Citizens Climate Lobby growing by leaps and bounds

Citizen’s Climate Lobby’s focus is to support legislation passing a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend to address climate change. The 7-year-old organization has 197 chapters around the world and membership has doubled since April 2014 to 7,100. CLL members stay in touch via monthly telephone conferences the first Saturday of each month, 10:00 am Pacific time. Chapter members gather in one place, dial in on a conference call, and for the next 50 minutes, hear a speaker and news from other chapters. The September 6 meeting of the San Luis Obispo CCL chapter featured a talk by Rear Admiral Len Hering (ret.) from the Center for Sustainable Energy. Mr. Hering has some serious environmental creds from his time in the Navy, building a team that reduced energy consumption over 40%, diverted 75% of Navy waste from landfills, and reduced water consumption by more than 1 billion gallons. Mr. Hering spoke about the geopolitical instability that we are already seeing from climate change and how it is viewed by military leaders as the greatest issue we need to face. With hurricanes, rising oceans and resulting starvation and displacement in Bangladesh, residents are being shot as they attempt to flee across borders to neighboring countries. The unrest in Syria and the rise of groups like Isis are blamed on a 12-year drought and a government unable to deal with the problem, resulting in instability. It is estimated that 12 billion people will be displaced by climate change. “Where are we going to relocate all of those people?” asked Mr. Hering. “It is a huge problem we have to plan for now.”

CCL is a very focused organization and it has developed some effective programs, including the monthly call-in to keep members connected and enthusiasm up. Members conduct letter-writing campaigns to political leaders and submit letters to the editors of their local newspapers. CCL has created a speakers bureau of trained members who can be called out to speak for service clubs and at conferences. More information about CCL here.  If you are interested in getting involved in the local chapter, e-mail sanluisobispo@citizensclimatelobby.org.