Author: Mike Tidwell

Dear CCANers,
When it comes to the weather, how many times do you hear this phrase: “Wow, I never saw that before”?
Sixty-five degrees and people in flip flops on Christmas Eve? “Never saw that before.” Over two feet of snow from a single storm across much of the DC region? “Never saw that before.” And international data now showing 2015 shattered the global record for average temperature by a HUGE margin: “Never saw that before.”
At CCAN, we look around at the weather and we get even more motivated. Our goal is to get people talking about our activist campaigns the same way they talk about the weather.
A bipartisan state bill in Virginia, with strong Republican patronage, to cap carbon pollution while protecting Norfolk from sea-level rise? “Never saw that before.” Two major climate bills in Maryland – one mandating huge CO2 cuts statewide and another mandating big wind and solar gains – both potentially passed in the same legislative session? “Never saw that before.”
How about DC? We are working toward a new carbon tax campaign that would dramatically reduce emissions while increasing – increasing! – the incomes of lower- and middle-class residents in the nation’s capital? “Never saw that before.”
Yes, all of these campaigns are moving forward across our region. In Virginia: The Virginia Coastal Protection Act. In Maryland: The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act and the Clean Energy Jobs Act. In DC: A nation-leading price on pollution.
We specialize in giving concerned citizens like you a voice in the great climate movement of our time. Wherever you live across this great region, we need your help. What kind of help? Check out this 90-second video CCAN just produced in Virginia. It gives common citizens an uncommonly strong voice.
So next time the weather makes you say it – “I never saw that before” – remember there’s momentum and opportunity in your state, right now, to make a difference so big you’ve never, ever seen anything like it before.
Onward,

Mike Tidwell

Time is running out to influence the most important decision that Governor Terry McAuliffe—and he alone—will make on climate change.
Which is why, right now, I want to ask you to watch this amazing new video—and take action. If you love our fragile planet: watch the video. If you love your neighbors in Virginia: watch the video.
The truth is, despite rising seas and extreme weather, mega-polluter Dominion Virginia Power is asking Governor McAuliffe to double down on harmful emissions—and let the company INCREASE total climate pollution in Virginia for decades to come. It’s outrageous.
So what can you do? You can do three things right now: Watch the video, sign the petition to Governor McAuliffe, and share it with your friends:

I think the good folks in this video—a student from the Shenandoah Valley, a teacher from Northern Virginia, a retiree from Hampton Roads, and others—explain what’s at stake better than anything I can write.
And their call is one I hope you’ll add your voice to: “Please do the right thing, Governor!” Stop Dominion from making climate change worse.
By this spring, Governor McAuliffe has to decide: Will he let Dominion increase total carbon pollution from power plants, despite the intent of new federal regulations to reduce such pollution? Or will he do the clear-cut RIGHT THING—and implement the Clean Power Plan with real solutions like solar, wind and greater efficiency?
Governor McAuliffe needs to hear — right now — from every Virginian who cares about clean air and a healthy climate. So click here to learn more and take action!

2015 is certain to be the hottest year on record. It’s also the year that I’ve felt more hope for the global climate movement than I have in a very long time. And I’m not alone.
In these final 48 hours of 2015, a group of generous CCAN donors has offered to match dollar-for-dollar every gift to CCAN — up to $7,000.
That means your year-end gift can have double the impact for CCAN and the campaigns you care about!
Click here to make a tax-deductible donation right now, and help us meet this challenge.
We have every intention of making 2016 a year for groundbreaking results. For every effort we undertake, we build as big a coalition as possible and never, ever, ever give up. Here’s why giving to CCAN is critical for the planet:

• We win. Your donation will ensure that we keep Maryland in the lead for envelope-pushing state clean energy policies. We have broader support than we’ve ever had heading into the 2016 General Assembly for our priorities to renew our landmark carbon cap bill and expand our clean electricity standard to 25% by 2020.
• We set the bar high. In the District, we’re launching a first-of-its-kind campaign to put a price on carbon in our nation’s capital. This will be a heavy lift, but we can do it with your support.
• We don’t let up. In Virginia, we will doggedly push to pass our bipartisan Virginia Coastal Protection Act in 2016, supported by cities across the commonwealth, faith and civic leaders, and clean energy businesses. We will also continue to work with statewide and local groups to fight Dominion’s aggressive push for hundreds of miles of fracked gas pipeline crisscrossing our land.

We are so thankful for your support — because none of these campaigns will be successful without funds and activism from people like you. We are also thankful for this matching gift opportunity made possible by CCAN board members who are similarly inspired about the progress we can make together.
In these last hours of 2015, please give generously — and double your impact for CCAN and climate solutions!
And, check out this short video to learn more about what your support helped us accomplish in 2015. As you’ll see, we won hard-fought progress in 2015. But we’ve got a LOT of unfinished business for the New Year:

My friend Bill McKibben has warned for years that, absent dramatic action on global warming, we will literally have to lower the flags of several nations at the U.N. building in New York. Sea-level rise will wipe out entire countries like the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and Tuvalu in the Pacific. Their national flags will have to be lowered in New York and put away, the nations gone forever. Imagine that.
But last week in Paris, during the international climate talks, negotiators heard the pleas of desperate and courageous island nation activists – and activists like you from all over the globe.
Those negotiators hammered out a Paris Agreement that commits the world to steady reductions in carbon emissions in a way that can keep temperatures “well below” two degrees Celsius.
Scientists say this gives not only the Maldives a chance at survival but also our equally vulnerable U.S. communities closer to home – like the low-lying Eastern Shore of Maryland and coastal Virginia cities like Norfolk.
Now you can help implement the Paris Accord with a year-end gift to CCAN. During this holiday season, donate to CCAN with the knowledge that global accords require local action to succeed.
People across the globe are counting on the United States to do its part to dramatically cut global warming pollution. But with Congress in gridlock, the whole world is literally counting on American states – not just California and New York but all states, like clean-energy leaders Maryland and DC, and climate-vulnerable Virginia – to do much, much more in the next five years.
Imagine that! Our Mid-Atlantic region is key to a global solution. That’s no exaggeration. Which means we need to pass legislation in Maryland in 2016 to increase our clean electricity standard to 25%. We need pass a best-in-the-nation carbon tax in the District of Columbia. We need to fight like hell to pass the bipartisan Virginia Coastal Protection Act in Richmond in 2016.
And we need to go on overdrive to stop new fossil fuel projects that will undermine global progress – like Dominion’s monstrous Atlantic Coast Pipeline for fracked gas.
Make a year-end, tax-deductible gift to CCAN to support the local organizing it will take to make the Paris Accord a success.
We cannot win globally without wins here at home. And CCAN is a truly people-powered group: volunteers and donors like you have been the force behind 13 years of victories – from putting mandatory clean electricity standards in place to shutting down coal plants to passing laws to keep fracked gas in the ground.
With your help, I do not believe we will ever lower any nation’s flag at the United Nations building in New York. And we will not abandon coastal Virginia and Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
I’m totally inspired by the new Paris agreement, and I’m eager to do the hard, determined work it’ll take to turn a new global pact into rapid local progress in 2016.
After you’ve made a donation, check out this essay about the Paris agreement from blogger extraordinaire Joe Romm. You’ll be inspired. But you’ll also see how much work is ahead of us here in America over the next five years. And check out these wonderful photos of Paris activism from our friends at InsideClimate News.

Dear CCANers,
Chances are if you know CCAN, you know our National Campaign Coordinator Ted Glick. If you’re a long-time CCAN activist, if you’ve joined one of our annual “polar bear plunges,” protested the fracked gas export facility at Cove Point, walked 100 miles in the summer heat to stop Keystone XL, or picketed outside the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, you’ve likely met Ted and been inspired by him.
This month, after nearly ten years of service to CCAN, Ted is retiring. Well, retiring is not the right word. He’s stepping back to do more writing and spend more time with his lovely wife Jane and get more involved in local climate fights up in New Jersey where they live. I don’t think Ted will ever slow down. He just won’t be in the official employ of CCAN anymore.
We will miss Ted tremendously. He brought to CCAN a streak of 1960s idealism and a passion for creative street protests. He got peacefully arrested multiple times while advancing CCAN causes. He fasted almost as many times, his last being an 18-day water-only fast outside of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last month in DC. He also illegally occupied a ledge in protest at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And he wrote and shared a lot of poems. Ted can stand up to tough cops and deaf politicians one moment, then recite a poem the next about the glorious mockingbird he heard during his morning walk that day.
When Ted came to work at CCAN in 2006, there was no national “fossil fuel resistance.” Now Keystone looks finished, coal plants are getting shut down, and fracked gas is finding determined opposition everywhere. Ted played a big role in making that sea change happen.
So, to my friend and colleague and mentor, I say: Thank you, Ted. Thanks for fighting with everything you have against the greatest threat human beings have ever faced. You have made a difference.

Mike Tidwell

Dear CCANers,
“All is not lost. Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start.”
These are the words of Pope Francis, issued June 18th as part of his historic “encyclical” on climate change and the environment. Encyclicals are Papal letters to the clergy and laity of the church that are considered highly authoritative. In this 184-page document, Francis spells out the urgency of the climate crisis, describes the spiritual and economic failures underpinning the crisis, and – most importantly – emphasizes the need for immediate and sustained ACTION from our leaders and from grassroots citizens worldwide like you and me.
Action. It’s the only way we can “rise above” the moral obscenity of profligate fossil fuel use and make a “new start” with clean wind and solar power. All too often we see people move from outright denial over climate change to outright paralyzing despair when the denial finally ends, without pausing in between on action, on actually doing something about the crisis. And now the most-recognized moral leader in the world – Pope Francis – has called on all the people of the world, not just Catholics, to see and repair the scourge of climate change.
Most moving to me as I read through the encyclical – titled “Laudato Si’,” or “Praise Be to You” – was the emphasis throughout on the appalling and unfair impacts global warming will bring to the world’s poor, who are least to blame for the problem. As a Christian myself – Presbyterian – and as a former Peace Corps Volunteer in the Congo, this issue hits home for me. In the tiny African village where I lived in the 1980s, it wasn’t a question of dirty coal-fired electricity versus clean wind power. These villagers had NO electricity whatsoever. And still don’t. And no cars. And virtually no carbon-intensive meat consumption. Yet the poorest villages worldwide are being walloped – as we speak – by the floods and droughts and extreme weather they cannot adapt to. It’s totally unfair.
Thankfully, there are lots of actions we can take right now here in Maryland, Virginia and DC to right this wrong. The Pope will be bringing his message directly to DC in September with an address to Congress and a Mass at Catholic University. As an act of solidarity with the Pope, won’t you join me and thousands of others for a “Moral March” on Sunday, September 20th? It’s being organized by our friends at the group “Moral Action On Climate.” It’s going to be big and it’s going to be spirited. And – especially if you are Catholic or religious – please make plans to attend a prayer vigil on the capitol grounds on the week of September 20th, more details will be sent out soon. Learn more about local Catholic leaders putting the Pope’s call into action by visiting this great resource page from our friends at Interfaith Power and Light.
Of course there’s also plenty to do beyond the Pope’s visit. CCAN, since its founding 13 years ago, has proudly included the word “action” in our very name. So get ready for a busy summer and fall taking action across the region: phone banking, door knocking, emailing, and marching for clean energy right here where we live. We’ll be working to pass a statewide carbon cap in Virginia, implementing a carbon tax in DC, and dramatically expanding wind and solar power development in Maryland.
As a people, we are indeed capable of rising above ourselves and choosing again what is good. The Pope just gave the world a big reminder of the core truth. And CCAN is here to help give you a way to make it happen every day.
Power to the people!

Mike Tidwell

Dear CCANers,
In the face of a broken Congress, can individual U.S. states do enough on climate change to save America (and the world) from the worst of global warming? I used to think “no,” but now I’m more optimistic. After all, if California were a nation, it would have the seventh-largest economy in the world. So it’s a breakthrough of global ramifications that California is now committed to a dramatic 50 percent clean electricity standard by the year 2030. That’s huge.
State-based climate policies like this are precisely why wind and solar power prices are plummeting across America, priming the pump for revolution. We’ve done our part in the Chesapeake region recently. We worked to pass a solar incentive bill in Virginia in February, a pro-wind power bill in the District of Columbia in January, and we continue to lead ongoing efforts to expand a statewide greenhouse gas reduction plan in Maryland.
Still, ultimately, our lawmakers in Washington will have to participate if we’re going to permanently transition off of fossil fuels. Which is why CCAN was thrilled to work with Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen in February as he reintroduced the carbon-cutting, economy-boosting Healthy Climate and Family Security Act of 2015. 
This bill would cap carbon emissions nationwide, forcing polluters to pay for their emissions and rebating 100% of the collected funds with a quarterly “dividend” check to every American resident. It’s the best climate solution bill ever introduced in Congress – and, eventually, it will pass. I’m sure of it. Click here to urge your members of Congress to co-sponsor it!
But in the meantime, it’s been gratifying to see other states draw inspiration from the Van Hollen “cap-and-dividend” bill to launch their own state-based campaigns to put a price on carbon. Rhode Island, Vermont, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington state now all have bills introduced in their general assemblies that would put a fee on carbon emissions and rebate some or all of the money to citizens.
Oregon really stands out. A new group there called Oregon Climate is running a full-throated campaign to pass a bill very similar to Van Hollen’s. If you want to be inspired by West Coast activists who are kindred spirits of CCAN activists like you, watch this quick video. Hats off to Oregon Climate and all the great heroes in dozens of states nationwide who have turned the clean energy mission into a local fight of global consequences.
Finally, speaking of fight, I want to give a shout out to the students at Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Dozens of them, with support from students across the state, made national news by occupying the UMW president’s office for 21 days this spring. It was part of a national campaign to get colleges and universities to divest from fossil fuels. In the end, three folks were peacefully arrested at UMW as the sit in came to a close. But not before first inspiring students and non-students across the region, and forcing the UMW  board of visitors to take up the issue. A wave of similar protests continues to grow at Harvard, Tulane, Tufts, Swarthmore, the University of Colorado, Yale and elsewhere.
Power to the people!

Mike Tidwell

On Saturday, January 24th over 200 of us braved the elements to make the 10th annual “Keep Winter Cold” Polar Bear Plunge our biggest yet. Neither the rain nor an incredibly high tide could stop us from jumping, wading and even diving into the Potomac River! Plungers were as young as nine and as old as 85, including students, community activists and Franciscan priests.
Together, we raised over $85,000 to support CCAN’s work to move our region off of dirty fossil fuels and to clean energy! We’re truly fortunate to be working side-by-side with so many dedicated activists to fight climate change. Thanks to everyone who plunged with us or sponsored a plunger!
You can find great photos from the day here. Watch this video recap of our 10th annual plunge:

Having now taken part in all ten “Keep Winter Cold” plunges, I had some particularly special highlights from Saturday:

• A high tide can’t stop us! We’ve never had a plunge at high tide at National Harbor, let alone following significant rainfall. The obstacles we overcame Saturday (like a submerged beach!) reminded me of why we plunge: the seas are rising, and so must we!
• Rev. Yearwood has never fired me up more. With the words, “One day this generation will say we are fossil free at last!” echoing across the plaza, who wouldn’t be ready to jump into freezing water?
• Our teams raised more money than ever before. SIXTEEN teams each raised over $1,000, with 350 Montgomery County and Franciscan Action Network leading the pack! Big thanks go to our team captains and everyone who pitched in.
• Our prize winners really took it to a new level! April Moore, our top fundraiser, won the Green Commuter bike by raising a stunning $4,287. Our second top fundraiser, Lori Hill, won dinner with Mike Tidwell and Rev. Yearwood by recruiting 54 individual donors.

Together, we all made this year’s 10th annual plunge a big success. Once again, many thanks, and let’s keep building a strong climate movement in the Chesapeake region and across the nation.
A big thank you to all of our sponsors for donating generous prizes and keeping us caffeinated and fed:

• Deep Creek Cellars
• Patagonia
• River Rider’s Inc
• Perfect Settings Catering
• Zeke’s Coffee
• MLJ Event Management
• The Green Commuter
• Kate Bakes Bars
• Waste Neutral
• Bobby Mckey’s Piano Bar
• Home Energy Loss Professionals
• McLoone’s Pier House

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Dear CCAN supporters,
In case certain elections have you down, take heart. The most impressive vote this fall was not on November 4th. It was on September 21st. That’s when 400,000 Americans elected to march in New York City for the People’s Climate March. If you want to know what direction our nation is really headed in, the Climate March holds the clues. Black, white. Young, old. Gay, straight. Our country was represented at the march and our voice was loud: We want climate solutions now!
I’m reminded of the urgency of our movement and the progress we’re making wherever I travel in the Maryland/Virginia/DC region. Last month, I was in the Virginia coastal city of Portsmouth where sea-level rise linked to climate change is already wreaking havoc on a near-weekly basis. As I met with State Senator L. Louise Lucas, she explained that flooding was so bad in Portsmouth this September after a heavy rain at high tide that she had trouble reaching the apartment building she owns and operates for mentally handicapped adults to begin an evacuation.
In Annapolis, Maryland the flooding is getting so bad that a recent study from the Union of Concerned Scientists says there will be near daily “nuisance flooding” of streets and homes in the not-too-distant future. In other words, entire parts of the city are headed toward permanent disappearance.
But I’m also reminded of the progress we’re making in fighting the core source of the problem: greenhouse gas pollution. The city council in Washington, DC is on the verge of dramatically increasing wind power consumption in the city while encouraging community-based solar installations. Meanwhile, Maryland activists continue to succeed in keeping gas fracking out of the state. And in Virginia, thanks to President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, the state has the chance in the next few years to finally cap carbon pollution from its power plants.
Read more about these campaigns and learn how you can plug in on multiple important issues wherever you live. We voted with our feet in New York City in September. Now we must vote with our actions every day.
Onward!

Mike Tidwell