“Three of CCL’s lobbying asks pass Congress, will become law” by Flannery Winchester at Citizens’ Climate Lobby national site, gives, even in the awful year of 2020, some opening to optimism.

The big spending bill just passed by the U.S. House and Senate and now to be signed into law includes 3 measures that CCEA member CCL has been promoting, as described in that post, with its links:

BEST Act

CCL began lobbying on the Better Energy Storage Technology (BEST) Act in June of 2019. The bill, which authorizes $300 million over five years to reduce the cost of grid-scale energy storage systems, gained 24 cosponsors following CCL’s June lobbying this year. That support was a factor in the BEST Act being included in the Clean Economy Jobs and Innovation Act, which the House passed in September. 

USE IT Act

Politico calls this the USE IT Act “a top priority of outgoing Environment and Public Works Chair John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) that would boost carbon capture and direct air capture technologies.” CCL volunteers have lobbied on this legislation since June of 2019, too, and it gained cosponsors after our lobbying pushes. 

Climate-Ready Fisheries Act

CCL volunteers also advocated for the Climate-Ready Fisheries Act in June of this year—the bill gained 10 cosponsors after our lobby days. This provision will require a report to be prepared about efforts to adapt our nation’s fisheries to the impacts of climate change. 

The measures had bipartisan support. Let’s hope that’s the way of the future—and rapidly— for climate legislation!

Citizens’ Climate Lobby, 11/7/18

The elections are over, the people have spoken, and now the Democrats control the House of Representatives. In the following statements, CCL Executive Director Mark Reynolds and CCL VP for Government Affairs Danny Richter provide some perspective on what we can expect in this new political landscape.

Mark Reynolds: “Now that Democrats control the House, there is great potential to move bipartisan legislation to price carbon. I emphasize ‘bipartisan,’ because the only way to enact an effective and enduring solution is to have buy-in from both sides of the aisle. We believe a market-based solution, putting a fee on carbon and returning revenue to households, can find the common ground between Republicans and Democrats. With the IPCC warning that we have little more than a decade to take the ‘unprecedented’ actions needed to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change, we can’t kick the can down an ever-shortening road.”

“We also want to thank Carlos Curbelo for his leadership with the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, and we hope he’ll find a way to continue that leadership on climate change outside of Congress. Curbelo’s defeat, however, does not signal the end of the caucus. We’re confident other Republicans will step up to lead, and the existing and potential members are invested in continuing bipartisan work on climate. To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the Climate Solutions Caucus are greatly exaggerated.”

Danny Richter: “With Democrats chairing committees, we’re likely to see hearings that provide a robust and constructive dialogue on climate solutions, like the carbon fee and dividend policy recently announced in Canada. We’re also wasting no time getting the ball rolling on legislation to price carbon. On Nov. 13, we’ll send 621 citizen lobbyists to Capitol Hill to generate the bipartisan momentum to move forward with a bill in the 116th Congress and make climate change a bridge issue, not a wedge issue. We’ll continue working on both sides of that bridge.”

Read Mark Reynolds’ further thoughts on the future of the bipartisan Climate Solution Caucus in The Hill

Download pdf here: Shahir2

By Philip Finkelstein, Citizens Climate Lobby, 9/11/18

With the term “climate change” used more often than “global warming” these days, sometimes it’s easy to overlook one of the key changes we can expect: extreme heat. This summer, devastating heat waves swept across the Northern Hemisphere. From Japan to Canada, across Europe and the United States, extreme temperatures have taken hundreds of lives.

Extreme weather events, include heat waves, are becoming more frequent in response to rising levels of greenhouse gases increasing the earth’s average surface temperature. Periodic cooling and outlying atmospheric conditions may still occur, but in aggregate, the globe is warming at an alarming rate. This summer was no exception to the developing trend. With record heat waves on four continents and the hottest La Niña year ever documented, 2018 is incontrovertible proof of man’s pernicious impact on the planet….

read more at Citizens Climate Lobby