Citizens' Climate Lobby

CCL Training: Ask Community Leaders to Champion their Support to Congress

Contact community leaders you know and ask them to personally call to urge their members of Congress to support carbon pricing in climate legislation. Join CCL Action Director Todd Elvins and CCL leaders Robin Paone and Mark Welsch to find out how you can take action locally.

Skip ahead to the following section(s):
(0:00) Intro & Agenda
(2:03) Why now and which community leaders? 
(6:38) How they should contact their members of Congress?
(8:15) How else to highlight support?
(9:50) Volunteer success stories

CCL Training Page:
https://community.citizensclimate.org/resources/item/19/420 
Endorse at: 
https://energyinnovationact.org/endorse/ 

CCR Ep 64 Hinduism and LGBTQ climate work with Hari Venkatachalam

How does an American Hindu approach the climate crisis? What ancient values and teachings apply to modern life in America today? And how does this relate to LGBTQ issues and public health? Hari Venkatachalam connects his faith, work, heritage, and even his sexual orientation to living in a climate-changed world.

In the episode Hari reveals how extreme weather, which affects everyone, disproportionally impacts LGBTQ homeless youth. Citizens Climate Radio host, Peterson Toscano, explains, 

Up to 40% of youth living on the streets in the United States and Canada are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and non-binary. Many of them avoid going to shelters because they assume they will received the same discrimination and hostility they escaped. This is especially true for transgender and gender non-binary young people. This puts them at extra risk during extreme weather events.

Hari Venkatachalam also talks about his faith and the principles handed down to him from his father. Hari is an active member of Sadhana: A Coalition of Progressive Hindus, and his activism focuses on environmental justice, LGBTQ+ issues, and public health. He currently works in Tampa, Florida as a public health researcher for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Kathy Baughman McLeod, SVP, Atlantic Council & Director, Adrienne Arsht - Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, also weighs in to talk about the dangers of extreme heat.

The Art House

Joining us in the Art House is Dr. Krista Hiser, with the first in a series of an occasional feature called The Ultimate Cli-Fi Book cCub. The purpose of the book club is to look at climate-themed literature and consider how it can help us engage differently with interdisciplinary topics and existential threats related to the planetary predicament of climate change. 

 

In this episode Krista reflects on the cli-fi novel, Blaze Island by Catherine Bush, and lets her imagination run wild, as she pulls together some of the greatest minds in climate fiction. 

 

Dr. Krista Hiser is Professor at Kapiʻolani Community College. Her PhD is in Educational Administration from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She has published on community engagement, service-learning, organizational change, post-apocalyptic and cli-fi literature. 

You can read a written version of Krista’s essay at The Ultimate Cli-Fi Book Club for Sustainability in Higher Education on Medium. 

You can hear standalone versions of The Art House at Artists and Climate Change

Good News Report

Our good news comes from Anthony Leiserowitz at Yale Climate Connections. You will hear about a new fund which aims to bring more people into the climate conversation. 

We always welcome your thoughts, questions, suggestions, good news, and recommendations for the show. Leave a voice mail at 518.595.9414. (+1 if calling from outside the USA.) You can email your answers to radio @ citizensclimate.org  

You can hear Citizens’ Climate Radio on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, SoundCloud, Podbean, Northern Spirit Radio, Google Play, PlayerFM, and TuneIn Radio. Also, feel free to connect with other listeners, suggest program ideas, and respond to programs in the Citizens’ Climate Radio Facebook group or on Twitter at @CitizensCRadio.

 

CCL Training: Budget Reconciliation Explained

Join CCL Strategy Director Tony Sirna for a background review of the budget reconciliation process, understand how this process might apply to carbon fee and dividend related legislation and review additional climate legislation emerging from the Senate and House packages.

Skip ahead to the following section(s):
(0:00) Intro & Agenda
(2:23) Background on Reconciliation & Filibuster
(4:37) More about Reconciliation & Budget Resolution
(11:53) Carbon Fee & Dividend in Reconciliation
(16:33) Other Climate Policy In Reconciliation 
(33:40) What Have Studies Found?
(39:19) Q&A Discussion

Presentation Slides: http://cclusa.org/reconciliation-explained-slides 
Budget Reconciliation Actions: https://community.citizensclimate.org/topics/reconciliation-actions 
CCL Community Training Page: https://community.citizensclimate.org/resources/item/19/487 

Aaron Cosbey | Citizens‘ Climate Lobby | September 2021 Monthly Meeting

Border carbon adjustments, a mechanism to shield businesses in nations with robust climate ambition, have been a hot topic recently. The European Union has announced it will impose such taxes starting in 2023, and Senate Democrats in the U.S. have included it in the budget reconciliation resolution. To learn more, we turn to Aaron Cosbey with the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Aaron is an economist with 30 years of experience in the areas of trade, investment and sustainable development. He has served on the Deputy Minister for International Trade’s Academic Advisory Council on Canadian Trade Policy and recently wrote a report on the need for Canada to adopt a border carbon adjustment.

Skip ahead to the following section(s):
(0:00) Welcome
(2:35) Aaron Cosbey
(13:20) Q&A Discussion
(28:11) September Updates & Actions
(30:30) CCL's Strategic Initiatives
(41:04) Carbon Fee & Dividend: How It Works

CCL's September Action Sheet: https://cclusa.org/actionsheet  
September Pre-Call Video: https://vimeo.com/602102372  
IISD Report: www.iisd.org/publications/enabling-climate-ambition-border-carbon-adjustment-canada  
Understanding Border Carbon Adjustments Training: https://community.citizensclimate.org/resources/item/19/132  

CCL Training: Getting New Volunteers Engaged

We're having a surge of new members join CCL! Want to brainstorm ideas on how to best support your own local efforts? Join Elli Sparks, CCL Field Development Director, for a training review that pulls on some of the best ideas from the Onboarding and Group Development Coaches action teams to offer tips and suggested strategies for bringing new people aboard CCL so that they acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become empowered CCL volunteers.

Skip ahead to the following section(s):
(0:00) Intro & Agenda
(2:22) Onboarding Overview
(5:38) Basic Welcome Process
(16:30) Building Teams and Getting Help
(18:25) Boost Engagement via CCL Community
(20:17) Ongoing Engagement Ideas

Join the Onboarding Action Team for more ideas!
https://community.citizensclimate.org/groups/action-teams
Presentation Slides: http://cclusa.org/new-volunteers-engaged 
CCL Training Page: https://community.citizensclimate.org/resources/item/19/298 

CCL Training: CCL‘s Transformational Organizing Guide

Join CCL leaders for a review of CCL's training on our five pillars of transformational organizing to help us strengthen our leadership development and capacity throughout our organization. We'll review suggestions and ideas in our groups will increase the number of highly engaged and motivated people that we work with and enable us to reach our goals!

Skip ahead to the following section(s):
(0:00) Intro & Background
(3:19) The Pyramid of Engagement
(9:50) The CCL Way
(15:06) The Conditions that Motivate 
(20:22) The Elimination of Blame
(27:13) The Empowerment of Volunteers

Presentation Slides: https://cclusa.org/transformational-organizing-slides 
CCL Community Page: https://community.citizensclimate.org/resources/item/19/222 

CCR Ep 63 Climate Change Theatre Action 2021

Chantal Bilodeau tells us about Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA) 2021. Founded in 2015, CCTA is a worldwide series of readings and performances of short climate change plays presented biennially to coincide with the United Nations COP meetings. 

CCTA was originally founded by Elaine Ávila, Chantal Bilodeau, Roberta Levitow, and Caridad Svich following a model pioneered by NoPassport Theatre Alliance. It has since evolved into a U.S.-Canada collaboration between The Arctic Cycle and the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts.

Chantal is a playwright and translator originally from Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal, but now based in New York City, the traditional land of the Lenape People. In her capacity as artistic director of The Arctic Cycle, she has been instrumental in getting the theatre and academic communities, as well as audiences in the U.S. and abroad, to engage in climate action through programming that includes live events, talks, publications, workshops, national and international convenings, and a worldwide distributed theatre festival.

To tell us about one of the plays is Dr Zoë Svendsen, Lecturer in Drama and Performance in the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. Dr. Svendson’s play comes out of a larger project called Love Letter to a Livable Planet. Through collaboration with members of METIS Arts, Zoe created a short play called Love Out of Ruins, where we get to decide many of the details. 

Think of it as a much more sophisticated version of Mad-Libs with the aim to create a vision of the future worth pursuing. The play begins in the present time and moves forward. You get to decide the details that shape the character’s world.

You can read Love Out of Ruins by Zoë Svendsen at one of your CCL events. In fact, having a group of friends, students, or climate advocates sit and each fill in the lines can be a mind and heart expanding activity.  Then you can share the results at a Climate Change Theatre Action event you host and read some of the plays by the 49 other playwrights from around the world. 

Learn more about how you can get your hands on these plays and host your own event. Visit climatechangetheatreaction.com. 

The Art House

As a podcaster and radio producer, our host, Peterson Toscano listens to many climate change podcasts. Every now and then though he hears a well designed podcast that hits him in the heart and the gut. It becomes a transformative audio experience. This is exactly what happened when he first listened to Claude Schryer’s Conscient podcast.

As a sound designer, he is able to reach deep into a listener’s mind and even our bodies. Sound has that power. Peterson chatted with Claude about his podcast and his own journey as an artist addressing climate change. From that recorded conversation, Claude wove in sound effects and personal reflection.  We encourage you to listen with headphones on. 

The conscient podcast / balado conscient is a bilingual series of conversations about arts, conscience and the ecological crisis.You will find it wherever you listen to podcasts. 

You can hear standalone versions of The Art House at Artists and Climate Change

Good News Report

Our good news story this month comes from the US State of Utah. Tom Moyer shares How 25 Republicans in Utah came to endorse carbon fee and dividend.  If you have good news to share, email us radio @ citizensclimate.org

We always welcome your thoughts, questions, suggestions, and recommendations for the show. Leave a voice mail at 518.595.9414. (+1 if calling from outside the USA.) You can email your answers to radio @ citizensclimate.org  

You can hear Citizens’ Climate Radio on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, SoundCloud, Podbean, Northern Spirit Radio, Google Play, PlayerFM, and TuneIn Radio. Also, feel free to connect with other listeners, suggest program ideas, and respond to programs in the Citizens’ Climate Radio Facebook group or on Twitter at @CitizensCRadio.

 

Pamela Benson Owens | Citizens‘ Climate Lobby | August 2021 Monthly Meeting

Whether lobbying a member of Congress or doing grassroots outreach to enroll volunteers, the ability to really listen is a valuable asset. Our guest this month, Pamela Benson Owens, will coach us on constructive listening. Pam is the President and CEO of Edge of Your Seat Consulting, Inc., a consulting firm that is dedicated to helping for-profit, non-profit and faith-based organizations. Pam leverages humor and honest storytelling to create memorable and applicable strategies that organizations can employ to achieve their goals.

Skip ahead to the following section(s):
(0:00) Welcome
(2:58) Pamela Benson Owens
(13:36) Q&A Discussion
(30:24) August Updates & Actions

CCL's August Action Sheet: https://cclusa.org/actionsheet 
August Pre-Call Video: https://vimeo.com/602731724 
More about Pam: https://www.pamelabensonowens.com/ 

CCL Training: Introduction To Using Tiktok For Grassroots Outreach

Join CCL's Media Manager Ashley Hunt-Martorano for a training that will introduce you to TikTok and CCL's active channel on it (https://www.tiktok.com/@citizensclimate) as well as enhancing you and your group’s use of the newer social media platform to support your social media goals and interact with the millions of users online.

Skip ahead to the following section(s):

• (0:00) Intro & Agenda
• (2:57) Why TikTok?
• (6:05) What is TikTok?
• (12:00) Getting Started!
• (26:03) CCL's TikTok Strategy
• (32:30) CCL Tiktok Video Examples
• (44:40) How You Can Help!

Follow Us: https://www.tiktok.com/@citizensclimate 
Presentation Slides: https://cclusa.org/tiktok-slides 
TikTok Forum in the Social Media Action Team on CCL Community:
https://community.citizensclimate.org/groups/discuss/975/3102 

Take Action on a Price on Carbon in the House

Join CCL Executive Director Mark Reynolds, President Madeleine Para and Vice President of Government Affairs Danny Richter for a special CCL webinar for all-leaders because now is the time for a big push in the U.S. House of Representatives.  

Review the legislative landscape as context for this campaign, understand how CCL will amplify our asks to both Democrat and Republican House offices, and take action to help ensure a price on carbon is included in the reconciliation package.

Skip ahead to the following section(s):
(0:00) Intro & Agenda
(1:11) Opening Remarks
(3:11) Legislative Landscape
(12:26) Campaign Actions To Take
(16:15) Conversation Practice Activity
(21:37) Q&A Discussion
(35:30) August Monthly Actions & Speaker
(36:38) Sen. Whitehouse's Video

Take Action on A Price on Carbon in the House: https://cclusa.org/house
Budge Reconciliation CCL Community Page: https://community.citizensclimate.org/topics/reconciliation-actions
Presentation Slides: https://cclusa.org/price-carbon-house-slides
Questions? Ask on CCL Community’s Forums: https://community.citizensclimate.org/forums

#climatechange #climate #reconciliation #priceoncarbon #carbontax