than you might think if you watch cable TV.

If you’re a fan of different climate solutions, that’s great! There’s lots of work to be done over the next three decades if we want to “hang on to the holocene” as Adam Frank put it. We need to pivot our electrical system, rethink transportation, improve millions of buildings, restore forests, shift agricultural practices, invent new technology, and build resilient communities, all while responding to emergencies and addressing injustice. I’m excited about carbon pricing because it’s the biggest step we can take, and it affects several emission sources at once, and it’s compatible with and complimentary to most other climate solutions. If regenerative agriculture or ending fugitive methane emissions are more up your alley, that’s awesome. To solve climate change we need a diverse team with a lot of specialized skills and interests.
flwyd: (smoochie sunset)
For the last dozen or so years I've celebrated Shadow Boxing Day on February 3rd—the day after Groundhog Day, much the way that Boxing Day is the day after Christmas. Shadow Boxing Day is a day to get stuff done, particularly stuff that you've been putting off and keeping in the shadows for awhile.

This year was different. An important member of the Boulder chapter of Citizen's Climate Lobby, Eliana Berlfein, passed away on January 31st, a few months after a cancer diagnosis. Today was a celebration of her life and her passing, starting with a funeral at Congregation Nevei Kodesh, an internment ceremony, and finally a consolation meal with family and friends. All three were beautiful and touching.

Eliana brought a remarkable amount of grace to her dying process. The service included a piece she had written to be presented at her own funeral. I asked one of her sisters for a copy of the "speech" so I can remember a few brilliant quotes, one of which was something like "Guess who I ran into on the way to heaven?"

At Eliana's grave we huddled around the rabbi so we could hear over the intense Boulder chinook wind; someone commented later that it was introverted Eliana's speech now free. In Jewish tradition, written material with the name of God should not be destroyed, so the concrete box at the bottom of the grave held many papers and prayerbooks and probably a Torah or two. Eliana had chosen not to be buried in a casket, which is apparently the ancient Jewish way and common in Israel but fairly new in the U.S. So her nieces and nephews bore her body, wrapped in a white shroud, to the grave on a back board and then lowered her body in, where the gentlemen from the mortuary laid her atop her spiritual materials. Her family members then each picked up a handful of dirt and then the rest of us continued shoveling, embracing Eliana with earth.

At the consolation gathering Eliana's sisters asked her friends to share stories, since we'd heard from the family during the service. My connection with Eliana was fairly narrow, so the day of mourning and celebrations was an opportunity to discover the other facets of her life, from art to web design to skinny dipping to baking desserts. She was a fantastic person and I'm bummed I didn't have a chance to know her better.

Her nieces and nephews saw my purple Chuck Taylor Converse sneakers and, recalling Eliana's long-established love of purple, decided to all get matching purple Chucks. I smiled and shared that I actually had a CCL story about these shoes. I bought them in September (part of my annual Burning Man reentry process) and made sure to keep them clean and in good shape for lobby meetings in November. But when I got to Washington D.C. this year and headed to Catharsis on the Mall, it'd been a rainy week, so I spent the weekend Rangering in mud and getting dirt and grass all over my clean Chucks. Then, awkwardly, the legislative director in my first meeting complimented me on my shoes as we were sitting down.

I'd planned to do some Getting Things Done for Shadow Boxing Day when I got home, but instead it turned into several hours of researching Caribbean islands with Kelly fr a trip this spring. Fortunately I Got Things Done on Groundhog Day itself, clearing all of the accumulated papers on my desk and stereo system off to the bookshelves I set up in the office last weekend. Now when the cats we're taking care of for a month jump onto my desk while I'm computing they won't trigger a landslide of financial paperwork.
flwyd: (1895 USA map)
Last week I joined over 600 other Citizens Climate Lobby volunteers for the annual Congressional Education Day. CCL's main lobby day occurs in June, when we meet with over 500 offices of Representatives, Senators, and Delegates to discuss our proposal for a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend with border adjustments. The organization's Legislative Director, Danny Richter, then analyzes all of the meeting notes and identifies topics brought up by members and their staffs. For both Democrats and Republicans this year, the top topic was the Climate Solutions Caucus while the second and third topics for Republican offices were jobs and the border adjustment while Democratic offices talked about the Paris accord, jobs, and the dividend. In November, CCL volunteers pay their way to Washington again to share those results, letting congressional offices know how other offices have been responding to our proposal. CCL leaders say they're not aware of any other group that meets with approximately every office in one day nor of one which can then share aggregate results of Hill-wide behind-closed-door meetings.

One of the most promising findings in this year's analysis is the degree to which GOP offices are engaged in our conversations. For the past four years, Dr. Richter has recorded the staff or member engagement level with CCL volunteers. Tier 1 covers meetings where staff showed genuine interest; Tier 2 meetings had quiet but not uninterested staff, and Tier 3 represents meetings where staff were either combative or totally uninterested. In 2014, the ratio of Tier 1 to Tier 3 meetings with Republicans was 3:1. Each year the number of interested offices has increased and the number of cold offices has decreased; this June we had 21 active and engaged meetings for every combative or disinterested meeting. While popular perception may hold that Republicans don't care about climate change, Citizens' Climate Lobby has found that many GOP lawmakers acknowledge, at least in private, that climate change is a significant concern for America and many of them think the federal government should take some kind of action. This is not to say that they're all ready to turn our proposal into law&emdash;many of them have significant concerns or they prefer a different approach. There was a sense at the CCL conference and among staffers on The Hill that opinions had shifted significantly in the last several years and that bipartisan legislation tackling climate change could come soon. I find this really exciting, and I plan to continue helping build political will for a federal climate solution.

Some personal notes:
Conference organizers said that the dress code on The Hill is formal: offices aren't likely to take you seriously unless you're wearing a suit and tie or socially-approved female- or military-equivalent. I got a suit and dress clothes when I was a senior in college (prior to a national honor society meeting), figuring that as an adult I'd need to wear a suit on occasion. Based on the CU Buffs lapel pin, I don't think I've worn the suit since I left college, so maybe this outing means I'm finally a grown up at age 38.

I heard from other CCLers to expect a lot of walking, since Senate office buildings are on the northeast side of the U.S. Capitol while House offices are on the southeast side, with under-street tunnels connecting the office buildings on each side. I lucked out with three straight meetings on one side. Some folks with short times between meetings told me that some kind staffers had helped them get access to the underground trolley below the Capitol building, which sounded pretty cool.

Speaking of walking and subways, both of them were effective modes of transport in DC. The town is designed with the assumption that a lot of people won't be driving a car, so sidewalks are wide and trains are frequent. The subway system also seemed significantly more cheerful and less grimy than New York's. A friend who used to work in DC told me about the bike path along Rock Creek, so I had a lovely walk from the National Zoo (home of photogenic pandas) to Georgetown, the C&O Canal (now a national park that's 185 miles long and about 30 yards wide), the Potomac River (where I found a Chartres labyrinth overlooked by a bird of prey), the Lincoln Memorial, Korean War Memorial, and Vietnam War Memorial. After five hours of walking, my thighs were sore for two days.

I met with four offices in and around my state. Although I'm not at liberty to discuss the details of those meetings, I'll say that I felt all of them were positive. Republican staffers I met with were interested in our proposal and expressed very specific concerns about policy details and how it might affect their constituents. This is exactly the sort of meeting we want to be having. And offices, even ones who disagree with us, are generally happy to meet with us, in part because they know we're not going to come in and yell at them.

Part of the CCL approach to congressional meetings is to start with an appreciation. It doesn't have to be about climate, but it needs to be something you truly appreciate about something the person has done or said. In one meeting that we were a little trepidatious about, the meeting quickly dove into the policy discussion before I had a chance to share the appreciation. After a spirited discussion about climate and energy policy that lasted twice as long as we expected, I wrapped up the meeting with my appreciation. This led to another five minute discussion on a different topic on which our group and the staffer shared a lot of common concerns.

Maybe we lucked out with the location of the conference hotel, but there's a lot of really good food in Washington from around the country and globe. I had fantastic Afghan curry, Lebanese lamb stew, a crawfish-prawn-sausage boil, and some good bagels.

The National Mall is bigger on foot than it appeared in my minds eye after looking at maps. I arrived in time to get a Burner welcome, do some dancing, and watch the temple burn at Catharsis on the Mall next to the Washington Monument, which is right in the middle of the mall. The Lincoln Memorial at one end and Capitol building on the other seemed quite distant while the White House, which looks as if it's just a few small parks away on a map, seemed rather small. One could probably explore all of the monuments on the National Mall in a day, but it would be a long one.

Speaking of the Lincoln Memorial, despite having seen countless pictures of it, I was unaware what's in the wings. The left side has the Gettysburg Address, which begins with one of the most famous sentences in English but which I don't think I had previously read in its entirety. It's really good and remains relevant today, the 154th anniversary of the speech. The other wing features Lincoln's second inaugural address, which I found quite powerful. Also notable to contemporary debates, when some folks claim that the Civil War was "not about slavery," Lincoln's contemporary remarks make it pretty clear that he (one of the two primary belligerents) thought it was. Above the speeches are two murals with perhaps the most White Savior imagery I've ever seen.

The Korean War Veterans Memorial, newer and much less famous than the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has a set of white soldier statues in a triangular field. Their features are much less distinct than most statues, creating a really beautiful ghostly sense of almost-presence. I was there a day after Veteran's Day so there were a lot of floral wreaths sent by various veteran and civic groups along the also-ghostly black granite mural.

I was familiar with the design and context for the Vietnam Veterans wall. But what was much more emotionally salient, and also familiar from Burning Man's temples, was all the offerings and remembrances left at the foot of the wall. These ranged from candles and flowers to photographs to poems to boots and hats. Much more than a name, these give a sense of the character and humanity of the Americans who lost their lives in that unwinnable war.

Before planning this trip, I had not previously realized that "The Smithsonian" is not one museum but half a dozen under an organizational umbrella. They line the eastern arm of the National Mall with striking architecture. Following a tip from my friend, who worked for The Smithsonian, on my last day I headed for the 4th floor of The National Museum of the American Indian. The shape and color of the building's exterior clues you in that it's got a bit of a different flavor and the tone of the exhibits made clear that Indian people were involved in telling their own story: it wasn't simply a monument to the collected artifacts of colonialism, which is how the British Museum feels. The 4th floor features a long curving exhibit structured around the cycle of the year, the moon, and the stars. Several alcoves introduced the world view of a different indigenous American people and how it plays into their culture, from dress to tools to housing. The other half of the floor is an exhibit dedicated to treaties between Indian tribes and the United States. I had learned from A People's History of the United States that every US–Indian treaty had been broken by the United States, but I didn't know a lot about the particulars. This exhibit does an excellent job of presenting the context, negotiating perspectives, and treaty technologies (from wompum belts to written documents signed with an X to modern legal documents) of over 300 years of treaties between White and Indian groups. The exhibit shows how treaties were broken or subverted, whittling away at tribal land through paperwork and occasional extreme force. It's a remarkably fair and informative exhibit, well worth a (free!) visit for anyone visiting the nation's capital.
flwyd: (1895 Colorado map)
Last November I was really disappointed with the election. Not so much the results, but the way the whole year and a half had gone. People weren't listening to each other. They were shouting to their friends and painting folks they didn't know as terrible people. I managed to mostly avoid the commercial media, but the ads I did see were almost universally against an opponent rather than in support of a good idea.

So I decided that after I got healthy, I was going to be the change in political discourse I wanted to see in the world. As a left-leaning Boulderite who rides in technolibertarian cirlces, I wanted to come to a better understanding of conservative points of view and then find some conservatives to have some non-confrontational conversations with.

Since I was still moving slow from my year of illness, I realized that I shouldn't put the bulk of my energy in an imminent fight like health care or immigration. So I turned my attention to climate change, a systemic problem that doesn't require action tomorrow, but definitely requires action soon. It's also a problem that's not rooted in liberal or conservative values: every human has a stake in the outcome.

I connected with Citizens' Climate Lobby a non-partisan group focused on both national climate change legislation and cooperation across party lines. I realized that waiting for Democrats to take all three houses of power wasn't an effective strategy for addressing climate change. Not only would it delay action until the 2020s, it would be an easy target for repeal when the winds of change shift in Washington. CCL's carbon fee and dividend proposal is structured to be attractive to members of both major parties and therefore stands a chance of remaining on the books as people come and go from Capitol Hill. Plus, with the revenue generated from pricing carbon going to households, it could become a widely popular program, meaning constituents will speak up to keep it in place.

For the last few months I've been working with several other CCL volunteers to organize the Colorado Energy Freedom Tour. Following an outreach model that CCL has used from the Gulf Coast to Kentucky to Alaska, we're visiting a handful of towns in eastern Colorado. We'll be giving presentations in Erie, Fort Morgan, Greeley, Parker, and Sterling (and hopefully more to come). But more important than the information we're sharing, we'll be having conversations with folks about climate change, energy policy, and engaging with our elected representatives to ensure that Coloradans voices, whether urban or rural, are heard.

If you know anyone who lives near these towns and is interested in energy, climate, or market solutions, we'd love to see them at one of the presentations. We're also hoping to meet with organizations like city councils, newspaper editorial boards, chambers of commerce, and growers associations. Tell folks to check out Colorado Energy Freedom Tour on Facebook or on our website.
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