Where to from here?

Join the CCL National Conference

December 3-4

Get ready for 2023

The December National Conference will prepare you for action with the new Congress and inform you about CCL’s expanded policy agenda: what the new areas are, why we need them, and how they’ll help build bridges to pass big solutions like a price on carbon. Leave armed with ideas and materials to breathe new life into your climate advocacy in the new year.

See the full agenda here. It's good.

In light of this coming weekend's event, we will not conduct our usual Marin CCL chapter meeting in December.

The opening keynote speaker will be former Florida Republican Congressman Carlos Curbelo, who started the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus. Closing keynotes will be by Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) and Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY).

In between will be talks on CCL policy agenda, legislative strategy, carbon border adjustment mechanisms, clean energy permitting reform, building electrification and efficiency, healthy forests, and putting it all into action. After the brief closing keynotes, there will be a student mixer.

Timing (All online and PT):

• Friday, Dec 2, 4-5:45 Reception and Action Team fair
• Saturday, Dec 3, 10- 2: Main day of conference
• Sunday, Dec 4, 10 - 1 (Choose one): Climate Advocate Training; Conservative climate action pillars; Inflation Reduction Act details and implementation; Building diversity and retaining volunteers

If you're already registered, watch for emails with more details and connection information. Be sure to check your spam, promotions, and updates folders and update your zoom client.

Info and registration here. Questions here.

Coming soon:

Rep. Jared Huffman virtual meeting with CCL members in CA-02

Our worthy congressional representative just secured an amazing 77% of the votes in CA-02, which stretches from the GGB to the Oregon border. He's agreed to address CCL members in his district once the dust settles in D.C. with the new House majority. We've to hear his assessment of what's in store for climate legislation and how we can help. Stay tuned!

You can stream his August 30 Book Passage appearance with Dr. Michael Mann here.

Watch Al Gore's impassioned speech at COP 27. "There is a path to hope...And political will is a renewable resource."

Also watch UN Secretary General Guterres:

"How will we answer when baby eight billion asks, 'What did you do when you had the chance? We are losing the fight of our lives...on a highway to climate hell, with our foot on the accelerator."

Next stop: Permitting Reform

Why is it easier to build oil and gas pipelines than electricity transmission lines?

It's not enough to throw money at building renewable energy projects. You have to get that energy to where people use it. The environmental movement must shift from a focus on blocking bad things to building the things we need for a clean energy future. 

CCL's Research Coordinator Dana Nuccitelli explains the importance of streamlining the permitting process for new electricity transmission lines in order to meet our climate goals. As with all things political, it's complicated. 

Here's the video.  Here are the slides. And for policy wonks, the detailed discussion by Tony Sirna, CCL Strategy Director. 

From our Economics Research Coordinator, Jonathan Marshall:

New Study Confirms Why We Still Need a Carbon Price

If you have any doubts about why we still need carbon pricing to get the United States to the net-zero finish line by 2050, check out a new study published in Nature Communicationsby a team of experts from the Electric Power Research Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Ramboll Group engineering consulting firm.

Titled “Economy-wide evaluation of CO2 and air quality impacts of electrification in the United States,” it combines unusually sophisticated models of U.S. energy systems and air quality to demonstrate that a rising carbon fee accelerates both clean generation and widespread electrification of transportation and buildings, resulting in “substantially lower CO2 and improved air quality.”

Read the paper here.

Got offsets? Got crypto? Here's why you should be skeptical.

Bloomberg:

Junk Carbon Offsets Are What Make

These Big Companies 

‘Carbon Neutral’

DO NOT MISS THIS SERIES!

Doubt, Denial and Delay -- that was yesterday. Now it's Deception, Distraction, Disinformation and Doomism. Don't buy it. For more, watch Dr. Michael Mann's talk at Book Passage on The New Climate War. 

Ice Waterfall, by Paul Nicklen

"In climate science, a gigaton is one of the measurements used to record the amount of ice melting off the ice caps, roughly equivalent to one billion tons of ice melt. That mental image — one billion tons of ice — is a reminder that we do not want to wait until sea levels have risen 200 feet -- which they will when the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets melt -- before we finally decide to act."