New Marching Orders from Senator Cardin: Get More Letters!

To paraphrase a great speechifier: If there is anyone out there who still doubts whether a little teamwork makes all things possible; who still wonders if our collective democratic actions truly influence our elected officials; who still questions the power of grassroots climate activism, today’s letter drop to Ben Cardin was your answer.

Today we dropped by Capitol Hill for our second big delivery of letters to Senator Cardin. Our first delivery of 250 handwritten letters a few weeks back clearly earned us the Senator’s respect, because today the Senator dispatched none other than his top legislative adviser, Michael Burke to receive our latest batch of 260 letters. Letter team leaders Ellen McGovern (Silver Spring), Susan Stewart (Greenbelt) and Sunita Pathik (Burtonsville) headed up the delivery ceremony as immortalized in the picture below.

Mission accomplished; a job well done. But the best moment was yet to come. Continue reading

'Mountains Just Get In the Way' and other gems from the Coal Lobby

By now you’ve heard about the DC-based lobbying firm that sent utterly forged letters to Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello and Pennsylvania Congress members Kathy Dahlkemper and Christopher Carney urging them to oppose landmark global warming legislation.Congressman Perriello received eight forged letters, one from a Hispanic non-profit Creciendo Juntos, five from the Virginia chapter of the NAACP, one from the Jefferson Area Board for Aging, and one from the American Association of University Women. Four letters in total were sent to the two representatives from Pennsylvania. CCAN Director Mike Tidwell interviewed a Creciendo Juntos Board Member on his radio show earlier this week. Listen to the show now.The news broke on Friday. On Monday we learned that the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) — the coal industry’s top front group — had hired Bonner & Associates and knew about the forgeries days before the House voted on the bill. And yet it did nothing.And because being responsible for forged letters to Congress isn’t bad enough, on Tuesday ACCCE spokesman Joe Lucas came out with another gem. Joe Lucas told a Guardian reporter that people who lived in the shadow of mountaintop removal sites welcomed the radical form of mining because those pesky mountains just get in the way.

I can take you to places in eastern Kentucky where community services were hampered because of a lack of flat space

How to Get a Strong Senate Climate Bill, Part 4: Party!

The passage of the Waxman-Markey bill in June may not be reason to celebrate but it is certainly reason to party. That’s because we’re going to have to fight hard to get a strong bill from the Senate in the coming months and partying is actually one of the best ways to prepare ourselves for that fight.

With everything we’re up against including a coal lobby that forges letters to our congressional leaders, we need to do everything we can this August to strengthen our movement for the fight ahead. That means taking actions like our campaign to collect 1000 handwritten letters to Cardin, but it also means building our community, connecting with one another, having fun.

In other words, we need to have some parties. Climate community mixers are just as critical to growing our movement as the actions we take, and as with our actions, the success of our parties depends upon you.

Please volunteer today to host a climate house party this month. Hosting is really simple; all you need to contribute is a space for a few dozen local climate activists to meet, mingle and have fun. CCAN will help you work out the details, spread the word, and turn out the crowd.

Contact me (keith@chesapeakeclimate.org) today to register to host an house party. You won’t find a funner way to help our movement this summer. Once you’ve registered, I’ll give you a ring to help get the party started. Sign up now and help us make this an eventful August.

No prize for me but Sen. Cardin sure deserves one

As you know we have put out the call to get Letters to the Editor submitted in Maryland. And you answered that call! Last week CCAN volunteers submitted four LTEs, so as an act of solidarity I submitted my own to the Washington Post. To be honest they haven’t gotten back to me about printing it…because they are probably considering me for a Pulitzer and don’t want to spring it on me too quickly. So, while I wait on my prize I will publish my LTE here for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

To the Editor:

Kari Lydersen’s piece about the important bill introduced by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) to prevent mountaintop removal mining [Miners Boycott Tenn. Over Alexander’s Bill, July 26] was missing a key explanation. Why would a Senator from Maryland

James Lovelock and the End Times

Future Hope column, August 3, 2009

British scientist and author James Lovelock has just had published a follow-up book to his 2006 book, “The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity.” This 2009 one is entitled, “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning.” Throughout both books he presents scientific evidence to support his view that humankind has caused so much damage already to the Earth, burnt so much coal, oil and natural gas, cut down so many forests, and unthinkingly overdeveloped so many cities and towns in an environmentally destructive way that the chances are not good that we can avoid a worldwide climate catastrophe.

Lovelock believes that the likely result of our historic, short-sighted disregard for what he calls Gaia, “a self-regulating Earth with the community of living organisms in control,” (1) is the mass die-off of 85% or more of the human population over the course of this century. Despite this severely depressing belief, he has used his considerable intellect in these two books to try to think through how we can make the best of a very bad situation.

While generally supporting their work, he is critical of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations-supported organization of 2,000 scientists who have been studying climate change since 1989. He is critical of them for underestimating the severity of climate change. Continue reading

Coal lobby resorted to deception, identity theft

At least six letters sent to Congressman Tom Perriello (D-7th Dist.) from Charlottesville-based minority groups opposing the American Clean Energy and Security Act were forged, the Charlottesville Daily Progress reported today. Congressman Perriello, a freshman Congressman from the Charlottesville area was considered a swing vote on the legislation.

First of all, was Congressman Perriello the only one to get these letters? I wonder…

Secondly, way to go Perriello for standing up to these lies and voting the right way on a important, if weak, clean energy bill.

The letters were sent by the Washington lobbying firm Bonner & Associates, which has lobbied on behalf of utility companies in the past. The firm did not register to lobby on behalf of any company or organization against the cap-and-trade bill.

Two of the letters purportedly came from the Albermarle-Charlottesville chapter of the NAACP and Creciendo Juntos of Charlottesville.

Read the letters:

NAACP
Creciendo Juntos

The American Clean Energy and Security Act, which narrowly passed the House of Representatives 219-212 in June, would put a cap on emissions of global warming pollution and invest money into the renewable energy and efficiency sectors.

According to the Center for American Progress, a $150 billion clean energy investment across the country would bring 45,000 jobs to Virginia and about $3.9 billion in investments, reducing unemployment by 1.1 percent.

How to Get a Strong Senate Climate Bill, Part 3: Get Local Leader "Sign-Ons"

In the first installment of this series, I talked about the big difference that collecting handwritten letters can make in pushing our Senators to fight for a strong Senate climate bill. Few things are likely to leave more of an impression on an elected official than receiving a ribbon-festooned stack of hundreds of letters from constituents, all urging their leadership on a particular aspect of a particular piece of legislation.

john-hancock

Well, few things perhaps besides a stack of hundreds of letters from local leaders. After all, the strategy of our campaign is to do everything we can to demonstrate that there is a broad and diverse community of support for bold climate action among the Senators’ constituents. To do that we can mobilize the grassroots to show numbers