But Washington, D.C. centrist Dems appear to want business as usual in relation to climate change. Take money from fossil fuels, we’ll put you on the House climate change panel. Exxon Mobil, give us some help with the wording on this bill. That way of doing business can and will no longer work. You are with us 100% or you are the opposition. Time for a line in the sand. :
The Line in the Sand & A Rallying Cry for the Next Generation
The Huffington Post reported Friday that Democrats had named Florida Congresswoman, Kathy Castor as chair of the revitalized House panel on climate, neglecting to consult or even inform Ocasio-Cortez or anyone within the Sunshine Movement advocating for the Green New Deal. Castor also went on to indicate she had no plans to exclude panel members who accept donations from the fossil fuel industry. Castor pretty much had to allow those members to be part of the committee, since she’s accepted over $70,000 in fossil fuel donations.
From the Huggington Post: “Coupled with back-to-back United Nations and federal reports that showed climate change already rapidly worsening, the effort established a new litmus test for lawmakers, breaking the binary of whether or not a politicians “believes” in the science of human-caused warming. The movement gained stunning support in just a few weeks. A poll released Monday found 81 percent of registered voters supported the policies outlined under the Green New Deal resolution ― including 64 percent of Republicans and 57 percent of self-described conservative Republicans. Last Friday, more than 300 state and local officials voiced support for a Green New Deal in an open letter.” If you have not read much about the Green New Deal, click here for a post that outlines the goals and strategies involved in the Green New Deal.
Apparently there are more adults in “the room” that is our Nation, than we had surmised. And there is a new generation of newly elected representatives who want a seat at the table, who want to be the adult in the room or the panel that insists that business as usual is not ok.
“We don’t have time to sit on our hands as our planet burns,” Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday in a tweet. “For young people, climate change is bigger than election or re-election. It’s life or death.
For the better part of the fall, newly elected progressives have been advocating to make The Green New Deal the centerpiece of Democratic climate change efforts. But the Party response is sounding a good deal like business as usual and that can no longer be acceptable. Given the two recent climate change reports, a line in the sand is precisely what is needed. Call it a litmus test if you will, but as Ocasio Cortez has put it so succinctly, it is now life and death we are discussing and it is on us, all of us, to draw that line in the sand and share our feelings with our legislators.
I can tell you right now that Udall and Heinrich will say that the Senate is not now considering the Green New Deal in GOP-controlled committees, but they have influence in Congress and they can reach out to Schumer, Pelosi, and Lujan and say: “I think we need to take this seriously. This plan needs to be seriously considered and these new legislators need a seat at the table. Make sure Ocasio-Cortez is on your climate change panel. And while you’re at it add Deb Haaland, Bo Khanna, Rashida Tlaib or one or two others of the early endorsers to the panel.”
Even more importantly, write to Rep. Ben Ray Lujan and keep writing Rep. Ben Ray Lujan and tell him you expect him to represent you and that you want the Green New Deal to be the centerpiece of Democratic Party policy and messaging. I just got an email from Lujan as most of you did. He was outraged by the death of a seven year old refugee at the border. Taking that position does not take political courage. I want an email from Lujan telling us he has heard from his constituents and that he has gone to Pelosi’s office and he has told her “We need to do this. I want you to press Castor to appoint 2-3 members of the Sunshine Movement to the select panel on climate change.”.
Retake feels that the Green New Deal should be at the heart of a sustained advocacy effort in Washington and that we need to use all our leverage to press our elected officials to stop treating climate change as if it were just another issue among many. We owe our tireless advocacy to the new generation occupying the halls of Congress, both those newly elected representatives and those protesters being arrested in those halls.. This could and should be not just an issue, but an issue of life and death and one that separates those who are with us from those who oppose us.
Time to flex our muscles. Share this with everyone you know and ask them to raise their voice also. Tell our elected officials it is time to take climate change seriously and that you will be watching for their actions in Congress and will not be amused by your “studying this carefully.” Time to act Sen. Udall, Sen. Heinrich, Rep. Lujan. Walk over to Pelosi’s office and tell her she needs to get this done. Contact info below.
In solidarity,
Paul & Roxanne
Tom Udall, US Senate
- 531 Hart Senate Office Building
- Washington DC, 20510
- (202) 224-6621
- Link to email form: https://www.tomudall.senate.gov/?p=contact
Martin Heinrich, US Senate
- 303 Hart Senate Office Building
- Washington, D.C. 20510
- p: (202) 224-5521
- Link to email form: https://www.heinrich.senate.gov/contact/write-martin
Ben Ray Lujan, Congressional District 3
- 2446 Rayburn HOB
- Washington, D.C. 20515
- Ph: (202) 225-6190
- email: grassroots@benrlujan.com OR
- Link to email form: Click here to get to his form. You will need to input your zip code to get access to the form used to direct email to the Congressman.
Categories: Climate Change, Agriculture, Land Use & Wildlife, Personal & Collective Action
Hi Paul and Roxanne. NM’s solid blue wave is tinged with green. Deeply tinged. One might interpret that green several ways: money, inexperience, corrupted, untested, inadequately educated/informed, fresh, envious, etc.
Writing Lujan is an exercise in futility. I have written him dozens of times. I always get the same form letter, telling me to talk to local staff. He is a faint shadow of his father, and he is the chair of the DNCC!! My take: staff manage him, and his staff are mostly corporate D plants from the Pelosi cabal. Never forget – Pelosi is the one who very publically stated that not one head would roll over the gutting of the public economy by the financial fascists in 2008. She certainly is a masterful power broker. But also is just another mob boss. She is 8 years older than me, and knows virtually nothing of science, environment, climate or HIPPO. She is a centrist and a steadfast practitioner of top-down, concentrated power, doled out via Hoyeresque tribalism.
Her almost certain rise to the top of the only D-controlled sector of the federal crime family will ensure that Range Rover/Prius environmentalism becomes the defining icon of more of the same, do-nothing, hyper-pragmatic wrangling that Nero was famous for. Only we are 2k years down that road, the roadbed ahead is gone, washed away by climate change, the demise of yet another failed empire founded on the crumbling sands of hegemony and narcissistic self-adulation.
The Green New Deal is as good as it gets inside the existing political structure. It is far from enough, but avalanches begin from small slippages of snow. The new faces within HOR will face the same daunting challenge of many before them: moving the carcases of the myriad dead in front of them out of the way before they can even get to the base of the alter of marbled entrenchment.
Pay to play exists within the political establishment as well as being created by it. How to get to Lujan and turn him, I do not know. Tom may not take fossil money, but I am not sure about Martin. Our new gov already has jumped on that bandwagon.
History has always shown that no one can successfully serve two masters, but the stories fail to teach this successfully. Why? Power does corrupt.
Not ONE human will escape climate disaster, the phenomenon is ubiquitous. There is no time left for incremental shifts, there never was. If we want anything of value to survive into some possible future, we must clear the glitter from our eyes. The horses pull the wagon, not the other way round. The school of fish turns in unison, there is no head to guide it. If we seek inspiration for how to FIND our voice we need look no further than the the caravans of foot power that propel desperate yet gentle folk toward us. That is a MOVEMENT.
Perhaps it would be advisable to take off our shoes and feel the Earth beneath our feet before the temperature is too great to bear. Chris Hedges often points out that the only thing that keeps the despot in fear, and therefore weak, is the sound and trembling of the feet of movements of those with nothing left to lose.
If we in Retake strive to move the needle, we must adopt both the newbies of change and the trappings of that change. Ru Paul recently said that we are all born naked, and the rest of our life is drag. Damn, if that is not crystal clear, I do not know what observation could be more true.
I agree with Mick Nickel re “Writing Ben Ray Lujan is an exercise in futility.” As a member of the Santa Fe chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby, I have not written “dozens of letters”, but I too have seen the futility in trying to influence Lujan. Ben recently had an Open Telephone Town Hall on Wednesday, December 12. He asked for questions “on any topic”. I asked him to discuss the recently introduced “Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act” (H.R. 7173) – a bill that may be the strongest and most comprehensive climate bill ever submitted to Congress. https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-carbon-dividend-act/ .
He dodged it completely.
Remember that New Mexico Executive Order 05-0332 sets statewide greenhouse gas emission reduction targets of 2000 emission levels by 2012, 10 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, and 75 percent below 2000 emission
levels by 2050.
CCL-NM started a separate non-profit org to focus on a NM-State-focused bill to be introduced in the 2019 Roundhouse on revenue
I think “Follow the Money” is an increasingly powerful strategy to address Climate Chaos whether its the dark $ trails or shaping demand for fossil fuel with tax policy, first at the State level, then at the Federal level.
This why I and others within Santa Fe chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby https://www.facebook.com/ccl.newmexico/ raised $4500 for Climate-Xchange.org to develop a 22 page report “Recommendations For New Mexico Carbon Pollution Pricing Policy” based on a revenue-neutral Fee and Rebate:
https://climate-xchange.org/2018/11/27/recommendations-for-new-mexico-carbon-pollution-pricing-policy/
The answer to addressing Climate Chaos is a concurrent “All of the Above”.
Take a look at my FB page: https://www.facebook.com/BobKreger66 .
Also https://www.facebook.com/Climate-Defenders-New-Mexico-309740506538624/
Also look at the Jan 28th Clean Energy Conference I am helping to organize:
http://www.riograndesierraclub.org/lobby-training-registration/
It’s about empowering NM CITIZEN LOBBYISTS teh next day to advocate for a livable climate.
This is great info, Bob. I am buried, in part due to loss of internet for most of two days due to snow, but also the ramp up to the session is unrelenting. I’ll try to follow up with this.