Calendar

A presentation that will launch the Palouse Region chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby and explain the case for a revenue-neutral federal carbon fee and dividend. William Barron, Regional Coordinator for Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL), will lead the presentation. Saturday, March 29 from 1 pm to 4 pm, Fiske Room of the 1912 Center.

The Palouse Region CCL is officially started now, following a great opening meeting last Saturday with front page coverage in the Daily News on Monday! (One of the first items to discuss will be the best time for everyone to meet.) The following is from an email from Rob Briggs and Pat Rathmann last Thursday:

 

We will have our first regular meeting on Monday April 7 at 7:00 pm in the sanctuary (up stairs) of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse, 420 E 2nd St, Moscow, ID.

 

The agenda for the meeting will include listening to the national Citizen’s Climate Lobby conference call.  These calls are invariably upbeat and informative and provide concrete actions that we can take to move the campaign for effective federal climate legislation forward.

 

Additionally, we will be taking initial steps to organize into interest groups to tackle various educational, outreach, and lobbying activities.  We’re hoping to establish multiple interest groups that feel empowered to act, and then use the monthly meetings simply for coordination and sharing successes.

 

There is a wide variety of productive roles you can play in CCL.  These range from reliably reading local newspapers, to serving as behind-the-scenes climate science advisor, tabling, giving presentations, writing letters to the editor, and meeting with Senators and House members.  There are important roles for all skill sets and comfort levels.

 

As Bill Barron mentioned several times on Saturday, CCL likes things to run on time.  We’re hoping to run our chapter meetings in a disciplined and effective way that is respectful of everyone’s time.  CCL suggests that monthly meetings run for two hours.  We rather like the idea of finishing early and retiring to some gathering place to socialize and strategize informally.  CCL provides great opportunities for us to innovate locally, share nationally, and thereby attach a big multiplier to our creative efforts.

Please find attached a draft agenda for our meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) at 5:30 pm at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse (downstairs), 420 E 2nd St, Moscow. We will be serving pizza early during the meeting.

If you can listen to the national CCL call in advance of the meeting here, that will be helpful but is not essential. I found Jay Butera’s story particularly inspiring.

For each month’s call, CCL prepares an action sheet here for the month. Writing members of congress is the top action this month, and I will bring materials so that we can generate letters and postcards to our members of congress during the meeting (time permitting).

Please try to arrive promptly. We will need to finish before 7:00 pm, as many of us will be participating in the planning session (7 pm in Fiske Room, 1912 Center) for community activities to complement the Years of Living Dangerously series showing at the Kenworthy.

The meeting will be held in the Hecht Room of the Neill Public Library at 210 N. Grand Ave, in Pullman from 5:30 to 7:00 pm, Wednesday, June 11.  Pizza  will be served.

The next meeting of the CCL-Palouse will be from 5:30-7:00 p.m. on July 16. We will meet at Bucer’s (back room) at 201 S. Main Street in Moscow. Bucer’s offers a variety of snacks for sale if you want to eat. Many of you will probably continue on to the 7 PM meeting of the YLD group at the One World Cafe in Moscow. (Spanning the length and cultural spectrum of Main Street, eh?)

The meeting will follow the National Call on Saturday July 12 at 1pm by Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, climate change evangelist. (More about this on the CCL website.)

Our big success of the month is that the Idaho Democrats Convention approved a platform that included this statement: “For the sake of future generations, we are committed to taking proactive measures to prevent and mitigate the effects of climate change.” While the subject was not addressed in the platform draft that was presented at the beginning of the convention, CCL-P urged Latah County delegates to introduce a plank on Climate Change. Nancy Nelson carried the ball, and after some discussion (e.g. “climate disruption” vs. “climate change”) at the Platform Committee Hearings , this final wording passed with no objection from the convention delegates.

The Palouse Chapter of the Citizen’s Climate Lobby will meet from 5:30-7 p.m. on Wednesday August 6 at the Daily Grind on Main Street in Pullman. The Grind has a variety of beverages, sandwiches and pastries if you would like to eat there.

We will send the agenda and July’s minutes with our next reminder, but the focus of the meeting will be a Power Point presentation from the national office on climate change. Members, please come with tough–even adversarial–questions so we can hone our skills at giving presentations to local organizations.

The next national call is on Saturday, August 2 at 10 a.m. Retired general Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander will discuss the impact of climate change on national security. To listen to the call go to http://citizensclimatelobby.org and on the opening page, scroll down to National Call. If you are registered, you can listen live, or the call will be available as an MP3 by about 1 p.m. that day under the button “Listen to the August Call.” We hope you can listen to this prior to the August 6 meeting.