From the frontlines

It may be vacation time, but 1Sky sure is busy fighting for climate. On Monday, 1Sky supporters and organizers held 69 beach parties in 28 states nationwide to welcome the Senate home for summer recess. And that's just the beginning.

Not only are 1Sky Supporters out in force with their Senate beach parties and rallies; they're hitting the blogs with messages to their senators. Take Mary's blog, A Female New Mexican's Political Point of View. Mary supplies a direct message to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM):

By Jenna Garland, a 1Sky organizer working with Clean Water Action in Minnesota. -- Luis

After the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) cleared the Energy and Commerce Committee, many people were surprised to see the loudest opposition to the strong climate legislation not coming from oil or coal companies, but from the northwest corner of Minnesota.

1Sky is relieved by the House of Representative’s passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454). 1Sky’s Campaign Director Gillian Caldwell said: "Thousands of activists across the country made a difference improving the bill and in securing this vote...

Here are more facts that the Big Oil and Dirty Coal lobbyists don't want you to know about the new clean energy bill: read this Associated Press story about a just released Congressional Budget Office report that, according to the AP shows:

Low-income families will receive hundreds of dollars a year to help pay higher energy bills if Congress enacts the first-ever limits on the gases blamed for global warming, according to a new analysis.”

1Sky and a group of our allies recently sent a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, asking for the opportunity to strengthen the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454). Our message was clear: Congress will need to stand strong against the special interests that seek to weaken the bill at every turn.

I keep wracking my brains with getting members of Congress -- and really, how to get all Americans -- active on helping to pollute less and diminish the climate crisis. Before I came to 1Sky, I was like most people in what I call the "mushy middle." I knew about the climate crisis, and yet, I was not motivated to act beyond changing my own behavior. Now I can’t understand why there are not riots in the streets demanding that we limit carbon emissions.

I have an idea: if we could bring some people from the islands that are likely to be under water first (like the Maldives) and get them to lobby Congress, then maybe Congress will understand? Something about meeting victims tends to move people in a way that statistics and graphs and pictures of icebergs melting do not.

Here's a post from Tama Griffith, Field Fellow here at 1Sky -- Luis

This past Friday, members of 1Sky’s DC Rapid Response Team hit the streets to create a buzz in the offices of four key members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The team of ten met at Dupont Circle and fanned out to ask people walking by to call the committee members to strengthen the Waxman-Markey bill.

The following is a guest post by veteran climat activist Ted Glick, cross-posted from the CCAN Blog. -- Luis

“This is 2009. We’ve got 41 years in this deal, and we shouldn’t be so worried about the first 10 years.”

–Congressman Mike Doyle, Environment and Energy Daily, May 7, 2009

I had no plans yesterday morning as I woke up and turned on my computer to spend the afternoon in the D.C. office of Congressman Mike Doyle. But then I read this line in an article on the status of efforts to cobble together a piece of climate legislation in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

I remember my physical reaction as I read these words, my head shaking back and forth, some trembling and an upwelling of deep, livid anger. “This is the last straw,” I remember thinking.