Labor Leader Rally for Clean Energy

Labor Leader Rally for Clean Energy

Last week labor leaders joined climate advocates in what would normally be considered an unlikely cross-over episode. They rallied on the National Mall, in Washington, D.C. to show congress their support for an immediate passage of President Biden’s “American Jobs Plan” with a 100% Clean Energy Standard. 

Read the full transcript below.

Charles Olsen  0:01  

Hi, my name is Charlie Olson, and this is Upside Down the podcast from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. Last week, climate advocates and labor leaders from around the DC area joined together on the National Mall to show their support for President Biden’s American jobs plan and the 100% clean electricity standard. The audio of this episode is taken from that rally. Enjoy.

Unknown Speaker  0:33  

So here’s our message to Congress. Y’all got a lot of work to do over there. The bipartisan senate infrastructure bill last week does not come close to taking care of workers and the climate doesn’t come close. The roughly $600 billion in new spending is a start. But it leaves out nearly three quarters of President Biden’s vision under the American jobs plan released in March includes among other features $400 billion in investments for wind and solar construction of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations and weatherization of 2 million low income homes. The plan also explicitly calls for passage of the protection of the right to organize act a bill that our labor colleagues have prized for decades. So I’ll let my friends in labor and from the hill explain more. But Congress, you must do more. Every feature dropped by the slim down insufficient senate infrastructure deal must be restored through additional bipartisan votes or more likely through budget reconciliation, all $2.3 trillion. All $2.3 trillion of Biden’s original jobs plan must become law, not $1 last for workers and clean energy. Now on to our first speaker. Now when Joe Biden first unveiled the American jobs plan in Pittsburgh and march It was a union worker who introduced him with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. So we are thrilled to kick off this rally with Tom Clark, a 30 year member of the IBEW Local 26, here in the metro area region and a member of their executive board Tom.

Unknown Speaker  2:32  

Good afternoon. As a proud member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, I anxious anxiously await the passage of the American jobs plan. This forward thinking piece of legislation puts America to work in 2021, but its effects will last well into the 22nd century. With the promise of installing 500 electrical vehicle chargers across the nation, President Biden has tat the IBEW to lead this clean energy project. Our president knows that the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers are right now training young men and women for the green energy jobs at a future at no cost to the state. President Biden knows that union electricians collectively bargain for health care, annuities and defined pensions at no cost to the state. The White House knows that these very benefits will not only lead to a thriving middle class for my fellow electricians, but ensure future generations the same opportunities for success. The American jobs plan is not only multi generational, but addresses the gender pay gap as well. Because when union jobs, men and women get paid the same period. I’d like to thank President Biden and all congressional leaders for getting the American Job plan to this point. The future this bill is now in our hands. It’s now time for the American people to get to work. I asked all citizens to notify their representatives about the importance of passing the American Jobs Act. I ask all elected officials on Capitol Hill to get to work, compromise and pass all aspects of this vital jobs bill. This once in a lifetime bill that promotes clean energy and the American worker. Finally, I asked my fellow blue collar members to in organized labor, let’s strap on our tools and get to work. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker  4:51  

Thank you, Tom Clark with IBEW Local 26. Now, you know after the disappointing and pared down Senate Structure agreement last week, there’s been a slogan that’s been circulating among climate advocates and congressional leaders. That phrase is no climate. No Deal. But I picked that phrase as incomplete. I think it should say, no unions, no deal as well. So I’m gonna speak here. And when I, when I yell something out, I want you all to respond with no deal. Okay, are you ready? No climate. No unions. No climate. No unions. No climate. No unions. Okay, y’all, they can’t hear you at the Capitol. All right. So we’re gonna do that one more time. You’re ready. No climate. No unions. No climate. No union. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is David Steven. He’s the political and legislative director of the metro Washington Council of the AFL CIO, David

Unknown Speaker  6:08  

Haye, thank you. It is beautiful to be out here. Amongst all of our labor folks. On this beautiful day, y’all Give yourselves a hand for coming out here. To help me out, show me what democracy looks like. Show me what democracy looks like. Show me what democracy looks like. All right. All right. Now, you know, it was Dr. Kane that said that justice, or excuse me, peace is not merely the absence of tension, but the presence of justice. And I want to take this opportunity to thank congressman Bobby Scott, Congressman john Yarmuth for coming out here and standing with us as we fight for economic justice with our union brothers and sisters, y’all give them a hand. Now, President Biden knows unions are key to rebuilding an economy that works for the rebuilding. That starts with the passage of the American jobs plan. The Washington, DC metro Labor Council, is urging Congress to listen to the 10s and 1000s of union members right here in the District of Columbia, who are sick of a system that benefits billionaires at the cost of workers, it is time for Congress to pass the American jobs plan. This package will not only make critical investments into our nation’s infrastructure, but will help build a growing clean energy economy that is powered by millions of good paying jobs. Now, show me what democracy looks like. Thank you, God bless you.

Unknown Speaker  8:06  

Thank you so much. And I want to ask congressman Bobby Scott, to step forward, it’s your turn. And congressman Scott, representing the third congressional district has been in Congress since 1993, is chair of the education and Labor Committee, a great friend of labor. And I want to begin, Congressman Scott by handing you a letter that was signed last week by 1700. Union households, not just from this region, not just from Virginia. But this letter calls for passage of the American jobs plan. And a clean energy revolution in this country was signed by 1700. Union households in all 51 States of America. And all their names are right here. So I want to hand this to you in recognition of your work. Please tell your colleagues that labor is with you. The climate movement is with you. And we are with you.

Unknown Speaker  9:14  

Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I am Bobby Scott representing Virginia’s third district and that’s where the James River, Nansemond river and Elizabeth River all meet the Chesapeake Bay. And I want to thank you all for what you do to try to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. I’ve been working on it since I was in the Virginia General Assembly. In 1978. I was on a Maryland, Virginia, bipartisan legislative committee to see what we could do. And the first thing we decided to do is that Maryland and Virginia wasn’t enough. We didn’t get everybody involved. We’re wasting our time. And that’s why the Chesapeake Bay commission was formed many years ago. And so we’ve been working on this a long time and we’re making some progress. But we’re gonna thank you for all that you do. Now I also chair the committee on education and labor where I’m proud to advance the interests of working men and women. And I’m also the proud sponsor of the project, which passed the House of Representatives and do what you can to get it out of the Senate. Now, as we gather today we’re suffering through in the Pacific Northwest, we’re suffering through a dangerous heatwave precedent setting they used to have I’ve heard 90 degrees used to be noteworthy. They’ve had several days in a row where it’s over 110. I heard that an ice cream parlor had to close because the air conditioning couldn’t keep the ice cream cold enough. I mean, you think an ice cream parlor would be making money hand over fist similar weather like this not able to close because they couldn’t deal with the weather you got people in Detroit suffering from from flooding and coastal communities, including those hit by hurricanes last year preparing for another hurricane season. All of this is happening because of climate change. And you know that there’s another direction we ought to be taking and workers are leading the way. I’m proud to be here with my colleague, the Budget Chairman, John Yarmuth of Kentucky and hopefully, Joe Morelli, from New York will be here in a few minutes. And we’re working hard to get the American jobs plan to the American families plan passed in the United States Congress. We recognize this as a once in a lifetime capital investment, just like it was once in a lifetime when Dwight Eisenhower right after world war two created the interstate highway system, we have the opportunity to have a once in a lifetime infrastructure plan that not only does roads and bridges, and tunnels, and ports, and schools, the CDC said functioning ventilation systems are an essential element opening school safely. So we need to make sure in Virginia, half the schools the more than 50 years old, we need to make sure that we have school reconstruction, housing advice has already been mentioned, and broadband to bring communities into the 21st century, we need to do they have charging stations, people are gonna buy electric cars that they can charge them on the highway, people aren’t going to build charging stations and people aren’t buying electric cars. So we start off with the electric charging stations, people buy more cars. And next thing you know, every restaurant on it near the interstates is gonna have a charging station, because they’re going to attract people to those they’re gonna hook up with and then they’re gonna go right in the restaurant and buy a meal. That’s how you do it. But you have to have somebody with the vision to do the dude to do it first. We also need to do what it takes to put people to work. That’s like daycare, childcare, and early childhood education. So people can go to work and job training. So they’re so they have the skills to perform the work. All of that can be done in a climate friendly manner if we do it right. And that’s why rallies like this are so important. Why I’m so happy to be here. And I look forward to working with each and every one of you as we do what’s necessary to pass not only the American jobs plan, but also the American families plan and do it in a critical climate friendly way. Thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker  13:33  

Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Congressman Scott, and thank you for all your leadership and making time for us in this heatwave. I next want to bring up another committee chair. We are very, very fortunate to have congressman John Yarmuth. Again, he is also from the third district but this one in Kentucky. He is in his eighth term in Congress. He is chair of the House Budget Committee. It is through congressman Yarmuth that any kind of reconciliation bill is going to have to travel and so we are fortunate to count him as a friend and Congressman Yarmuth, I too want to hand you this letter from 1700 labor households in all 51 states. So that includes the district, and we appreciate all that you do.

Unknown Speaker  14:27  

Well, good afternoon, everybody. It’s great to be here. Thanks for standing up for the future of our civilization. It’s a good thing to be for. It’s great to be here with my colleague, Bobby Scott. Bobby’s my chairman. I’m his chairman. And incidentally, Joe Morel is on both the budget and the education labor committees as well. So we’ve got a monopoly here on the program. You know, about two years ago, I made a speech to the Louisville reference Louisville, Kentucky, by the way, I gave a speech to the local Rotary Club. And I said, The theme of the speech was that we’re in this incredibly interesting and probably unique time in our history. And that is that art history is catching up with us, and the future is getting here faster than we thought. And one of those things that illustrates that is climate change, we have our neglect for the environment, over generations and generations has brought us to this point. And it’s climate change. The climate threat is reaching us faster than anybody anticipated. Another area that that? Well, there are a lot of things. But I said, there are three things we need to be doing right now, as intensively as possible, if we’re going to have a future for our country. And number one is to deal with climate change. Number two was to deal with early childhood education, because unless we make sure that every young person in this country has the strongest possible Foundation, there isn’t going to be much of an economy or future for anybody then. And when I look at the American jobs plan, and the American families plan, and then you add in the American rescue plan, there is one unmistakable theme. And that is, we are trying to build a future for our country, for our children and grandchildren. And, that future involves dealing with climate change, so that there is in fact, a future. And right now, as Bobby mentioned, we’re seeing the manifestations of climate change every day, everywhere in our country, everywhere around the world. And it’s time to act. And one of the things that I’m so excited about with American jobs playing in American families’ plans is that finally, after decades and decades, we have leaders in Washington, who are asking the important questions in the right order. Now, what do I mean by that? For decades and decades, whenever we identified a problem we thought we needed to deal with, what was the first thing we asked, what can we afford to do? That’s not the right question. That’s not the right question. The right question is, number one, what do we need to do to serve the American people? Not the people we’ve been serving, who are the ones in the top 1%, and so forth. That’s, that’s the other party that serves them. But President Biden has finally started asking those questions in the right order. What do we need to do to prepare our young people for their labs? What do we need to do to save the country? environmentally? What do we need to do to build a 21st century economy and not a 19th century economy? What do we need to do to build an economy that actually looks forward to the future as opposed to looking back to the wagon trail days, again, that other party does that. And when we passed the American rescue plan, with its emphasis on children, the expanded child tax credit, which is the checks are going to start going out in about two weeks, to give every parent the means to lift their children up. Half the kids living in poverty are going to be lifted out of poverty with this, to give it to Gibbs, yes.

Unknown Speaker  18:28  

To give state and local governments and school systems the resources they need to do things in an environmentally friendly way. And so to retrofit schools to build new schools and buildings that are environmentally friendly, that conserve energy, and so forth, and giving cities and towns and counties and states the money to do that as well. But there’s a reason that this major proposal, the American jobs plan, is not called the American infrastructure plan. The Republicans want to have a debate over what’s infrastructure. They don’t think childcare is infrastructure, they don’t think care for the elderly is infrastructure. They don’t think of the electric grid electrification for electric vehicles, any of that stuff’s infrastructure. Okay, who cares? That’s not what the name of the bill is. The name of the bill is the American jobs plan. Because the idea is to create millions of jobs while we realize this, this future oriented economy that we’re trying to build. I was thrilled to have my name on the American rescue plan. That was the day we passed that I said to myself, I asked myself, have I ever had a better week in my life? And I said, not even close. To have my name associated with something that changed lives so dramatically and made the kind of investment in our people that we did was something that I will always cherish. I had that opportunity. And now I have the opportunity to do it again and again. And believe me, I’m gonna do everything I can to make sure that the American jobs plan on the American families plan. And then whatever we do next year, when we can do reconciliation again, and do something that serves the American people, I’m going to be right there as well. So thank you so much for your passion, your commitment, and, and your interest in making sure that our future is a bright one, an environmentally friendly one, and one, which serves all of the people in this country, and not just the very few. We’ve seen how that works, we’ve seen the trickle down theory, not so good. We’re gonna build the next economy from the ground up, and make sure that the 99% who have been figuring out how to get by, won’t have to worry about that. They’ll work and they’ll get by, and the jobs will be there, and the future will be there for them. So thanks for all your work. Thanks for having me here today and get on with the rest of them, because we’re gonna need some help. It’s not going to be easy. But I think everybody in the Democratic Caucus, we’re not expecting to get any Republican votes. But everybody, the democrat credit caucus, we may have different ideas. But we all know that what we’re trying to do is the right thing, and we’re all agreed on the objective. So we’ll get there. Thanks for your support. We need it.

Unknown Speaker  21:29  

Thank you, Chairman Yarmouth and our next speaker is also a member of Congress. Congressman Joe Murali, a Democrat from New York, he’s on both the House Budget Committee and the house education Labor Committee, proudly serves New York’s 25th congressional district. He’s got some really important business to deal with back on Capitol Hill involving something like armed services or something like that. So we wanted to bring him on up to the stage, I present to you Congressman Joe Murali.

Unknown Speaker  22:05  

Good day.

Unknown Speaker  22:07  

Good afternoon, I think it is a good afternoon. It is. Good afternoon, everyone. And thanks for being here. It’s wonderful to see you here at the nation’s capitol. I am honored to be talking alongside two of my favorite members of the House and to Chairman on whose committees I serve Bobby Scott, chairman of the education and Labor Committee. I’m very proud of our work there. And of course, John Yarmuth, who chairs the Budget Committee, a committee I also have the privilege of serving on, I do have to run back to an armed services committee meeting that we’re hosting right now. But I wanted to make sure I came down and said a few words about the importance of you being here. And the importance of the work that we have to do together to rebuild America. I have a pin on my dresser that I look at every single morning before I go to work. It’s the 55 year pin for my father, who was a member of local 13 plumbers and pipefitters in Rochester, New York. And I think about my dad every day. Because first of all, I don’t think I ever saw him in the morning. When I’d get up at 6: 37 to go to school. My father was already out to work. And he worked every single day. He was relentless. But he was incredibly proud of the work that he did. And what he would say to five of us that were lucky to call him dad. He talked about how the middle class was built by organized labor, and that the United States of America owes the fact that it has the middle class to organize labor now I’m pretty blessed in New York, have a buddy Mario Salento is the head of the AFL CIO in New York State, Gary labarbera, who heads our building trades in New York State. We have great progressive leaders in New York. But we have a lot of work to do around this country. If we’re going to build the middle class once again. And I think and I’m sure Bobby and John mentioned this, but I think the right to organize is as fundamental as any right guaranteed us and the US Constitution, the right to organize. And this is why this has been one the rights we have today have been one through the blood, sweat and tears of a lot of brothers and sisters who have come before us on whose shoulders we stand but it is our job our generations job now, to continue to expand those rights and to make sure that the right to organize, isn’t lost when they started calculating this data 22% of Americans were in Union households is down to 10%. That talks about the erosion of the labor movement, not because of the men or women in the labor movement but because the forces that have aligned against us and it’s time for us to take it back. That’s why we need to fight to pass the proact to raise the wage to enact the American jobs plan to create clean, sustainable, accountable tinyme for working families in the millions across this country. So I know I joined with my brothers and sisters and certainly with Bobby and John Yarmuth, Chair Two great committees, we have a great deal of work to do. And I also think we’re all blessed to have Joe Biden in the White House along with a comma Harris. They’re fighting for us every single day. And they’re bringing the fight to the Congress. And we have to join with them and join with all of you by the millions to come to Washington and capitals all around the 50 states in every village City Hall everywhere in America, to fight for these important things. So thanks so much for the opportunity to be here to be with you. But thanks so much for what you do every single day to fight the way for millions of Americans. God bless you, thank you.

Unknown Speaker  25:35  

Thank you, Congressman Murali of New York, I really appreciate you making time. Okay, now we’re gonna take a quick break from the DC labor course. If you’ve never heard about them, you’re about to hear them. They are legendary in this town. They are all union workers from the area and they’re gonna sing a couple of songs for us and we’re so thrilled to have them. I present to you the DC labor course. And they’re gonna get set up and be ready in just a second.

Unknown Speaker  26:26  

We are members of the DC labor chorus and we’re thrilled to be part of this event today. We have two songs for you and here we go through the change that we’re trying to change we are gone. Gone the last part, honor labor here we are gonna change we’re gonna change the last car race racism, no racism or sexism or homophobia. Jobs and justice jobs. We are gonna change jobs. Changing jobs is gonna change. Last time Yeah. Bronco, Bronco, Bronco. Very soon. We’re gonna change. Hey. Ready for the nice, strong. Pro. Show run. Where there can be no power right around the Sun got my forest on earth solidarity. Sa strong they have taken on toto oil to iron out our drain turn we learn

Unknown Speaker  30:43  

straw in our hands is placed a power greater than their hard head told we can recover straw Espanyol. So your solidarity.

Unknown Speaker  32:09  

All right, give it up one more time for the DC labor chorus coming out here on a hot day. Thank you so much. We really appreciate that lift. And I want to invite Tasia to the podium who’s going to speak to us for a mom, I thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker  32:28  

What would you do beaky? Jesus gives you an indigent cause and I got you in on doing Juba magazine. Oh, damn. Hello, everyone. My name is Taylor Martin. Oh, I’m from the Fond du Lac reservation in northern Minnesota. I’m a well known water protector. Being a water protector, makes me anti pipeline, but we are not anti worker. You know as proletariat’s, you have the right to demand ethical pay, you have the right to demand fair wages. And you have the right to demand ethical work that isn’t harming indigenous people. But in the global south, which, if climate change, as it’s currently happening, the first people to feel those repercussions is our indigenous relatives to the global south. So I love the fact that we’re speaking about solidarity today. I love the fact that we’re standing up for your rights. I love the fact that you’re out here, not only demanding that those in Congress, you know, treat you fairly, but standing up for what you believe in as a core value of the water protector. So we’re really happy to see that as an indigenous person. I’m coming for everything that they told my grandmother’s that we could not have, and I hope to bring each and every single one of you with me Magwitch

Unknown Speaker  33:34  

Thank you so much. tasia. Our next speaker is Josh Armstead. With Unite Here union Josh is the vice president of the DC chapter of Unite Here local 23, which represents over 7000 food service workers in DC, Maryland and Virginia.

Unknown Speaker  33:55  

Alright, right, can everybody hear me? All right. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Josh Armstead. As Jeff introduced, I’m a food service worker at Georgetown University. Most of the Vice President of Unite Here local 23 here in DC. When I started working at Georgetown, I immediately joined the committee for Unite Here local 23. And at Georgetown, we pressured Aramark for a fair living wage of $15 an hour and then using our power pressure DC to $15 an hour as a bare minimum for the work that we do. When we talk about climate justice. Right, we have to talk about fair treatment of workers along with the environment, one cannot go without the other. Winning $15 an hour or more now has changed my life. One of the first is my vision. I was unable to actually have good health care without actually joining the union and fighting for my rights on the job and for fair pay and for good health care. Now because of that fight. I’m More or less free to see you clearly, all workers need a fair living wage of at least $15 an hour. I’ve organized in many places across the country, including across the Potomac River and Virginia, which is a right to work state. And it’s shameful. It’s very shameful that there are millions of Americans right now who literally work 40 or more hours a week, and they don’t know how they’re going to pay the bills. They don’t know how they’re going to take care of their kids, as a single father of a three year old. I don’t know how I could personally survive. And I’m very thankful every day that I made the decision to join the union. But it shouldn’t be like that for anyone and the richest country on the face of the earth. It should not be that way. And speaking to, you know, COVID-19, right, like my union took a big hit. My union is the hospitality and restaurant workers union. If you’ve been in Estonian, you’ve probably seen most of our members. Or if you’ve gone to the airport, 98% of all of my brothers and sisters lost their jobs. But even then, we still were fighting. Joe Biden got elected because 1000s of members went to Florida, Pennsylvania and Nevada, Arizona, and made the crucial difference, knocking on doors. And then 1000 more members went to Georgia, and knocked on more doors to secure a Democratic Senate. Right. Like we need our government that we as workers put into office to actually care for us by passing and moving through the proact the American Jobs Act, and to make sure that all workers are uplifted, it does not make sense with the government that we as workers have put through, that we are still left behind, whether they be in airports, whether they be in restaurants, whether they be anywhere, we need to make sure that our government that we put in is passing this and so workers will keep on fighting until that happens. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker  37:07  

Thank you so much, Josh. Thanks for everything you have been knocking on doors in Georgia and Pennsylvania and making it happen we really appreciate all our friends that unite here. Our next speakers are Anya vines and Ryan are leery of one fair wage. Man, I tell you, this organization gets stuff done. I told them earlier, I wish I had their well, whoever their media consultant is because every time I pick up a newspaper or turn on the radio, I hear about one fair wage causing good trouble. John Lewis always called it. So I want to invite Anya and Ryan up, they’re gonna let you know what they’re up to express some solidarity with the rest of us and actually give everyone a chance to take action right after this event. So y’all come on up.

Unknown Speaker  37:55  

All right. So before I get started, if you guys support the ajp Make some noise. No, I don’t think I heard y’all right. If y’all support the American jobs plan, make some noise. Perfect. Thank you so much for inviting one fair wage here today. My name is Anya Vines, and I am speaking on behalf of one fair wage, and also on behalf of Generation Z. I’m 21 years old y’all and I am a part of the climate movement. That is very imperative. There is a stigma that is saying the next generation is not willing to pick up the pieces and help out with this fight. But I’m just here to tell you guys that that’s not the case. We’re out here. We are out here. We are fighting, we are standing in solidarity, we are a part of this fight, because we are the future at the end of the day. So again, thank you so much for having us here. And of course, speaking on the intersectionality between climate change and restaurant workers, you cannot support one without the other. You cannot support one without the other. You cannot bring attention to $15 plus tips on top nationwide, without paying attention to the climate change that is happening in the world. When it comes to climate change, it discourages people from leaving their homes from hurting neighborhood eateries. We support the American jobs plan. Why do we support the American jobs plan? Not only does it help unions, but it also addresses climate change with clean energy jobs that benefit everyone, including restaurant workers. So again, one fight is all of our fights. One fight is all of our fights, we have to understand internet intersectionality for both, so you cannot have one without the other. So one fairway stands in solidarity with each and every one of you. And I’m going to pass it off to Ryan so that he can inform you about our direct action because direct action that’s a part of the movement where revolution. So, we’re going to pass it. I’m gonna pass this off to Ryan. And at the end I’m gonna go over some chants with you guys and we’re gonna rock out together. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker  40:14  

Thank you Anya. My name is Ryan, I’m another organizer with one fair wage. There’s two pieces of action that I want to mention today. The first is that we have officially submitted a proposal, a ballot initiative, to the DC council to once again vote to eliminate all sub minimum wages in DC and pay all tipped workers $15 with their tips on top. Make sure you sign that petition we got to get on the ballot. The other thing is that after this we are going to be taking a short walk down to the capital grille owned by the Darden restaurant group. Darden is the largest restaurant group in the country, they own all of the garden, they own the yard house, they own all of the Capitol grills and they are the biggest opponents to raising the tip minimum wage, a wage that has been set at 260 an hour since 1990. federally, so one fair wage is going to sue them. We’re suing them while we’re driving. We’re walking down later today after this rally, and we’re going to be serving them papers. We’d love for you to join us. We’d love for you know, we love talking to talk up here but it always helps to end it by walking a little bit of the walk. So please stick around afterwards. Look out for us. We’d love to have you come down for our, our serving. Alright, thank you guys.

Unknown Speaker  41:39  

Thank you so much. By the way, I’m gonna be joining them. I’m walking down with one fair wage down to the crowd capital grille. And I hope if you all have an extra 1015 2030 minutes that you’ll join us, I think it’s really amazing that they’re giving us an opportunity again to walk the walk. So our last speaker and I saved him as cleanup. His cleanup hitter is Don Sleeman, and he’s going to be speaking on behalf of the Northern Virginia Council, the AFL CIO, and as a member of IBEW Local 26. Also, no one more than opened doors for this event and introduced me to a lot of new friends was always encouraging. And, you know, it feels like the goal here was not just to have a rally today and support the American jobs plan in support of union jobs and clean energy. The goal here was also to expand our networks to make our coalition bigger to create permanent relationships between the climate movement and the labor movement. And frankly, those bridges have not always been sturdy. And after today with the help of Don Sleeman, they are so much bigger and better and I give it to you, Don slamet.

Unknown Speaker  42:51  

Good afternoon. How’s everyone? I want to compliment Mike on getting budget Chairman Yarmouth here, Bobby Scott here the head of the Labor Committee who wrote the best labor law I’ve legislation in the history of my lifetime. And Congress Murali is really a real pleasure to listen to him. You know, we’ve been waiting a long time to invest in people and infrastructure in this country. We’ve been waiting, how long, how many infrastructure weeks have we celebrated 1000s this bill, and it’s only one to two bills that we need. This bill will build back better and build a union like President Biden says he mentioned. And he mentioned building a union to change our climate when he spoke to Congress. This bill would expand broadband. This bill would revitalize Union Station and help the Brotherhood locomotive engineers and the union of transportation unions and the Teamsters. This bill will be the single largest investment in mass transit in the history of this country, which is not only good for our workers and good for folks that spend more time with their families so they can get home quicker, but it’s also good for our environment. This bill will clean our waterways. And you know, this bill doesn’t go far enough, right. We could spend trillions, trillions. 6 trillion is my you know 4.3 trillion is what the engineers society says just to get us upgraded where we should be. But this bill will be the largest investment ever. And it is a great start. And the focus of this bill, where we are going to build an apprenticeship. We’re going to build with prevailing wage, we’re going to build with safety. We’re going to build careers, not jobs, and all in creating a stable environment because we can build stable jobs and a stable environment we have to the alternative is insurrection after insurrection, as this country becomes more fascist, because the workers have no hope and don’t have any and can’t vote and can’t rely on each other to have rights and a voice at work. That is why it’s also so important to have the project as a vital part of this bill. To lift up all the voices, you know, I’m I’m happy I’m building Amazon, that’s gonna be a build 100% Union, their new headquarters and that is going to diversify our economy, though I have a lot of problems with Corporation and other things, but they are going to diversify this economy bring AI and robotics. But you know, what is AI artificial intelligence? How can quick machines learn? Well, how about real intelligence? How about giving workers a voice on the job, how about listening to the people to put things together who have experienced every single day in day out, that’s where real intelligence is, that’s where we’ll have productivity gains. And that only happens if you give the first amendment to people where they work and live where they spend their waking hours, build their relationships, even to get their last name. If you don’t have the right to have a voice on the job, you don’t have the First Amendment where you work, you don’t have anything, and only 6% of the private workers in this country, have a voice on the job, have a right to face your accuser have a right to prove their innocence and the right to stand up. If something is said about him without a union, they make up stuff about you, you’re fired, you’re out the door, and you don’t even have a chance to even say your piece. That is why it’s so important to get the project to be part of this climate action bill. And we have to do it. You know, in the last 75 years, every war we fought has been over fossil fuels and droughts. We can’t we can’t ignore reality. We have to fix our climate, save our climate. And there’s and this bill does it in a way where we’re also fixing our democracy. We’re fixing our trade unions, we’re fixing the balance of power between workers and capital, nothing’s going to change in this country to rebalance a property and workers and capital and give us a stable climate. And so this is the first of many times we’re going to get together. Because obviously, we’re not going to have this bill done by Fourth of July. And obviously, we’re not gonna have it. So it looks like Labor Day. So we have a lot of work to do. There’s going to be two bills, we have to have the American families plan as part of this American jobs plan. We have to invest in our children, we have to invest and take care of our elderly, we have to invest in paid, paid sick leave to Ireland’s in one nation, an entire world that doesn’t have paid sick leave. That’s us and, and marisha and some other places Borneo, Bernie, we have to make a difference. We’re so far behind. This is a start. And by getting these two chairs here, you know, the democrats have five or six marginal votes to play within a house and no margin in the Senate. But they’re going to have to do it because they saw the alternative. The alternative of doing nothing is having a bunch of fascist take our capital, so they got to get to work. And they got to give two bills to the president by Labor Day. And we’re all going to be there to make it happen. Thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker  47:45  

Thank you, Don. slammin Nova afl-cio IBEW Local 26. Real last speaker is with a soccer team. And I’m going to let her tell you more.

Unknown Speaker  47:59  

Hi, everyone. I’m Lindsay Behrens, with the Washington Spirit, a professional Women’s Soccer League here in the DMV and the National Women’s Soccer League, the most competitive Soccer League in the whole world. I’m here to invite you all to our salute to labor on July 10 at outfield and September 26 at segra Field in Leesburg, if you would like to join us and extend an invitation to all of your members, please let me grab me afterwards or my colleagues, Zoey, raise your hand. We’d love to have you thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker  48:38  

So I want to thank all our sponsors one more time and then I want to send you away with some action items I want I think Metro Washington council the AFL CIO, the AFL CIO, Northern Virginia Labor Federation, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, local 26, the amalgamated transit union. Unfortunately, Ray Jackson couldn’t make it today. But they’re totally in solidarity with us. Again, the restaurant workers at one fair wage, and Josh will unite here and all the great work that they do. I also want to thank everyone who sees CCAN Action Fund, our board member Andres Jimenez. Natalie Piane, one of our board members for Northern Virginia, if you work for C can or C can Action Fund staff raise your hand, these people worked really, really hard to make this happen. Let’s give him a round of applause. Thank you so much. Thank you to the DC labor corps for singing. Thank you, Tasia and everyone else. So here are two things. The first one, one fair wage, folks, raise your hand. I’m going to be walking with them over to the Capitol grill. I hope all of you can come with us. Just one more thing we can do for everyone else. Let’s make the American jobs plan part of your life. We’re not talking about 10 years to get it passed. We’re not talking about five years. We’re not going to burden you with one year. We need your health for the next nine 90 days, this thing is either going to happen or not happen in the next 90 days, we’re going to resolve the destiny of our global climate. In the next 90 days, wrap your head around that. We’re going to decide once and forever: Are we going to have fair wages for a fair day’s work or not? We’re gonna resolve that in the next 90 days. We can do it together, good jobs, good wages, Union protections, clean air, clean water, solar power, wind power, electric vehicles, we can have all of that if we get the President’s back. We keep the pressure on Congress. We stay together, we stay informed. We stay united. So thanks again for coming. You guys. Really appreciate it. We’ll see you down the road.

Charles Olsen  50:45  

Thanks for listening to Upside down. This podcast is produced by me, Charlie Olsen. with incredible support from the entire weekend staff. Check out the show notes for links to all the things discussed in this episode. If you want to know more about how you can get involved with C kin in the climate fight, check out our website at Chesapeake climate.org. If you want to get in touch with us, follow us on instagram and twitter at sea kin. And if you enjoy the work we do, why don’t you share it with your friends. Sharing the show is a super easy way to help spread the word about the work we’re doing in the fight for bold climate actions. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.

All the Trucks in Texas on a One Way Road – Dave Goodrich’s Bike Ride Across the Permian Basin

Author, climate scientist, and CCAN board member Dave Goodrich is an avid cyclist. So much so that he has embarked on a 700 miles journey across the Permian Basin. On his way he has been taking in the sites of the most active oil (and wind) producing areas in the country, and documenting what he sees along the way. 

We are so excited to be have been able to chat with him last week after finishing his perilous journey. 

Continue reading

Virginia Clean Cars Public Q&A

Virginia Clean Cars Public Q&A

Virginia last year saw the passage of the most ambitious climate legislation in the American South, the Virginia clean Economy Act. Now in 2021, advocates across Virginia are turning their attention to one of the biggest sources of climate pollutants, the transportation sector, following closely on the heels of ambitious transportation plans in California and Massachusetts, to ban the sale of internal combustion engines. This episode is a Q&A with our Virginia team and experts from Gen180 that helps paint the picture of what an electric transportation sector will look like in Virginia.

Read the full transcript below.

Charles Olsen  0:02  

Hi, my name is Charlie Olsen and this is Upside Down the podcast from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. In this episode, Virginia last year saw the passage of the most ambitious climate legislation in the American South, the Virginia Clean Economy Act. Now in 2021, advocates across Virginia are turning their attention to one of the biggest sources of climate pollutants, the transportation sector, following closely on the heels of ambitious transportation plans in California and Massachusetts, to ban the sale of internal combustion engines. This episode is a Q&A with our Virginia team and experts from Gen180 that helps paint the picture of what an electric transportation sector will look like in Virginia.

Kim Jemaine  0:51  

Hello, everyone, as Ellen mentioned, my name is Kim Germain, and I’m the Virginia director for CTN. And we really want to thank generation 180, for helping us not only with this with the material, but also for joining us today. Blair and I have done a lot of events together over the last few weeks. So getting to know each other really well. So thank you. And thanks to you all for joining us. Now that we’ve gotten limber with those polls. We’ll get started by just addressing offhand some common misconceptions we’ve heard related to electric vehicles. Later on in the evening, we’ll talk. We’ll have questions that have been pre submitted for us to answer and then we’ll also give you an opportunity to ask questions right here. But it just started off where you were going to just address some common misconceptions. All right, we can go to the next slide. So this is a big one. Many people are surprised to learn that transportation is the leading source of carbon dioxide emissions in our state, which means it’s one of our biggest opportunities for impact. We know that transit, transportation emissions, like carbon dioxide and fine particulate matter have negative impacts on our health and our children’s children’s health. But Virginia also spends $33 million every single day on important imported gasoline. So we have the potential to not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also save huge sums of money. And the reality is that these emissions also have an environmental justice impact. communities of color and low income communities face the burden of these emissions. So we have a really unique opportunity to address issues on multiple fronts by addressing emissions from our transportation sector. So generation one he recently released the Virginia drives electric report, which includes the key findings you see sampled here. In summary, the report shows that there is a significant demand for electric vehicles in the Commonwealth, which includes 53% of Virginians who are somewhat likely or very likely to consider electric vehicles for their next vehicle. And roughly 71% of respondents strongly support or support Virginia offering an Eevee incentive. So we know that the demand is there, but there are barriers holding up our transition to electric transportation. So we get a lot of questions about the options related to electric vehicles. And the reality is that there are over 42 models available right now. And 10, more at least coming in 2021. Mate menu, major manufacturers, manufacturers have all announced their goals for fully electric fleet fleets. Electric cars aren’t just the future of the automotive industry, they are here right now. I’m here in Virginia, you may not see that broad array of electric vehicles. And we’ll tell you why throughout this program.

So another thing we hear really often about electric vehicles is that they aren’t affordable. But that’s not necessarily the case. The average out the door cost of a new car in the United States is 39,000. And there are 20 electric car models that are at or below that amount. And that’s before any tax credits or discounts. So right now there is a federal incentive of 7500 and we are going to be working here in Virginia to make sure that in the coming years, we can offer incentives that further reduce the cost of electric vehicles. So there is big news out there designed to keep you out and out of an electric vehicle. But the biggest is range anxiety. The average American drives around 30 miles a day. Which is well under the average range of an all electric vehicle, and Evie can be your perfect daily driver. So you all were correct 10 plus models, electric cars have ranges of over 200 miles so can take all the trips you want. There is a dog in here playing with his toy so that is the noise in the background. Another question we often hear is, where am I going to charge? The answer is at home 80% of Evie charging happens at home overnight, just like charging your cell phone, it becomes part of your evening routine. But for those of us who may not have a garage, or easy access to a charging source at home, charging can happen at your workplace or on the go. There are currently 1400 public charging outlets in Virginia. with significant growth slated for over the next three years. Virginia has partnered with Evie Go, a charging infrastructure company based out of California, to expand Virginia’s Evie charging network. And when the project is completed, 95% of Virginians will be within 30 minutes of a fast charger. So I know when we got started, a lot of folks expressed concerns about range in charging. So hopefully this eases some of that anxiety. So here is just an outline of how you can charge and fast charging stations are not your only option. We all have access to level one charging in our own homes right now. Just plug it into any basic outlet the same one needs to charge your phone, it will take longer, but it is an option.

Level One plug in can be a bit slow however, which is why level two charging is recommended for your home. This level uses the same 240 volt plug as your oven or washing washing machine. an electrician can easily install one of these plugs and a corresponding level two charger in your garage or parking access. What nor charging on the go however, we want the quick as chargers as possible. That’s where fast chargers come in. Fast chargers convert electricity to a more efficient form for charging and deliver power directly to your car’s battery. So you don’t always need a special charger for your electric vehicle. And we are obviously going to continue the program answering any questions you have pre submitted and ones you have right now. But if you’re interested in getting involved, here are some ways. I will let you look over this and we will drop some links in the chat box later on tonight. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker  8:09  

Awesome job cam.

Unknown Speaker  8:13  

And Awesome job to all of our attendees today. Y’all are on it.

Kim Jemaine  8:17  

I am impressed.

Unknown Speaker  8:21  

Thank you so much, Kim. That was great information. So now I haven’t been able to look at the chat because I was presenting so I’m pretty sure I saw some notifications going off. And we’ve got some great questions piling up in there. So I’m going to turn it over to Stacy. And let her cycle through them and get some answers for y’all from Blair and Kim.

Unknown Speaker  8:42  

Great. So I’ve been looking at the chat collecting some questions. If you have other questions, please put them in the chat. One question I see. Tim or Blair, can you handle this? The question is, are many federal incentives exhausted for some carmakers? Will this be renewed?

Unknown Speaker  9:02  

Yeah. And Charles put a great response in the chat after that. And he’s absolutely right. Some of the automakers credits are phased out. That’s pretty much just Nissan, Chevy and Tesla. So there are so many other EV’s that are still eligible for the full tax credit. There’s kind of a misnomer that when that federal tax credit didn’t get renewed by the current administration, most recently, that that meant it was dead and dying. But that’s not what it means. It means that, you know, Nissan, Chevy and Tesla wanted them to renew it for more than 200,000 units, because they’ve already sold that money. And the current administration said no, all of these other OEMs these other auto manufacturers still qualify for the full tax credit. So we’re going to let those people run their course before we determine whether or not we renew it. Granted with the current or with the upcoming administration that may change There may be a new effort, I believe there is a federal bill being considered to yet again address that. But if you’re looking at a Kenya or a Hyundai or a BMW, there are still or Mercedes, there’s still so many tax credits out there. And if some of us on our call on this call to our jobs well enough in the coming years, they’ll also be a state level incentive as well.

Unknown Speaker  10:24  

Great, thank you. I have another question here. The question is, is rolling out a restructuring plan, so that I will get a cheaper rate when charging my Eevee during certain hours, but it requires a smart meter. What is a smart meter? And how do I know if I have one? Or how do I get one? Blair? Could you answer this one?

Unknown Speaker  10:45  

Yeah, um, yeah, if you don’t think you have a smart meter, the odds are you probably don’t. But they are not complicated, scary things. It’s just a slightly different model than your standard level two, plug into the wall, kind of charging mechanism. I don’t know if folks have noticed lately, but about six months ago, the iPhone had an update, where now your phone doesn’t start immediately charging. When I plug my phone in at night, I get this alert that pops up that says Like, my phone will be charged by 5am. Because my phone knows that, that’s when I have my alarm set. So it structures itself to charge in the most efficient manner, instead of just charging up right then and there. And then sitting on full for hours on end, which for all of us who don’t do this, but have been told to, you know, you’re supposed to let your battery drain down, you’re not supposed to leave it plugged in all the time, those things apply to your car, too. And so a smart charger essentially takes that responsibility off your plate, you don’t have to worry about it, the charger worries about it. And the reason the charger can address that is because it’s actively tapped into the data network with your utility for Dominion for this instance. So that charger is being told when electricity is at its lowest cost, which is generally between 12am and 5am. So it’s going to start charging your car around then. And that’s to the dominion’s benefit, it takes advantage of off peak grid power. I don’t know if folks know. But utilities actually do have to keep a constant flow of electricity for emergencies, essentially, throughout the entire evening, even though they know it’s not going to be used, it’s going to be wasted. And so electric vehicles actually represent an opportunity to reduce that waste. And besides it being a monetary gain for utilities, it is a great civil stabilization aspect as well.

Unknown Speaker  12:44  

Thank you. Okay. Next question is, it seems that auto manufacturers offer more Evie options and other countries, perhaps that maybe because of market demands that makes it more lucrative to offer emus abroad? What can we do to persuade vehicle manufacturers to offer more of their models in the US and how can we create market conditions to favor ABS here? That’s a great question. Kim, can you take that one?

Kim Jemaine  13:12  

Yeah, absolutely. And you’re absolutely right, and the answer is layered. But the first thing I will say is that this is not a matter of low demand. As I mentioned earlier, the generation when he released a report indicated that 53% of Virginians would consider an electric vehicle for the next vehicle, and 71% have a favorable view of electric vehicles. I think the reality is that this is a market failure. In the United States, manufacturers prioritize sending electric vehicles to states that have adopted clean car standards. That means states like Virginia that have not adopted these standards are being left behind. One simple fix is to adopt Zev and Love standards, which apply to manufacturers and tasked them with sending a certain percentage of electric vehicles to the Commonwealth. This means that Virginians will have access to a wider array of electric vehicle options, they won’t have to travel out of state to go car shopping, and it will broaden the use of the electric vehicle market for those that may not be able to afford an electric vehicle right off the lot. The second approach is to remove barriers for consumers. We can provide rebates or other incentives to ensure that more Virginians can afford electric vehicles. And we can also invest in charging infrastructure so people feel secure in the knowledge that their electric vehicles will be adequately powered. So it’s not a it’s not a matter of demand. The demand is there. We just have to set the mechanisms in place.

Unknown Speaker  14:52  

Thank you. I see someone in the chat who wants to make a comment. Let’s just get through our submitted questions first, and then we’ll open it up to allow you to take yourself off of mute in just a few minutes. Okay, so I’m just checking through the rest of the questions that you all submitted ahead of time. One more is, Where can I buy an Eevee in southwest Virginia, specifically Roanoke, and part two of that is what electrical infrastructure will I need to install in my home for a typical Evie charging station? And then lastly, this person has a three part question. Why is the resale value on Evie so low? For example, a three to five year old low mileage Nissan LEAF lists at only 11 k? Who can take that question? Perhaps? Can you want it? Yeah, I

Kim Jemaine  15:48  

I can answer and then glare if I am missing anything, you can absolutely take care of it. Go for it. Like and sold earlier, many Virginians are unable to find electric vehicles because manufacturers simply are not sending them here to Virginia. We have to change that by adopting clean car standards, a quick search. And we’ll show you a Hyundai and Chevy dealer in Roanoke with a few hybrid auctions and a couple of Eevee auctions. But we want to make sure that folks throughout the Commonwealth have access to a wide array of electric electric vehicle models. We address the second portion of this question in the slide deck. But the short answer is that you can charge an electric vehicle using a standard outlet. You can also purchase and install or have a charger installed, those start at around $200. So that is an option for those folks who have allocated parking spaces or who have a garage. And the answer related to the resale cost of electric vehicles is a little complicated. It’s not the case across the board. But it is the case for some vehicles. Because of rapidly changing battery technology. Some older EBS have a lower resale value. But this is way less true for newer electric vehicle models.

Unknown Speaker  17:24  

It’s also way more true for Nissan specifically, because Nissan has changed their battery technology considerably back and forth over the past decade. So if you’re looking at Nissan’s in particular, like pre 2018, pre 2017, which is when they had a big change in battery technology, those are going to be lower priced. That’s not the case across all OEMs or all manufacturers. And it’s definitely not nearly the same for newer models. In fact, titles in particular hold their resale value incredibly well. So yes, you can totally scoop up an old Nissan, very easy to scoop up as well, what we call orphan brands. So for instance, the FIA that they’re not making anymore, or the EB golf that they’re not making anymore, are not Eagle Eagle. There are pluses and minuses to buying a bolt that buying a car that’s not being made anymore. Maintenance, for instance, is technique, it can be harder to come by, but you can get them at a steel. So what was the other part of that question? Roanoke? We have a ton of Eevee owners in Roanoke. So it’s hard and I sympathize with that. I know the BMW dealership, for instance, is very pro Eb there. If that is potentially a brand that you want to consider, I’d also recommend, you know options like carvana, for instance, or carmax, you know, looking at manufacturers or or used options that will deliver straight to your driveway. But until we pass some more Evie friendly policies in Virginia, driving to Northern Virginia or Maryland, or even Charlottesville is the unfortunate reality right now.

Unknown Speaker  19:20  

Great, thank you. Okay. Other questions that we have? Someone asked a follow up question about the smart meter. So I just want to make sure we’re everyone’s clear on that. The question is, off -peak plan requires a smart meter. Do I have to buy that or just a minion install it?

Unknown Speaker  19:40  

Hey, Charles, you know this book better than I do. He’s responding in the chat. I don’t know if Charles can unmute himself at this juncture. But dominion is helping people install them in the first wave. And once they hit that wave that might change. Do you have any follow up?

Unknown Speaker  20:03  

I just checked the website and put that in the chat. But yeah, they’re in the process of installing meters in Richmond and one of their service areas. And so yeah, they’re doing it in phases. And every time you do a wave of a certain set, then they go back, I think, to the sacred ration commission and get permission for the next wave because it costs there. There’s a cost associated with that. And yeah, it’s in process. And if you’re, if your area is going to get one, you’ll get a card in the mail that says, hey, we’re going around installing smart meters. So you saw you called them and requested one, unfortunately.

Unknown Speaker  20:45  

Thank you. Okay, moving on to this one that I have here. How can personal Evie lead to electrification for public good? I am electrifying the public transit fleet. Great question. Who wants to take that one Kim or Blair? Kim, do

Kim Jemaine  21:08  

Do you want me to go?

Unknown Speaker  21:10  

Okay. Um, so there’s a lot of ways that EDS fit into the broader transportation electrification picture, in terms of the types of vehicles we’re talking about right now, which is light duty vehicles. There are policies and incentives in place and great organizations like the Clean Cities coalition across the country. And in our state, we have a few who helped municipalities and businesses electrify their fleet. So that’s sort of the next organic Step. Using the vehicles that we’re talking about right now. Then, most recent Nissan leafs are the most ideal candidate for that work, because they are vehicle to grid enabled. And so they help with resiliency, they help mitigate costs for those companies because they can store batteries and then draw down on them. Really, it’s a very cost effective argument, which is why combined with the lower cost of maintenance, you see so many cities going electric with their fleet, Roanoke is actually a great example of them. They were one of the first in the city or in the state other than Norfolk. So small, light duty fleets, really easy to electrify this technology directly supports that when we start looking broader at fleets. Just going off of that one word for the question. You start looking at buses, we start looking at trains. Trains, I think, are a little farther off. But there are a lot of hopeful breakthroughs coming out just actually this past week. So I think they’re getting there. Buses are here, we just need to help push for them more the technology is here, it becomes similar to an Eevee. A cost question, can you afford the upfront cost of an electric bus, and then reap the significant rewards of those savings over time. And so some of the work that Kim and I do is to help more areas understand more schools, more transit authorities understand that if you look at the long term, going electric with your fleet makes insanely good economic sense. And then there are other things that we can do like policy levers that help create better financing mechanisms that create more access. Right now, we do have, I believe it is around 5000 advanced transportation jobs in the state. But Volvo is bringing Volvo trucking and has always sort of loved Virginia. And Volvo trucking is bringing their electric truck manufacturing to Virginia. So we’re seeing the effects of these policies showcase Virginia as a hub for innovation, which creates more jobs. So we’re going to see more of not just light duty vehicles, but a comprehensive approach to transportation electrification taking place.

Unknown Speaker  24:02  

Thank you. Okay, next question from the chat is Can someone speak to the total life battery life with fast charge versus slow charge will a slow battery, less slow charge battery lasts longer than a fast charge battery?

Kim Jemaine  24:23  

Yes.

Unknown Speaker  24:27  

Same with your iPhone, like if you’re constantly leaving that sucker plugged in, it impacts your battery life. It’s negligible. You know you won’t notice it that much. But it is better to not constantly be fast charging unless you install a fast charger in your home or you drive 500 miles a day and so you have to fast charge every single day. You really don’t have to worry about it. The beauty of an electric vehicle is not having to worry about this stuff. You know we don’t worry about that with your gasoline car. You don’t have to worry about it with your ice cars just or your Eevee cars just that this is new technology and So, change is scary. And so, you know, it’s helpful to ask these questions. But I promise like owning an Eevee gets rid of all of that anxiety, owning an Eevee cures range anxiety, it cures any real concerns, the only thing you have to figure out is either, How comfortable are you with refilling the window washer fluid. If you’re comfortable with that, then you’re good, you’re set there’s nothing. If you’re not, then you can still drive to your maintenance shop and have them do it for you. But that’s about it. That and changing your windshield wipers.

Unknown Speaker  25:29  

That’s really it. Thank you. Okay, our next question is, how can Evie vehicles help or impact rural communities? Can you want this one? Yeah, so

Kim Jemaine  25:45  

I think the big answer here is that, um, somebody asked the question about how does electrifying our personal vehicles supports a transition to electrified fleets? And this answer kind of ties into that school buses are a perfect example. These are vehicles that are used in the morning, and then they’re used in the, at the end of the day to pick kids up, that means that we have the perfect opportunity to charge them. So there is technology moving forward that will allow us to utilize them as battery storage as well. So that’s a way that if we invest in the infrastructure needed for electric vehicles and electric fleets, the entire Commonwealth will benefit. And our most vulnerable populations, including our children will benefit if we start to see electric vehicles, electric transportation and electric fleets as a way of the future.

Unknown Speaker  26:46  

And I just add to that there’s recent data that came out. Actually, Charles is the one who sent me this study, talking about how there is actually increased transportation emissions in rural communities, because these are the same communities who are in general driving farther, as well as driving less efficient vehicles driving older vehicles, you know, lots and lots of pickup trucks. And so you’re actually having a higher density of core air quality transportation emissions in these rural communities. And so they actually could really benefit from transportation electrification, we do have to do things to make that a more feasible transition for them, making sure we don’t have charging deserts and rural communities, making sure that we prioritize incentivizing vehicles with longer ranges. But we’re, we are on a tipping point and how quickly we get to the other side of that really depends on how quickly we push for it.

Unknown Speaker  27:46  

Thank you. Next question is do you know if there are recycling centers for Evie batteries in the US?

Unknown Speaker  27:56  

I don’t know if there are recycling centers specifically for EDI batteries in the US. I can say that we have plenty of manufacturing sites, businesses that are currently being powered by old Evie batteries in the US. For instance, Amazon’s data centers are backed up with EDI batteries, the Mall of America’s escalators are run on old Ed batteries. When an Eevee battery is done in the vehicle, it still has 70% capacity left. So they’re used across the entire world. And I truly do mean the entire world. I can travel often example in every continent

Unknown Speaker  28:37  

or

Unknown Speaker  28:38  

escalators, data storage. Hospitals use them as more efficient generator systems. So there’s a huge Second Life market there even before we talk about recycling of the battery. We talked about repurposing the battery. But yes, there is a big market for recycling. But I think focusing on the repurposing is more effective, because we should get every last ounce of that battery that we can before we even think about how we recycle it.

Unknown Speaker  29:12  

Thank you. We have a couple of questions left. Next one is how can we make sure that easy access is equitable in terms of the rebates and incentives? Is there any policy being proposed?

Kim Jemaine  29:30  

Yeah, I know Blair is working really closely on Ed incentives.

Unknown Speaker  29:35  

Yes, there is a great bill being proposed by delegate Reed. I would love to have seen more of the detailed bill but the legislative Information Services website is very, very behind. So I know what my understanding of it is. But I’m going to say stuff that could be proven wrong tomorrow if the bill gets posted, so please don’t hold me back. Honorable if I become a liar accidentally, but it is designed very equitably, not only is there an enhanced rebate for lmia communities 55% of the funding for the program is reserved for those communities. It’s available, what’s being proposed is that it would be available for both used and new EBS, it’s really important to have that used component in there. Because elamite communities are generally buying more used vehicles. But we still do need to incentivize new vehicles to support that use market. So that’s why you still see financing for non LMA communities financing for new vehicles, it’s to create a more robust market, and also helps get at what Ken mentioned earlier about sending policy signals to manufacturers that they should be sending their emails here. And Zev is one lever, and it’s a fantastic lever and Eb rebates is sort of the other partner level to that cause. And, you know, we won’t get non equitable policies passed. That’s not, Kim and I are not going to put our names or effort on policies that are not designed with fence line and frontline communities at heart. So I can guarantee that if we’re advocating for it, we’re making sure that it is up to snuff. Thank you, Blair, I

Unknown Speaker  31:21  

actually have a follow up question to what you were saying. I have a question. In general, how long can you speak to how long it might take for electric vehicles to enter the used market where they become a little bit more affordable?

Unknown Speaker  31:35  

Sure. And this isn’t just an Eevee thing, this is just standard automotive things. The majority of the US market that you’re going to be most interested in is cars coming off of leases. So those are generally between one and three years. There’s definitely vehicles that people flip at the seven to eight year mark. That’s because on average cars are flipped between eight and 12 years. So you start seeing those early, early end options, but really like certified Pre Owned, which I will highly recommend you still get a warranty that car has been checked up, up and down. It’s basically as good as a new vehicle that tires might have a little bit more wear on them. But that’s basically it, it’s been scrubbed. And those are coming off of leases. So that 123 year mark is where you can get a really good deal.

Unknown Speaker  32:27  

Great, thank you. Okay, we have two questions left. Next question is, is there any difference between the lifespan of an Eevee versus a combustible engine? Yes, there

Unknown Speaker  32:42  

Is a BS that lasts longer. Whoa, Merry Christmas? Um, no, not not to be good, right. But there are lots of studies showing, you know, they’ve put EBS just by sitting on a treadmill to see how many miles they can get them to. And it’s well beyond what any of us mean, I’ve driven a car to 250,000 miles, and I’d like to never pay for those maintenance bills ever again. Don’t do it, I don’t recommend it. Unless you’re in an Eevee. Because there are no sway bar legs to replace. And you know, all the other transmission parts to an ice speaker go that go broke at 100,000 miles, you don’t have that same and it may be so an Eevee can go farther. And if anybody tries to tell you, what about when you replace the battery? My response to that is that the battery and an Eevee engine in an EB car is the exact same as your engine in an ice vehicle. And in any right mind, Would any of you, unless you’re desperately in love with that car, consider replacing your entire engine? No, you would not. It would be way more than the value of the car. And so it’s really a non-starter. And so if it’s just it’s it’s a talking point that ice advocates are trying to use to conflate one to the other in a way that it’s just not even something you would ever consider. And it’s also just not supported by the data.

Unknown Speaker  34:15  

Thank you. Okay, my last question is for Kim, can you give us an overview of any legislation that will advance EBS and this upcoming session?

Kim Jemaine  34:26  

Yeah, and I will actually address the clean car standards aspect. And then, like I said, Blair is working on some rebates, rebate incentives. So I’ll let her speak to that. So the short answer is, yes, there are standards that we can adopt, and we are pushing for this next legislative session that will send a signal that Virginians want electric vehicles, and will, quote will task manufacturers with Sending a small percentage of EBS of what they send to Virginia to be EBS. So that number starts at I think we’re looking at about 7% initially, and it will increase over time. And it has a two year waiting period. So if this legislative session Fingers crossed, it will impact model year 2025 vehicles. So that is the short answer there. It doesn’t impact our dealers, it’s not something that takes a lot of money. It is simply a market signaler that says, We want manufacturers to send electric vehicles to Virginia. So the short answer is we want to adopt love ends of standards, also known as clean car standards.

Unknown Speaker  35:52  

Yeah, and I would raise or I would add to that. Zev solves a market failure, like Kim was saying, We have so many Eevee owners, some of you on this call, who bought your car in another state, because you couldn’t find it in Virginia. And so that’s Virginia losing out on that revenue and those jobs, and it’s Maryland getting it. So if I’m Maryland, I’m advocating against them for Virginia, because I’d like to keep getting those sales. But there already is demand in Virginia. And if anybody tells you differently, they’re wrong. And so really, it’s just about increasing access to these vehicles to help to support the demand we already have. The flip side of that is the Evie rebate program, which supports demand and it supports more equitable access as well. Bringing the Evie here is fantastic as the long term market economics trickle down, you’ll get more used vehicles, you’ll have increased access to infrastructure, it has a way of increasing equitable access to Evie. But if you combine that with a point of sale, Evie rebates that’s equitably designed. So a rebate that drives down the price of the car on the hood incentives is what manufacturers called instead of the federal tax credit, which is designed to benefit folks who make the most money, maybe rebate helps drive down that price right then and there for folks who can’t afford that upfront cost anyway. And it supports the communities who can benefit most from electric vehicles. So if we could get that passed, that sends a great market signal as well to these OEMs. And it addresses the other side of the EDI coin, we need to increase equitable access. But then we also need to make them more reachable for so many people. So these are really complementary policies. And then in 2022, we’re going to come back and talk to you guys about TCI. So just brace yourself. We have work to do.

Unknown Speaker  37:56  

Thank you for these great questions. I’m going to turn it back over to Lauren. And we can pick a few more questions from you all.

Unknown Speaker  38:05  

Thank you so much for facilitating that, Stacy. Y’all have some great questions. I do want to give just a few minutes for people to raise their hands. I’ll call on people to do some kind of round robin questions. And maybe any, you know, testimonial statements, we only have a few minutes because I do want us to do a few closing polls so that we can reflect on this information and see if we changed you know anybody’s minds or presented new information and then cap it off with next steps. Where

Kim Jemaine  38:32  

Where do we go from here? So

Unknown Speaker  38:33  

I’m going to start off with Chuck who has been waiting so patiently Chuck, please go ahead and unmute yourself.

Unknown Speaker  38:41  

Okay, so yeah, just to comment on affordability and emission. So we’re in year five of our all electric and for the first time of my life, I got vanity plates, vanity plates, say son car. The reason I say son car is because our car is powered totally off the roof of our house. Nice. We put on solar panels at the same time because we bought the car. Now people say,  “Well, that’s expensive.” But I have found that we have recovered the cost of our solar panels in three years. Because we’re saving $7,000 a year in gasoline and maintenance that we were spending on our Volvo wagon. The other thing people said to us was oh, well, aren’t you cool? You’re driving an electric car with dirty electricity. Oh, no. And I say no. It’s not dirty electricity, because the sun is not dirty. And as far as resale. First time ever. I leased a car. And the reason we lease the car was that you know this technology turns over like every 18 months. So every two to three years. We get it we get brand new technology and we’ve Had no devaluation of the car, because we didn’t know, I

Unknown Speaker  40:03  

I don’t know how to do this.

Unknown Speaker  40:06  

That’s awesome. I would just add to that, even if you don’t have solar, by the way, everyone go solar whenever you can, if you can, or check out our cadia, where you get offsets for your house. Even if you’re charging on today’s grid in Virginia, it’s still a 70% reduction in emissions. So across the United States, and every single state, even Kentucky and Tennessee that are primarily charged with coal, it’s still cleaner to drive electric cars than it is to drive gasoline. And that’s because you lose 50% of your energy in an ice vehicle simply due to heat. So it’s incredibly inefficient. And so you’re just burning more and more and more than you would from seeing natural gas, or nuclear, which are the primary grid sources here in Virginia. But combining that with solar, like Chuck said, takes you all the way to 100%. And so, you know, that really is the creme de la creme of options.

Kim Jemaine  41:03  

Yeah, and I will just piggyback off that and say that one thing that Chuck highlights is that solar panels help the individuals but here in Virginia, we are well on our way to modernizing our grid, and making sure that our grid is sourced by renewable energies. So as our grid becomes cleaner, our electric vehicles if you own one will also become cleaner. So it just shows you how much all of these policies, and all of these components reinforce one another.

Unknown Speaker  41:35  

Yay for the Virginia Clean Economy Act.

Unknown Speaker  41:37  

Thank you so much for that. Chuck. That was great. We have time for two more, we’re gonna go to Diane, and then we’re gonna go to CMB 4761. Hit it, Diane. Oh, I mean, go ahead and unmute yourself.

Unknown Speaker  41:51  

Still muted.

Unknown Speaker  41:53  

There we go.

Unknown Speaker  41:54  

I’m about 20 minutes south of Charlottesville. So I’m interested in buying and having serviced an electric vehicle in Charlottesville with any firsthand experience about that. And the second part is, if I can squeak this in, besides being around here, I’m sure I will work locally, we travel up to New England. So the idea of taking a trip and planning a trip.

Unknown Speaker  42:19  

So I live in Charlottesville, and I have my electric vehicle and I get it serviced in Charlottesville. If you buy an Eevee from a dealership, it has to be certified to maintain that vehicle. So that’s a really good way of guaranteeing that the maintenance is really, really, really minor. But you still do want to have the tires rotated, you know, have your brakes checked. So there are still those good things every year, you have to get a state inspection in Virginia. So it’s still good to check with your local dealerships and make sure that they can service them. If you’re not that far from Charlottesville, you really won’t have any problems, in particular Carter Myers Automotive, here in town is an Eevee leader. They have solar on their roofs, CMA, Carter Myers, automotive, they are great. Pete and wise are the owners and they are truly fantastic. And our Ed leaders in space. The second question was about traveling. Okay, what if, if you guys traveled that much? Check out a plug in hybrid. Best of Both Worlds, the majority of your daily driving is still electric, but you still have the convenience of gasoline vehicles. I will say that, you know, renting a car is really easy, though. So if you want to go all electric, it’s really easy to rent a car for a trip and a charging infrastructure. Just look at the plugin, look at the plug star maps and see all the Chargers on your route and just see what the infrastructure is like now and know that it’s getting better. Every single day. Virginia has tripled our access to DC fast chargers in just the last year. So it really is a network that’s expanding, especially on travel quarters, like 95

Kim Jemaine  43:58  

Yeah, and one of the benefits of doing a lot of these events related to electric vehicles and clean car standards is that we’ve heard a bunch of great stories about people traveling in their electric vehicles, which include stories about people charging at the grocery store, which includes stories about a wild lion in Fairfax County that is only equipped with fast chargers. And a lot of places, especially in Northern Virginia, have increased access to charging. So I think for folks who are looking to take long trips, the infrastructure is there you may have to like Blair said plan it out a little bit. But definitely would encourage folks to to think about just pulling up a map of Evie chargers and you’ll realize that there are more available than people may think.

Unknown Speaker  44:52  

Yeah, and Google and Apple Maps now have USB chargers built into their maps. So that’s a new Yes. They’re now included so you can look up Evie chargers on your apple or iPhone or Apple or Google Maps.

Unknown Speaker  45:06  

Thanks so much guys. That was great information that I’m going to go check out very soon. CMB 4761 bring us home and then guys stay with us for the last few minutes. We still got some important reminders.

Unknown Speaker  45:19  

Oh, you got on mute. Sorry, you muted. Yep. There we go.

Unknown Speaker  45:24  

My question would be if you’re not even considering the incentives, which of these are the top that you would recommend? If it were new at this and we’re thinking of purchasing one.

Unknown Speaker  45:39  

Okay, if money isn’t an option,

Unknown Speaker  45:42  

but we’re not totally extravagant

Unknown Speaker  45:47  

The model three is probably one of the best TVs out there. But the bowl is the best bang for your buck, the Chevy Bolt it has is the most cost efficient with me for this range. So and and really do check out use options on the carvanha my coworker got his delivered. His Eagle just slid into his driveway and it was the easiest buy so I’d highly recommend those options too.

Unknown Speaker  46:11  

This has been a great great informative presentation all you guys who organized it it’s just like it’s the first zoom we’ve been on where it just goes tick tick tick tick and we just did Thank you

Unknown Speaker  46:25  

my heart. I know you just made my day to day like that’s amazing. Thank you sir. Okay, give us the last minute and a half to hang in there with us guys. Okay as he likes to say everything worth doing is worth reviewing. Did I get it right recapping worth

Unknown Speaker  46:41  

evaluating

Unknown Speaker  46:43  

there we go okay guys, you know I love a pullback now.

Unknown Speaker  46:46  

Here we go.

Unknown Speaker  46:48  

Easy softball question y’all. Do you feel more informed about him leaving? Not to guilt trip here but give you give this give it? No, I’m just kidding. Answer. Answer. Honestly.

Unknown Speaker  47:02  

We only have four of these Hang in there. And they’re gonna be so helpful.

Unknown Speaker  47:09  

Okay, good. I’m

Unknown Speaker  47:10  

gonna go ahead and end it. And we got 85% said yes. And 15% said somewhat No one said no. Thank you. We’re so happy. Yeah, I will get a 100% ticket. Okay, next one. Are you more interested in purchasing an Eevee? Now? Yes, no, someone knowing the answer.

Unknown Speaker  47:34  

Yeah, we’re 1,000% aware of that one. And Evie isn’t necessarily for every single person at this exact moment. And we just hope that you’ll consider it for your car when you can go electric. And hopefully we make it easier for you to do so.

Unknown Speaker  47:50  

Perfect. So 70% said, Yes, I’m more interested now. So panelists, you’ll nailed it. 25% said someone will take that too. And no, that is all right, baby. You’re the one buying a scooter.

Kim Jemaine  48:02  

Okay,

Unknown Speaker  48:03  

number eight.

Unknown Speaker  48:06  

What barriers Do you still feel prevent you from making your next car and EV? So we tried to address them. We gave you a lot of new information. But help us tell us you know, this is still a concern that we can do more research, we can find more good facts to help with those concerns. And these are the same ones from the beginning so we can kind of compare apples to apples. I’m looking for about 20 votes. I’m almost there. And then the last one next. Thank you all for giving us a few extra minutes. We really really appreciate it.

Kim Jemaine  48:35  

Our rights

Unknown Speaker  48:37  

ending right there. Okay, still

Unknown Speaker  48:40  

people own an already paid off vehicle. Great problems still have consulting cost concerns. a totally understandable car’s big purchase no matter what it is. And charging infrastructure. Great. That’s good to know. We will take that back. And then this is the last one y’all. Very important. This transitions us into next steps. If you’re one of the people that at the beginning said yes, I’m a Zephyr owner. Are you willing to help us get more people to be seven love owners? This is multiple choice. You can choose more than one? Let us know l put our emails. Is it working? No one’s voting.

Unknown Speaker  49:16  

Oh, they’re not gonna do it.

Unknown Speaker  49:19  

I’ll put our emails in the chat. If you didn’t get a chance to ask a question if you didn’t get a chance to share your testimonial or where you charge or where you got your car, or how much you love your car. Please email me an owl. We’re looking for ways this upcoming legislative session to communicate with legislators about how we can get more jobs and lives into Virginia and we need y’all the owners of these vehicles. To show us your cars shows how much you love them shows you plug it in into a charger, something that’s COVID safe that we can send as an invitation to legislators to say hey, we’ll ask this great local Evie owner to come to your district office because they’re local And open up the front door and let you take a peek. So please email us and let us know if you are available or would like to do any of those things. We got 63%. That’s a yes, you would love to help provide that 25% so that you’d be happy to roll out into your driveway in your pajamas and take a quiz. Love will tell you that it will email you instructions. And 50% said you take a selfie everyone knows how to take a selfie.

Kim Jemaine  50:27  

I script points if you put your puppies in the selfie with your electric vehicles,

Unknown Speaker  50:33  

babies.

Unknown Speaker  50:35  

So those are just some of the next steps. I’m also going to go ahead and drop in the chat really quickly. Take the pledge gentleman, he has a great pledge that I’m going to drop in for how to electrify your ride, take that pledge, it shows us that Virginians are committed to this. And then also watch out on January the 14th. So you can be doing lobbying training to help advocates like yourself, get prepared to advocate for this type of great legislation. In the upcoming session. We’ll do a much deeper dive on how you can help. This is kind of the tail end of our great info session tonight. So we kept you so long. I’m so sorry. So I’m not gonna give too much time to everybody else. But I just want to say thank you so much for great panels to come to me and Blair st Leger Olsen for being our experts. And Blair has been doing every event that anyone invites her to for this. So we’re so thankful for doing

Unknown Speaker  51:25  

hanging in there, y’all

Unknown Speaker  51:28  

being able to facilitate anything on a dime, all for everything she did to work on this. putting this event together. We’re so thankful that God gave us your evening. Please, please email us. Let’s not stop the conversation here. And let us know what other information we can get you and how we can keep partnering. Thank you so much. And we’ll see you out there at the next events.

Unknown Speaker  51:47  

Thanks, everyone. I have holidays,

Kim Jemaine  51:49  

everyone.

Unknown Speaker  51:51  

Bye.

Charles Olsen  51:55  

Thanks for listening to Upside down. This podcast is produced by Charlie Olsen. with incredible support from the entire CCAN staff. Check out the show notes for links to all the things discussed in this episode. If you want to know more about how you can get involved with seeking in the climate fight, check out our website at chesapeakeclimate.org. If you want to get in touch with us, follow us on instagram and twitter @CCAN. And if you enjoy the work we do, why don’t you share it with your friends. Sharing the show is a super easy way to help spread the word about the work we’re doing in the fight for bold climate actions. Thanks again for listening. I’ll see you next time.

Climate Poll Shows Maryland Residents Ready for Action

Climate Poll Shows Maryland Residents Ready for Action

In this episode, Montgomery county, Maryland declared a climate emergency back in 2017. Yet in the past three years, no meaningful actions have been taken to address the urgent threat. A recent poll commissioned by seeking and Gonzalez polling indicated a striking amount of Montgomery county residents support immediate actions to solve global warming. The following episode is a press conference with CCAN executive director Mike Tidwell, and pollster Patrick Gonzalez, releasing the poll to the public.

Read the full transcript below.

Charles Olsen  0:02  

Hi, my name is Charlie Olsen and this is The Upside Down the podcast from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. In this episode, Montgomery county, Maryland declared a climate emergency back in 2017. Yet in the past three years, no meaningful actions have been taken to address the urgent threat. A recent poll commissioned by seeking and Gonzalez polling indicated a striking amount of Montgomery county residents support immediate actions to solve global warming. The following episode is a press conference with CCAN executive director Mike Tidwell, and pollster Patrick Gonzalez, releasing the poll to the public.

Mike Tidwell  0:41  

Welcome again, my name is Mike Tidwell. I’m executive director and founder of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. And we’re going to talk about a poll and as far as I can tell, I googled around and I asked a lot of activists in Montgomery county, no one can remember there ever being a poll done specifically on climate change in Montgomery county before. So we’re proud this may be the first ever I just have never heard of one. And we did it of course, because we know that the impacts of climate change are worsening as we speak. Ellicott City had 2000 year floods and 22 months. Recently, the rains of 2018 alone are devastating red and white oak trees in all of Southern Montgomery county. I mean, it’s just amazing how many trees are dying from the extreme rain of 2018 followed by drought followed by beetle infestation, and it goes on and on and on. And scientists tell us that we have maybe 10 years to cut emissions worldwide in terms of greenhouse gases throttle back on fossil fuels, and in western countries, wealthier countries, we have to cut emissions even more than 50% by the year 2030. And that’s why our county council Montgomery county, I live in Montgomery county, I’ve lived here for 31 years, my son went to Montgomery County Schools. I love this country. We’re diverse, we’re progressive. And I was so proud in 2017, when our county council passed a climate emergency declaration that basically called it what it was an emergency. It was at that time the biggest jurisdiction in North America to make that declaration. And the first to do it in the way that they did it. The Declaration was attended with a goal of 80% reductions in greenhouse gases by 2027 and 100%. By 2035. I mean, those are incredible numbers. And they’re really big promises basically, that the government county council made to the voters and the people in McGorry county and with big promises, obviously come with big expectations. And we’ve had big expectations for the last three years. But unfortunately, the county council has not passed any single major legislation to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our county or a package of bills that might do that. We’re still waiting on that. And you know, until COVID, carbon emissions really didn’t go down in our county. During the three years after the climate declaration. Yes, they’ve dropped during COVID. But unless we take action, they’re going to go back up. Now. The county executive just yesterday, Marc Elrich released his Climate Action Plan. Some of us have had a chance to look at it, you know, not all of it, but at least look at the 87 recommendations. They’re great recommendations. Unfortunately, we were hoping to see specific legislative recommendations or a package of bills that might actually put us on a path of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I’m a believer in my organization’s belief that this is a nation of laws. And if you want to change this nation, you have to change the laws. So we’re still waiting on a legislative package for our county council to pass.

So within that context of rising climate impacts, and rising policy expectations, and Montgomery county that the Chesapeake Climate Action Network hired Mr. Patrick Gonzalez. Patrick is an amazing pollster. He’s well known across the state of Maryland. He’s been involved in literally 1000s of polls across the state for years, going back 35 years. He is widely respected by his peers for unbiased surveys in an impartial and even handed manner. I asked Patrick to put a poll in the field that he’s about to talk to you about. Because I’ve worked with him before going all the way back into the early 2000s. And with the Republican and Democratic governors both and I’ve always been been impressed by the accuracy, the impartiality and the professionalism of his polling, and we thought he was the perfect pollster to get at some of the issues so we can figure out where Montgomery County voters on the issue of global warming, and what did they want their elected leaders to do. And that’s the poll that he’s about to tell you about in more detail, but I just want to read to you the first paragraph of the press release that you can just release on this poll. It says a bipartisan majority of Montgomery County voters in Maryland are personally concerned about the rising impacts of climate change, with a whopping 94% of Democrats expressing concern, and a new poll released today. Voters also say they are eager to see the county council keep a 2017 promise by adopting within six months, a plan that will lead to, quote, major pollution cuts. In quote, as a first step, nearly 69% of voters countywide support a bill now before the council to allow a limited number of solar farms on agricultural land in the northern part of the county. So that’s the first paragraph of our press release. I’ve just told you more about Patrick Gonzalez, the esteemed pollster, and I’m now going to turn it over to Patrick, as he speaks, you’re also going to be able to see the PDF pages of the actual polling document that he’s created for us and that we’re releasing now.

Patrick Gonzalez  6:35  

Mike, excuse me, thank you for the kind words Mike and thank you all for being here with us this afternoon and allowing me to, you know, to talk to you, as Mike said, We Gonzales research work with Mike and Lauren Charlie and CCAN Chesapeake Climate Action Network for many years. And so I think we have, you know, a really good relationship. And I enjoy it. What Mike came to us about, I don’t know, a month or so ago and said, hey, look, we want to get into Montgomery county, we want to look and see a couple of issues. Specifically, the resolution that was passed a couple of years ago, voters concerned about acting on that resolution. And kind of the issue is solar farms. So as with any survey, we conduct, we want to start, we always keep in mind that hey, we got somebody on the phone that’s agreed to do something and they don’t know what’s going on. We do an intro that kind of explains and so we wanted to begin by getting a general sense of where Montgomery County voters are on the issue of global warming. And we said how concerned are you personally about global warming, very concerned, somewhat concerned, not too concerned or not at all concerned. And what we found overall in Montgomery county 83% are concerned 63%, nearly two out of every 360 3% are very concerned. And then and 17%, as you see not concerned, then we look at it by some of the demographics. And as Mike stated in his opening 94% of Democrats, but we found even breaking it down by party that 69% of independents are voters who choose not to affiliate with either party, or concerned and even a majority 51% of Republicans. You look at it by gender, not a huge, huge difference. 86 men, 80 women, and you look at it by age, and I think probably I don’t go into any survey with a real expectation. But I would have thought that the divergence between under 50 and older over 30 would have been a little greater at 84% under 50 a battle like 82% over 50. So we now have an understanding of where Montgomery County voters are on the issue and they 83% express some level of concern. Okay, now we’re going to move into the resolution that was adopted three years ago and we wanted to get a sense of voters’ opinion on that. And we stated kind of the goal we’d not kind of we stated the goal in the question. The question read. In 2017 the Montgomery County Council unanimously passed a resolution declaring a climate change emergency. The council set a county goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2027. So we’re asking, we’re stating the specific Do you support toward or oppose this climate emergency declaration and goal. And what we found is that 70% of Montgomery County voters support this goal 19% oppose 11% offered no opinion nap, the 70% that supported 51% strongly supported. So for every question we asked, we had intensity. So it’s one thing to say I support something, but to say I strongly support it. And there, we found that the 51% majority of Montgomery County voters strongly support the climate emergency declaration and goal. Now we see a little sharper distinction between parties, we find out 82% of Democrats support it. And among Republicans, that supports drops down to 35. But among independents, unaffiliated, it’s still 58%.

by gender, we see, you know, again, males a little more, a little more heavy, heavier level of support, but not much. And now we see a little sharper variance by age, but under 50 78% 50, and older 65%. So again, we are seeing, you know, sort of a consistent sort of level of support. A, the distinctions are there, as we see, but there’s also sort of a constancy. So it’s not something that’s being driven heavily by one demographic or another, the county, as a whole, is kind of coming together. So now we’ve had,

Mike Tidwell  11:44  

yeah, and I did want to jump in and say, I think we’ve, Laura, you’ve posted in the chat, the link to the actual polling, if you if you want to see the actual wording of the polling questions is toward the end of the survey, so you can just go to the end, and you’ll see the complete wording of the question. But on this one in terms of support for the 2017 declaration and the goals. That’s a key part and the goals. You see these incredible numbers of 82% of Democrats, what struck me on that question was, it’s easy to say yes, thank you elected officials for declaring a policy for declaring a goal of reducing greenhouse gases. But then, to say they also support that 80% by 2027. Mmm, that is it. That’s an amazing number. And we know that that is going to be very, very hard to meet if it’s possible at all. And we weren’t sure if voters were going to see that three years had gone by, you know, from 2017 to 2020. And that 80% by 2027 reduction might strike people as totally unachievable and unrealistic, and therefore, they wouldn’t support their continuation of that goal. But as you see, these numbers are 82% of Democrats support the 2017 declaration and still support the goal of 80% reduction. By 2027. We weren’t sure we were going to get that strong of support. So this is pretty impressive that people are still overwhelmingly bought into extremely aggressive goals.

Patrick Gonzalez  13:22  

Yes, sir. So we start with the general concept of concern over the issue of global warming, and get into the specifics of what happened three years ago. Now we know where we’re at. And now we wanted to kind of get a sense of the voters. appetite voters support for action. So Laura, let’s go to the next question that we asked. And so what we asked was, okay, they passed this resolution in seven in 2017. Do you support or oppose the county council adopting a climate solution plan within the next six months, which will generate major pollution cuts? So now we want to get a sense of okay. They support the concept. They certainly support the general notion. Support definitely is behind the resolution. Now, how about some action and what we find is that 75%, three out of four Montgomery county, Montgomery County voters support the county council adopting a climate solution plan within the next six months. And, and again, when you look at it by party, and unfortunately, I don’t have that here, but just again, it was 85% democrats 39% republicans 70% independence. So again, 80% 85% Democrats. So here we’re at with Democrats, let me just let me just go with this for a sec. We start with global warming. 94% are concerned, we go to the resolution 82% of Democrats support it, we now talk about action within the next six months 85%. So you get the drift. But what struck me most significant, I think, is that I was constructing the report. And I cannot take credit for this wonderful map, my director of marketing, my youngest daughter, that wonderful human being put together the map. And why I got to use this map was the consistency between council districts. So 75% overall in Montgomery county support acting within the next six months. And it varies from 79% in district one, to 70%. In district three, there is a very consistent level of support geographically. And as you see, it goes from 79%, one to 76%, and two to 70%, and three to 72% in District Four, and 77%. In district five, that’s that this is a significant result. That concerns every district over 70%. So now, after we did this question, we wanted to look specifically at the issue of solar farms. So let’s move down to that one. And Mike and I and his team and my team, we went through the wording on this question, and it was rather verbose. So it’s rather a wordy question, but we felt it was necessary. Because what we wanted to do in the question was not design a question to get a specific result, but kind of put the pros and the cons out there. So respondents, Montgomery County voters, would at least be able to respond to something that they’re probably, you know, it’s like anything, we all have lives. So when there are many, I would submit that Montgomery County voters are more in tune than the average bear. But still even that said, Yeah, they kind of understand the issue, but we wanted to give him some specifics. So I’m going to, if I can real quick, read this question, because I think it’s important to understand how we tried to present the information. So we went in and we said one proposal for fighting global warming in Montgomery county is to change county law to allow some farmers in the county’s agricultural reserve to put solar farms of limited size on their land. Critics, including many farmers, say this will harm the rural character of the reserve.

But a county council committee voted in August to support the practice as long as no more than 2% of agricultural land is used. And part of the solar power is reserved for low and moderate income residents, would you support or oppose allowing county farmers to put solar farms on their land, if no more than 2% of Montgomery’s agricultural reserve is used, and part of the solar power created goes to low and moderate income houses. And what we found here was that 69% of voters support allowing county farmers to put solar farms on their land with those conditions. 21% oppose 10% giving no response. And we see it at parties. And once again, we find among Democrats 85% support it by gender, very little distinction. And again, slightly more support as we’d expect under 50. But not not the Great Divergence that you often find, when you break out a vote or group by age. So again, sort of a consistent level of support for the concept and one of the things that we did also and you’ll see it in, in the full report is we broke every question out by every demographic, so every question has party gender, age, and region and council district. So you’ll see within the different council districts the results for each and every question.

Mike Tidwell  19:50  

So I will say yeah, Patrick, I think you gave a good summary of that. You know, it’s easy to have a broad declaration. And broad commitments to solutions. When you start getting into specific solution proposals, then things tend to get more interesting and the debate intensifies. And that’s certainly the case with its compromise proposal to put limited amounts of solar farms in the agricultural reserve. There are strong opinions on both sides, we realize that we tried to capture that. And the question is Patrick said, just to be Climate Action Network is supportive of the compromise, a bill that got out of committee and that has since stalled at the county level, we do think it’s reasonable to cap solar farms at no more than 2% of the ag reserve, and to use the overwhelming share of that solar for low and moderate income community solar purposes. But as Patrick said, you know, we did want to make sure that someone getting a call from from a pollster on a Tuesday night in montgomery county, and is asked about this issue and may not know anything about it, that they heard, as contract said, what the critics say, including it again, it says critics, including many farmers, not some farmers, not you know, a few farmers, it says critics, including many farmers say this will harm the rural character of the reserve, which has been the strongest criticism of this proposal. So he put it in there. And then the results, you can see, I mean, majorities and each district of the council, including, I mean, the highest support is district one, which includes most of the reserve, and district two, which includes a lot of the reserve, really, really high numbers. So you have majorities, robust majorities in all council districts. Frankly, this was the question I was most surprised about. We weren’t, you know, we weren’t sure what we were going to get in terms of results when we presented pros and cons. And I think that this shows really broad political support for a compromise. And, frankly, I think that the council should pass the solar zoning bill as advanced by the committee, and we’ll see about that. Does that cover it all? Patrick? Yeah,

Patrick Gonzalez  22:23  

I think it is. And you know, if Laura has any emailed questions, I’ll stay here all day. I’d love this stuff.

Mike Tidwell  22:33  

And you should have the link to the survey in the chat. We’ll also be emailing around an action alert and press release. And, yeah, if you’re a member of the media, and you have a question, send it to Laura at Chesapeake climate. I have gotten a few questions emailed to me. So Laura, I don’t know if you have anything. I haven’t checked your email. Any questions from reporters? Laura? Ah, not quite yet. But as a reminder, if you want to send a question again, it’s laura@chesapeakeclimate.org Great. And one question that I got for you, Patrick? Is the question about the margin of error. What about the margin of error of 5.5%? Isn’t that high for a poll like this? Or is this normal for a local poll? For a local poll, this

Patrick Gonzalez  23:26  

is fine five and a half percent 325. Where you have issues and you’ve got to be aware, as you’re analyzing the data, the demo that the cells for the different demographics, whether it’s in particular the council district, have to understand that it has to represent sort of the county as a whole. So in an election, Council district three is 20% 19% of the electorate, therefore it needs to be that percentage in the sample. And that is fine. So as for comparative purposes, looking within the districts, it’s great, you wouldn’t want to take and stand on the mount and and preach the Holy Gospel, that this is what’s going on in District Four, as a standalone, okay? And you’ve just got to be aware of that and that but as far as the overall margin of error, plus or minus five and a half percent. If we did 1000. interviews, the margin is going to drop down to three. So it’s a two and a half point game. But so you’re not gaining that much in with even that book, as an overall sample for this type of poll. I am more than comfortable with what we did so keeping in mind this statistical reality.

Mike Tidwell  24:56  

And Patrick, just to my thanks for that answer. To my my opening comment that I have no recollection of a county level environmental poll and montgomery county Can you have you ever done a county level environmental poll and when Governor county

Patrick Gonzalez  25:12  

dude, I’ve been polling in Montgomery County since 1986. Okay. And I know I look incredibly young, so I, you know, marvel at that. I have never known I’ve never been aware of it, and I’m thinking about how I used to have a close relationship with Keith Howler and Potomac. And, and I’m thinking back to what I used to do, you know, constituent stuff with them? I don’t I don’t ever remember even going back that far. But but

Mike Tidwell  25:44  

it could have been this is a novel, this is a novel. Yes. So a question for me is, Why didn’t your question on solar in the agriserve mentioned how solar farms could reduce the ability to move toward more locally based food production? That’s a fair question. Obviously, we couldn’t get every level of the debate encapsulated in one polling question. But the issue of local food production, I mean, the reality is today in the ag reserve, most of what’s grown there, a lot of it is for animals I personally am, I call myself a climateterian. I don’t eat meat, or fish or dairy, because of the impacts on the climate. So the amount of land needed to grow, the diet for me and my family is, is quite small. And I always encourage people to lower on the food chain. So, you know, if we were to just switch to a more sustainable diet in this nation, and hopefully we will one day, we won’t have to use nearly as much land to grow crops for animals and agriserve and elsewhere. But you know, I think there’s a misconception that the agriserve is already a sustainable, you know, carbon neutral agricultural paradise, and it just isn’t, and we want to do better, and we want to move in that direction, and have more sustainable food grown for people and the ag reserve. But I think there’s plenty of room. And voters, I think, agree in this survey, there’s plenty of room to use a limited amount of land, so that farmers can harvest sunlight, so they can harvest more than just corn and soybeans, they can harvest the sun. And frankly, as climate change and extreme weather take more and more of their land out of production, because of flooding and droughts, more and more land will be taken out of production in northern montgomery county, to the detriment of farmers, these same farmers to hang on to their farms and send their kids to college are going to need an additional stream of income, which solar farming appropriately cited can provide. So that’s the long winded answer to that.

Patrick Gonzalez  28:09  

And if I could just real quick it. I mean, it’s certainly a valid question. And it applies to any question we ever asked, which is, you have limitations, you can only, you know, come at it from certain angles. And again, it’s a valid point we tried. I mean, I can only speak from intent. And my intent is always to try to get at something in as straightforward and honest a way as possible. In other words, I don’t play games with my poles. I don’t know, I don’t put something out and pretend that what isn’t or what isn’t, is, we put it out. We did the wording, Mike, you and Laura and Charlie and all this in my gang. We all worked together and tried. Did we hit perfection? No. But we tried to get at it. And those issues are certainly worth exploring in the future and stuff. So I just wanted to acknowledge that the person that asked the question, it’s a valid question. It’s a valid point. So

Mike Tidwell  29:08  

um, another question we got is who paid for the poll? And did solar companies help in drafting the poll? So I can tell you that Chesapeake Climate Action Network paid for this poll entirely. And Chesapeake Climate Action Network crafted the questions about no solar company, no other company period. saw any of these questions changed, added or subtracted a single syllable from anything that you’re seeing. This is entirely generated by Chesapeake Climate Action Network, I will tell you that I did share the language with a couple of well known environmental advocates in Montgomery county, just because I trusted their point of view. And that’s it. So no solar companies, no private industry. paid for it. Nobody crafted the question. So what you see is a document from an environmental climate advocate and not from a profit oriented company. 

Patrick Gonzalez  30:10  

Let me just add to that, Mr. kidwell. Patrick, don’t play that game. Okay. Chesapeake Climate Action Network paid for it. Patrick Gonzalez, ultimately now it was in concert with secant. But I am the one that is solely responsible for the ultimate wording of the question in that. I agreed that Okay, let’s move forward. So again, and I sound defensive. And I don’t mean to because there’s so many sleaze bags and politics these days that I understand it, but I try. But everything Mike said is total luck. When I put out a poll, you want to ask a question. I’ll give you the honest answer and chsp Climate Action Network paid for this poll. Holy.

Mike Tidwell  31:05  

Thank you. Thank you. And back to you, Patrick. Somebody has asked, you know, among all the things that you’ve talked about here, in this, Paul, this novel, first ever, apparently county specific environmental slash climate, Paul, that we’ve released today, if you had to pick one thing, or one or two things, what were some of the biggest surprises that you take away from this, Patrick? Well, I

Patrick Gonzalez  31:30  

Again, as I think, as I mentioned, to get and it’s republicans are what 20% said that they know that it’s a small cell. And, and again, we got to be guarded from, you know, again, it’s when the cells are much more relevant for comparative purposes, in other words, comparing district one to two to three to four as far as its standalone. But I think one of the things that jumped out at me was that 51% of Republicans stated a level of concern over global warming. And, and I think if I had to, you put me on the spot, Mike, and I like that. I like being put on the spot. I think that the overall impression that I was left with was what I touched upon earlier, I think in my little dialogue, which is really kind of the lack of distinction by age. In other words, I would have I think, and I never go into a poll assuming anything, you know, I just don’t think it is what it is. But I think I had to make a guess beforehand. I would have I would have guessed, a sharper, diverge, a sharper variance between under 50 or in over 50. So I guess that is the consistency by age, among all Montgomery county ins, I guess, it surprised me. But so.

Mike Tidwell  33:04  

And just to clarify, I’m not a pollster. I did call up Patrick and say, here, here’s what I want to find out, you know, not not I want this specific answer. Here I want to find out what McGovern County voters are thinking on these issues. And he’s the pollster and these questions are coming from the pollster. The direction of Curiosity was coming from his client just to be Climate Action Network. But the impartiality of the questions, the professionalism of the question. Those are those of the pollsters’ careful hand that we have another question again, on the ag reserve. And the question is, why did the words rural character if you see in the question on the solar and ag reserve, it says, critics say that the solar farms could harm the, quote, rural, rural character of the reserve, and the questioner wants to know, where did that come from? I think it came from us hearing that from critics. Well, I know that that was the weather, it was phrased exactly that way. I think that the expressed concern is that you have an ag reserve, which is agricultural, not urban, agro, you know, rural, not suburban, and agricultural, not industrial, and therefore it has a certain character in line with a rural setting versus an urban setting. So that’s the answer to that question. The other question that we have is, you know, this goes back to I think the second question we asked, and now Do you support or oppose the climate emergency declaration as a counting Council in 2017? And the 80% by 2027 reduction goals? So those are together, do you support the declaration and the reduction goals? Someone has, to your question, about support for 80% reductions by 2027. Is that even possible? Someone asked. And that’s a great question. I mean, maybe it’s not, I mean, I’m just being candid. That would mean we’d have to basically convert probably our entire automobile fleet to electric cars by 2027. We’d have to de-gasify lots and lots of buildings, we’d have to generate a lot of solar and possibly wind power, dramatic improvements in efficiency. So who knows? But that was the question asked, and then a final question, unless someone more or you email me. Another one, is a question that sort of brings us back to the start. And that is, what are we going to do about this issue of climate change? And the dramatic concern that Patrick captured in this poll about a concern about global warming, bipartisan and McGorry County? What are we going to do about it? And someone asked, What do you think of the county executives Climate Action Plan, which was released last night? I think, Charlie, you’re going to put in the chat if you haven’t already. A link to the Climate Action Plan that county executive Marc Elrich released last night. And by the way, tonight at six o’clock, there’s a roundtable that all of you can join. Again, I think Charlie’s gonna post that in the chat, a link of where you can join the roundtable tonight.

If you know, again, as I said earlier, I’ve looked at these 87 recommendations from the county executive, and I believe our county spent, or will have spent a total of about $400,000, I think, on the consultants and the whole process to come up with this plan. I think they’re great recommendations in a general way. But as I said, At the start of this call, we need legislation. You know, as my good friend Reverend Lennox Yearwood likes to quote Martin Martin Luther King, saying that says a demonstration without legislation leads to frustration, so we can demonstrate and protest and have calls like this and raise our voices. But without legislation, eventually, we have frustration. And I’m personally frustrated. I think many of our 5000 members in Montgomery County are frustrated that we don’t have legislation and that’s what we need. So I would just encourage the county executive. And as the poll showed today, a majority of Montgomery County voters would like the county executive and the county council to come up in the next six months with a concrete legislative package that once passed, will trigger major pollution cuts in our county. And so those are my thoughts on the county executives Climate Action Plan. I intend to be at the roundtable tonight and listen to the discussion. But I hope all of you who joined this call will help us broadcast the information about this poll. Again in the chat, you can copy a link to our press release. You can copy a link to the poll narrative itself from Patrick Gonzalez. There’s information about the county executives Climate Action Plan A link to the roundtable tonight, we also at T can are going to send out an email to all 5000 of our members in montgomery county, either later this afternoon or tomorrow, summarizing this poll and encouraging people to stay tuned, stay involved and to take action.

Charles Olsen  38:57  

Thanks for listening to Upside Down. This podcast is produced by me, Charlie Olsen with incredible support from the entire weekend staff. Check out the show notes for links to all the things discussed in this episode. If you want to know more about how you can get involved with seeking in the climate fight, check out our website at chesapeakeclimate.org . If you want to get in touch with us, follow us on instagram and twitter @CCAN. And if you enjoy the work we do, why don’t you share us with your friends. Sharing the show is a super easy way to help spread the word about the work we’re doing in the fight for bold climate actions. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.

Maryland Legislative Preview

Maryland Legislative Preview

In this episode, CCAN helped pass the most ambitious climate legislation in the American South, the Virginia clean Economy Act. Sadly, we did not fare as well across the Potomac in Maryland. However, advocates in 2021 are optimistic that this is the year that Maryland will pass sweeping climate legislation. This episode is the recording of CCAN’s legislative preview event for Maryland. Our phenomenal organizers were joined by Maryland delegates, Paul Pinsky, Lorig Charkoudian, and David Frasier-Hidalgo, where they outline their goals for 2021.

Read the full transcript below.

Charles Olsen  0:01  

Hi, my name is Charlie Olsen and this is the Upside Down podcast from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. In this episode in 2020, CCAN helped pass the most ambitious climate legislation in the American South, the Virginia Clean Economy Act. Sadly, we did not fare as well across the Potomac in Maryland. However, advocates in 2021 are optimistic that this is the year that Maryland will pass sweeping climate legislation. This episode is the recording of CCAN’s legislative preview event for Maryland. Our phenomenal organizers were joined by Maryland delegates, Paul Pinsky, Lorig Charkoudian, and David Frasier-Hidalgo, where they outlined their goals for 2021.

Mike Tidwell  0:42  

Thank you, and welcome everybody. Again, I’m Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Chesapeake Climate Action Fund, and welcome to this Maryland legislative preview call for the year 2021. And boy, doesn’t that sound good for 2021. Good riddance to the battle year of 2020. But in the year 2021, we can be sure to expect two things. One is that climate impacts will continue, we’re going to continue to see more rain bombs, the kind of rainstorms that we’re seeing to entertain events are almost routine. Now, in the DC area, more sea level rise, more heat waves are in our futures. So the climate impacts are not going to go away even as the calendar year turns over to 2021. The other thing that is going to continue is that Maryland can and must continue its leadership on clean energy policies to combat climate change, even during the challenges of the pandemic. And I’ve been really proud for the last 18 years as a Marylander. To work with the delegates and senator you’re going to hear tonight with members of the General Assembly who’ve passed amazing legislation in the last two decades, to clean up our coal plants to ban fracking to incentivize and mandate solar energy and offshore wind. And you’ll hear more of that. We need to do more. We’ve pushed the planet outside its comfort zone. And now we have to push ourselves outside our own comfort zones in terms of what is politically possible and what we’re willing to do as activists and volunteers. So I’m looking forward to it. So I want to begin tonight by thanking the legislative champions who you’re going to hear tonight. In a moment you’ll hear from Senator Paul Pinsky of District 22 in Prince George’s County, he and delegate Dana Stein of District 11 in Baltimore County are sponsoring one as he can action funds, top priorities, and Tony. And that’s the climate solutions now Act, which you’ll hear more about shortly. Then you’ll hear from my dear friend, delegate David Fraser Hidalgo of District 15. In Montgomery County who is sponsoring Senator Ben Kramer District 19. Also in Montgomery, the climate crisis in Education Act, a bill that I think is one of the most fascinating pieces of legislation and perhaps one of the most timely bills, both in terms of climate, and in terms of the budget health of our state. And I’m looking forward to hearing David talk about that. Then finally, you’ll hear from my state delegate, Laurie Turkuaz, of District 21, garment county about her excellent and long overdue bill called the Public Service Commission, climate and labor tests. She’s also sponsoring that bill with Ben Kramer, Senator Ben Kramer of District 19. All of these leaders are climate hawks, they go the extra mile. They’re obsessed and committed to climate change, just like all of us on this call, and where would we be without these legislative leaders? So I want to thank them in advance. But it’s going to be a tough year. We all know that. COVID is here. We’re in a recession. There’s budget issues. It’s hard. It’s hard time to push forward on these bills. But we can do it. I know we can. But we can’t do it alone. One nonprofit and legislative leaders can’t do it. You on this call you the voters, us the citizens, you the activists are that link to get us over the top. I just want to say one quick thing about COVID and all the challenges that we’re going to face. I was on a call earlier today where a member of the city council of Ann Arbor, Michigan, said all of the following in Ann Arbor, Michigan in November 2019, that city declared a climate emergency. Then COVID came and they still stuck to their guns. And they came up with a climate action plan on March 30. As the stock market was falling and unemployment was going up, they came up with a Climate Action Plan proposing a billion dollars in investments to fight climate change over the next 10 years. And then in May 2020, the Ann Arbor City Council passed a bill that authorizes these investments during again code Good time, so it can be done. There are inspiring stories out there. And I know that Maryland is going to do the same in 2021, while simultaneously working with the new Biden administration. So the goal tonight, hopefully is to give you some facts you didn’t know, hopefully to inspire you a little bit. But ultimately, the goal tonight is to move you to help us pass the bills. You’re going to hear about turnout tonight, help us get ready, get ready to make calls, get ready to send emails, attend virtual lobby days. And I would finally issue the last issue, I would be remiss if I didn’t encourage you to join the 16th annual sea cam polar bear plunge on February 13. That’s my last plug. Go to keep winter cold. org, we’re going to do it virtually a climate Bucket Challenge. It’s going to be great, keep winter cold.org. And now I’m going to hand it over to our Maryland policy director Jamie DeMarco.

Jamie DeMarco  5:52  

Thank you, Mike. And I am going to introduce the incredible Chairman Paul Pinsky, who is part of the very origin story of climate policy in Maryland, from the very beginning, he has been are one of our strongest champions, and we are so grateful to have a leader like him, as the chair of the education health and Environmental Affairs Committee. Chairman Paul Pinsky was instrumental at the hip to passing the Healthy Air Act years ago. And that remains one of if not the strongest legislation of its kind. And he voted for the original renewable portfolio standard in Maryland. And in the year since there’s not been a single climate bill that’s passed without tremendous support from Chairman Paul Pinsky. And we are now incredibly thrilled that he is our sponsor for the climate solutions now act. I’m going to turn it over to Chairman Paul Pinsky.

Paul Pinsky  6:44  

Thank you, Jamie. And thank you, Mike. For the last four or five years, Mike and I have served on the Maryland climate commission. But I have to tell you, we’ve done it with a great deal of frustration. We have heard a lot of talk, but very little action. The administration has prepared a plan, which is so ephemeral, you couldn’t figure out what the plan is. And that’s actually helped drive the climate solutions now

Paul Pinsky  7:11  

And I want to thank CCAN for helping shape this bill. There are a lot of groups and grassroots groups working on it. But see, Ken has been instrumental in helping shape the many aspects of it, let me very briefly talk about the bill. It calls for a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas by 2030. That means in the next nine years, it calls for us being carbon neutral by 2045. And besides those broad 30,000 feet things, it wants to hold the administration’s feet to the fire. You know, they’ve talked about doing this and doing that, but they haven’t done it. The bill calls for planting 5 million trees by 2030. And we know how they capture carbon dioxide. It calls for the whole state fleet of cars to become zero emissions vehicles. You know, they’ve used money to talk about infrastructure and charging stations, but they haven’t spent $1 on leading by example. And we think by 2030 every automobile under the state auspices should have zero emissions there. You know, energy efficiency, we know it can save a lot of money, a lot of energy. We upped that number by 50% from 2% to 3% in energy efficiency. We’ve also learned Mike talked about inspiring stories. The Empire State Building is an amazing inspiring story of the greening of the Empire State Building. They put a multi million dollar effort. And some great thinkers, environmentalist said we will recapture your money in five or seven years. If you do this, now, they have increased energy efficiency by 40%. Their new elevators create energy. We can do that here in Maryland. So we actually are calling for new building standards for large renovation for office buildings, residential and for new construction, and not just for the state for the private sector as well. If they aren’t willing to do these efforts, and it won’t be a loss of money, it’ll actually be a savings to the business community. They don’t build, you know, they have to show energy efficiency and energy savings. You know, we have to encourage fuel switching to clean energy. You know, the governor’s plan says that road widening will reduce greenhouse gases. I mean, that’s nuts. You know, they say if you expand roads, cars will idle less, but we know there’ll be 1020 50,000 additional cars. So they are, you know, their effort is very misguided. But this legislation in front of us does a lot of things. It changes how we look at nothing. They said it to me 100 year life cycle, we say because of work of scientists and Mike and other people see can it could be a 20 year horizon. You know, they measure methane coming from landfills. Well, we now have airplanes that can capture atmosphere that are much more accurate. We are going to transform the state, but we need you. as Mike said, It’s a unique session, we’re going to have virtual hearings, people won’t be allowed in the building. So we need a massive upsurge. We need hundreds upon hundreds of people to confront every legislator to say, Are you on board? You know, there shouldn’t be a time when you have a conversation and send an email, can we count on your vote, because you won’t be there to see them in the hallway, we have to put pressure, we have to make people a little uncomfortable, but also to show them this benefits and state. You know, Mike mentioned a lot of the issues that the flooding etc. The biggest problem that’s starting to develop is saltwater intrusion. I mean, it is really our farms on the eastern shore, who are creating foodstuffs. So we have new additional allies, we think in the farming community. So we have to bring everyone together to do this. But we need you and again, I want to thank all of your staff for their great contribution. But this isn’t going to happen from a great speech on the floor by Paul Pinsky. It’s going to happen by hundreds and 1000s of people demanding a change. I think we can do it. We’re counting on you. Thank you.

Jamie DeMarco  11:32  

Thank you very much, Chairman. We really appreciate that. Next, we’re going to hear from delegate David Fraser-Hidalgo and let me tell you, there is no one in Annapolis who speaks about climate change with more passion than delegate David Frasier doggo. I think that’s a big statement. But I think it’s true. I mean, a lot of us when you talk about climate, we talk about co-benefits. We talked about all these other benefits that are going to come with climate action. When delegate David Frazier, it also talks about climate change. He reminds us that we are in a visceral existential fight for our lives. And in order to survive, we need to mobilize all we have to reduce emissions as quickly as humanly possible. He stood up for the clean energy jobs act when no one else would. And without him that legislation would not have passed. And delegate David Fraser Hidalgo, channels, all of that ambition into this bill, the climate crisis and Education Act. I’ll let him talk about it more.

David Fraser-Hidalgo  12:31  

Well, thank you. Thank you, Jamie. I will try to do you justice. So the carbon pricing bill that I have, I have it along with Senator Ben Kramer, we’ve had it for three years now. And before I get into the meat of the bill, but I want to kind of talk a little bit about what Senator Pinsky alluded to, and that is, we are going to have a session. Last session was crazy the way just kind of imploded in the end. And now this session, we have a little bit better idea of what it’s going to look like on the House side, we’re going to be broken up into two sections, the annex section, which is going to be in the house office building, and then the general state house, we’ll have the other half of the Maryland State delegates, and we’re going to go in on January 13 for a few hours to get session going and then everybody will be home. You know, Senator Pinsky, myself delegate Chuck Cooney, and all of the delegates and senators will be, most of them will be working from home they will be. So exactly what that and what Jamie said earlier, it’s going to be a little harder to get a hold of people. So you’re going to have to be really creative. And you’re going to have to be diligent and you’re going to have to work really hard because we can’t and I can’t tell you how much we need your help. So on the carbon bill itself, as most of the people on this call know that there is approximately $100 billion, depending on how you define it, that are given away every year to the fossil fuel industry in the form of grants and tax credits and incentives for them to go out and dig holes in the ground to pull up dead dinosaurs. So what what this bill does is it says okay, well, if you’re going to burn all those dinosaurs, if we’re going to to burn all those fossil fuels, and pollute the earth and cause global warming and cause climate change, and do all the things that one of the things that are Pinsky said about the rising sea levels out on the eastern shore, that doesn’t, that doesn’t even take into consideration all the the whole west coast of this country burning to the ground or, you know, the violent storms that we have. Now, if that’s not enough for you. Just think about all of those costs for burning fossil fuels, all those costs, that doesn’t include the kids going into the emergency room for asthmatic attacks or premature births, or any of those things. So the totality and extra totality of all of those things together need to be paid for and they shouldn’t be just paid for by US citizens and the taxpayers. They should be paid for when you do business. So if you’re going to buy a gallon of gas and burn it, you shouldn’t be paying two bucks per gallon. You should be paying a lot more than that. If you’re new You’re paying a lot more than that you’re paying two to three times that. And for generations for over 100 years, we really haven’t been to security, the oil industry hasn’t really been paying the total cost of doing business. And so when we talk about leveling the playing field, which is what they often say, when we talk about electric vehicle tax credits, when we talk about solar tax credits, when we talk about wind turbines and generating renewable energy, when they, when they talk about that, they said, We just want a level playing field we’re against, it shouldn’t be any tax credits. And then my comment to them is okay, well then give back your 100 million dollar $100 billion a year, every year, the tax credits that will have a lengthy playing field, I usually add a couple of adjectives in my head, but I hold those back. I don’t say them publicly. And so that’s essentially what this bill does. I mean, the carbon bill, which I’ve been working on, Pete’s on the call, he has been working for years with Climate Exchange. And, and, and when she can, and Mike and everybody, it’s just a bit of big effort. Last year, we had the best hearing we’ve ever had, it was a really good hearing, we had, I think close to 70. co sponsors 65, or six co sponsors, we had a great bill hearing on the House side last year, and then kind of, you know, as the hearing was going on delegate recruiting I was talking with her earlier today. And she has, you do know that as you are in the middle of your hearing, the governor was shutting everything down, everything was shutting down in the middle of your hearing. So with COVID, we had a great bill hearing that brought a lot of great advocates to the table. And we hope to do that again this year. I don’t know what is going to happen this year with COVID, I think that there’s going to be a small number of bills that have to do with balancing the budget that get passed. And some of the bigger lifts, I don’t know how leadership is going to look at them, because they don’t want a lot of Florida debate. Everybody’s worried about COVID. So anything that’s controversial, that’s going to get a lot of Florida bait is going to be harder, it’s just going to be harder this year.

But with that said, it’s a great opportunity for us to push forward on this bill. And one of the great things about this bill is it generates hundreds of millions of dollars to the state and that and the big part of the bill makes sure that those people and lower income earners get rebated and get made home. So we don’t worry about necessarily the low income earners, this is really going after those folks that can afford to pay for it. And to some degree, it’s going to be put back on the backs of the fossil fuel industry. So depending on how the final bill comes out, it’s a 47 page bill, it’s very complicated, and there are so many things that can change in the middle of it. But that’s that’s it, I mean, it’s just really an attempt to kind of level the playing field. So people know what when they stick that pump, you know, into their car, and they pump gasoline in or when they burn natural gas at home or methane at home. Or when they, you know, turn on their heat they’re actually thinking about a little bit where that electricity is coming from, we just really have to, we really have to transition yesterday as quickly as you possibly can toward the electrification of the grid through renewables. And we can do that. And that’s what this bill really helps to do. And I think that’s the big part of it is it just gets people thinking about what they’re doing. And there’s really not a, there’s really not a downside to it. So with that, I will stop and let us go the rest of the way. And then I’m happy to answer any questions at the end if anybody has any. Thank you very much.

Emily Frias  18:36  

Yeah. So we kind of jumbled our order a little bit. And we skipped going to ask Senator Pinsky. And then we will do a question for delegate Fraser Hidalgo. So Senator Pinsky. The question I have is, so in your recent op ed, you mentioned the need to center black and brown communities and our conversation about climate change. Can you speak a little bit more about how the climate solutions bill will address those points?

Paul Pinsky  19:08  

Thank you for that question. And as soon as I finish trying to cover the bill, there’s so many parts to it. I realized I didn’t talk about environmental justice. Yes, I’ve been an environmental justice commission for 10 years or more. But I have to tell you, it’s more that IT has been ignored. It’s been dismissed, and the Department of Environment has not paid any attention to it. Now, we’re told the administration is going to reinvigorate it and pay more attention. Well, we think people have to be accountable. So actually, in our bill and the climate solutions now act, we set up 345 charges to the new revamped commission. We say they have to define disproportionately affected communities, these poor black and brown communities, they have to talk about how much spending is going on there or not. and develop a tool to start using a lens To see how policy actually affects those communities, we also require the new commission to look at spending in those communities to make up for the lack of effort, the lack of focus over the many, you know, in urban areas, it’s been a total dismissal and it has to change. We think it can’t just be swept under the carpet, you know, we do some other things we say, of the 5 million trees 10% have to be in urban communities to, to have tree cover to capture carbon dioxide. But more than that, we have to use a lens every day, in every issue on the environment and beyond the environment. So as much as we can, and there’ll be other environmental justice bills, there’s a workforce that will come up with a restructuring of the condition, but we think they can’t dance anymore, they have to do something concrete. So we have a large section of the bill that will hold them accountable. Because it’s been way too long. It’s been over time where there has to be a better focus. You know, asthma, and other illnesses are affecting the black and brown community in Baltimore, Prince George’s and other areas. There’s been a lot of the facilities, the coal fired power plants have been around Baltimore, Baltimore County, North Adelanto County, and those communities have been affected, you know, and their cumulative effects as well. So it is a major part of our bill, I’m glad you asked that question. I was on the phone today on a zoom call with Dr. Jacoby Wilson, who’s a professor at Maryland, and has done a lot of work on this. So we’re going to ensure that no one is left behind. And in fact, those that have been left behind addressed first.

Emily Frias  21:52  

Thank you so much for your answer. All right. Our next question is for delegate Fraser Hidalgo. And the question is, can you speak to the fiscal note for the climate crisis in Education Act? Just what is that looking like? Has it changed from last year? What do you expect to see?

David Fraser-Hidalgo  22:13  

So we don’t have the fiscal note back, it’s probably going to be similar to that of what it was last year, and I’m not particularly concerned with the fiscal note, because it’s very, very positive for the state. So it’s not like the state has to lay out tons of money or, you know, millions of dollars in order to make sure this goes in the staff set. It’s just going to be so much. I mean, the benefit of the bill is that there’s going to be, you know, three to $500 million that starts to come in within a few years. So the, the issue with the bill isn’t the fiscal note is as much as it is, it is convincing leadership that the climate crisis is not now the climate crisis isn’t tomorrow, the climate crisis has been going on for, you know, 50 years or 40 years, at least, the oil companies very well know, their scientists very well knew, by the 1970s, what was going on, and they continue to do things anyway. So it’s just really getting people up to speed on this is real, and we can’t wait. And we have to elevate crisis issues, the climate crisis issues to the same level that we talk about when we talk about education. So there are big things that Annapolis we talk about, that are the big drivers in Annapolis education, public health care, public safety, those kinds of things. And quite frankly, the environment needs to be up on that same level not below not an afterthought. It needs to be on the same level as the other things if, if not higher, and the a lot of environmental justice is addressed in in my villas, as well and delegate Stein was on a briefing call that we did the latino caucus in the black caucus in the Asian American Pacific Islander caucus did a briefing a few about a month and a half ago. And it was only on environmental justice. It was a great, great briefing.

Jamie DeMarco  24:01  

Thank you delegate. Next we’re going to hear from delegate Charkoudian and delegate Charkoudian, as I think most of us on this call know is a force in this world like nothing I have ever encountered before. When the Maryland clean energy jobs act was on the ropes in 2019. We weren’t sure if it was going to pass. She was rightfully chosen to represent it on the floor and her brilliant defense of the bill ensured that it was passed. Just in her first term as a state delegate. She has built a reputation and positioned herself at the very center. She is sort of the center node of climate policy. in Annapolis. There’s some legislators who love to dive into the details of policy, some who love the politics of policy. delegates are comedians and are the rare legislator who masters both and I can’t speak enough about her reputation, not just today. I was talking to a delegate, who said when delegates are kuhnian brings me a bill and asks for my co sponsorship. I don’t have Have you read it, I just signed up, because I know that she only brings good bills. And that’s the kind of reputation she’s built for herself. And I think that is represented in the bill. She’s sponsoring the Public Service Commission climate test, Bill, and I’ll let her talk about it more.

Lorig Charkoudian  25:17  

Wow, that is what my mother wrote for you, Jamie, thank you, I am honored to be here. I’m honored to be here with ckn, who I have so much respect for and and with all of you and I see faces and names that I know are crucial to really getting good climate legislation through in Annapolis. And, I’ll just give a shout out. Also, before I get started, for the polar bear point, I gotta think of something really creative. Mike, I don’t know what we’re gonna do this year. But my daughter and I have done the polar bear plunge for like the last nine years together. So we’re good. So I can’t recommend it enough. And I’m sorry, we can’t do it together. So my bill this year is for the Public Service Commission to have to consider climate and labor in their decision making. And what’s wild about this bill is as I talked to people about it, if you don’t know the Public Service Commission makes decisions related to and regulating the utilities in the state. So this includes making decisions about new energy generation facilities. It also includes decisions about rate setting and rate making, mergers, pipelines, so all kinds of energy decisions and regulatory decisions related to energy are made by the Public Service Commission. And when I tell people that the Public Service Commission is required to consider things like localized environmental issues, they’re required to consider the economy of the state at reasonable rates. But they are not required to consider climate in their decision making. People are stunned. And it is wild to me that in 2020, with the crisis that we’re in, we somehow still are at a place where our Public Service Commission doesn’t have to consider climate and their decision making. And in case anyone was wondering if maybe we didn’t have it in statute, but they believed and understood that they were supposed to consider it in their decision making. We had a chance two years ago to find out that No, in fact, in a decision, and many of you, I see some Howard County folks on here, who were active in the in the fight on the the transition of the crane plant, to natural gas facility, and in the complaint made the case that actually climate change would affect the plant itself. So it wasn’t that the plant would affect climate change, although that was true as well, but the climate change would affect the plant. And the judge ruled and the commission backed up explicitly that the Commission is not required to consider climate change in their decision making. So in case we had any doubts about it, now we know for sure, so that led to us putting this bill together. And what the bill says is, basically they have to consider climate change. And there’s a couple of different places where this is important. I think it’s important, certainly in the cpcm process, which is the certificate for public CPC convenience in need, which is the decision making around the placement and the rules around the actual generation facility. So that’s considering climate change in deciding to authorize a new natural gas plant, or considering climate change in the decision making around a utility scale solar project. And so in both of those you want climate to be considered in one case, it would be sort of a reason to slow down or have to mitigate a project and the other it would be a reason to move it and move it faster along.

But also in every decision that’s made, and that’s really important, because for example, there was a merger, folks may be aware that the Washington gas Alta gas merger that occurred a couple years ago, the Public Service Commission approved the merger, and the Hogan administration and the Maryland energy administration asked that part of that merger be that 30 million $30 million be set aside for a natural gas expansion fund. Yes, in 2018, a natural gas expansion fund that is now being used to promote natural gas and this pipeline on the eastern shore. And the Public Service Commission authorizes that. And so again, it’s one of those things where in every decision they make that means in mergers, also they need to consider climate change. And so again, it would be a case where, where people too, and people did push against that particular merger decision. But that component of state statute would have required that the Public Service Commission consider that in a merger. So those are just a few very specific examples. But when we look at all of the decisions the Public Service Commission makes, it’s really important that climate is front and center. The other thing that this bill does is it requires that the Public Service Commission consider labor and I think folks know that we really need to be if we’re going to have a green sustainable, healthy, just future, equitable future. We’ve got To do that with environmentalists and labor unions working hand in hand with environmental justice communities, and really keeping labor, family sustaining wages, environmental justice, equity, and reduction of greenhouse gases, making sure we’re building policies where all of those are intertwined and linked. And so it’s really important that when we’re looking at the institutions that are going to build this green future, that they are considering climate, and that they’re considering labor and labor standards. And so this bill really gives us a chance to put those together in the same bill highlight and work in partnership with C can is a lead on this year, a club is supporting this, and laina labor union. This is one of their priority bills this year, as well. And so, it’s a really important partnership. And it’s, you know, we’re not always on the same page. But whenever we can be on the same page, and the more we can work together to build that green, sustainable family sustaining wages, economy, we need to be doing that. And this bill is a great opportunity to highlight that. So I’m really excited to be bringing this bill, I look forward to working with all of you in Annapolis, even if it’s virtually in Annapolis, and then hopefully celebrating together in person over the summer, or fall next year.

Emily Frias  31:22  

Great, thank you so much. So we have some good questions here. If this bill is passed in this upcoming session, might it have an impact on the Del Mar pipeline and the Chesapeake utilities project?

Lorig Charkoudian  31:41  

I think the short answer is, is it Yes, I suspect it would in some ways. I don’t know that it would stop it. Just because that’s the approvals have kind of come through already through a variety of sources. And people know that that’s been an obscure kind of and run around the state’s climate policy. But I think that there will be some decisions related to that project that will have to go to the Public Service Commission. And so it could influence to some extent how that plays out.

Mike Tidwell  32:16  

I also want to give a plug to another bill that we’re not talking about a lot tonight, that Lord’s gonna be sponsoring and that’s the Community Choice energy bill that would allow our county Montgomery County as a pilot to basically control its electric electrical destiny by taking control of our grid. And it’s the top priority of our county of 1.1 million people to meet his climate reduction goals, which are frankly beyond even what Maryland’s doing. And so I want everyone to keep a lookout for Lawrenceville Community Choice energy, a really, really important paradigm shifting bill, so we want to support that as well.

Jamie DeMarco  33:00  

I want to thank our three sponsors, I know that your time is really valuable. So thanks for answering questions each and don’t feel like you need to stay on if you feel like you need to drop off. Anthony, if you could share a screen, I’m just gonna run through the bills we just heard about and go over the provisions in them one more time to make sure it sticks. So climate solutions now. It requires us to reduce our emissions 60% by 2030, and net zero emissions by 2045. It requires that a certain percentage of all state funds going forward be spent on climate change, and go to underserved frontline communities. And that percentage will be decided by the Commission on Environmental Justice and sustainable communities. This is a pivotal piece of the bill. This is going to make it illegal not to invest in underserved frontline communities. This is modeled off of the New York bill, the New York climate leadership and community Protection Act, which is widely considered the gold standard of environmental justice policies around the country at the state level. This also creates a workgroup to protect fossil fuel workers and enact a series of policies that will reduce emissions immediately like planting 5 million trees. And two thirds of all the funds that go to plant those trees will be spent in urban communities that have been historically redlined. We know when these oppressive heat waves come they’re killing people. And they’re killing people and heating islands where there are no trees disproportionately. Also zero emission vehicles, reductions in existing buildings, everything. Chairman Pinsky talked about the public service Service Commission climate test that’s a lorex bill, this is not in the order of sponsors. So it’s just keeping you on your toes, making sure you’re paying attention, and it requires the Public Service Commission to consider climate change when deciding whether to approve a project or merger. Just consider that that’s all it does, and also requires companies applying for energy prices. At the Public Service Commission to disclose the benefits they would give to their workers. This is a key place where we are building an ally ship with labor. When we’re with labor, we’re strong when we’re against labor, we lose. And so we need to find every opportunity we can to work alongside labor. And the climate crisis and Education Act invests hundreds of millions of dollars every year into clean energy, climate resiliency, and just transition. It also puts $350 million a year into public education. Because we know this is an intersectional fight between public education, and disparities and public education are one of the greatest drivers of racial disparities across the board. It also raises these funds directly from shareholders while protecting consumers and giving every marylander a rebate. And that is our quick summary. I’m going to turn it over to Anthony to talk about our pipeline work. Great,

Anthony Field  35:54  

Thank you so much, Jamie. And again, thank you to the three legislators that were able to join us again. We understand your time is valuable and very appreciative to have three leaders here on the call on discussing such important pieces of legislation tonight. So for those of you don’t know me, my name is Anthony field I use he him his pronouns, and I am the campaign lead for C. Cannes no new fossil fuels campaign, working on issues such as advocating for stronger landfill methane regulations, making sure methane is adequately evaluated within our state, stopping retiring coal fired plants from converting the gas fighting gas infrastructure and brand new wind on the eastern shore and other possibly proposed infrastructure as they come up a number of things that were talked about by all three legislators on the call today, and I’ll have parts within the pieces of legislation that we’re discussing. But today, I want to touch on one specific issue. And that is the issue of the Eastern Shore pipelines and where we’re at on that front. So for those of you who do not know, there are two proposed pipelines on the eastern shore, the Del Mar pipeline, seven miles of pipelines shown on the left image here in yellow, and 11 miles of pipeline, called the Chesapeake utilities project, shown in red here on the right. Both of these pipelines cross multiple wetlands and waterways, both will impact air quality to the communities and threaten the land that they live on. Both will saddle already overburdened communities with a pipeline we know that the state should not be advocating for in light of our climate commitments and our emission goals. Both are being pushed through as part of Governor Hogan’s plan to invest millions into expanding fracked gas, which is what delegate lorig was referring to with the 30 over $30 million. It is worth noting that when requesting applications for energy sources, the state only requested applications from gas companies, only one company applied, that was Chesapeake utilities. They were selected. And then the Maryland environmental service stated that the process was both exhaustive and competitive. We obviously know that that was not true. If nothing else, taking away the community’s opportunity of a thorough vetting of alternatives is a grave injustice. So take one more look at this map and the path here. And on this screen, you are seeing the census tracks from a spatial analysis that was conducted, showing that the project will run through majority minority and low income communities. on this call. We’ve already talked about the issue of environmental justice multiple times. And here we are seeing, again, a specific example of environmental justice concerns when we’re talking about climate, but also fossil fuel infrastructure. Specifically, there are only four of the 41 mile study area tracks within this area that are not ej eligible. ej eligible means that more than 30% of the residents are minorities, and or 20%, or more live in poverty. Make no mistake, this pipeline will further burden these communities by endangering their water, land, air quality and health. And this pipeline is an environmental justice issue. On December 2, the Maryland Board of Public Works chose to ignore the many and justices in approving a key permit for the Del Mar pipeline, which is again one of two pipelines.

Leading up to that vote a lot happened in the recent months and I want to cover some of the things here. So as mentioned just now a commission study uncovered troubling environmental justice issues. The Maryland State NAACP chapter added the pipeline’s to their list of environmental justice priorities and local chapters took a stance in opposition. CCAN with the help from our partners with the Maryland chapter of Sierra Club and the local Wicomico environmental trust released a white paper outlining concerns about the economics of these pipelines. We know that investing in pipelines and gas infrastructure is a gamble at best with multiple companies facing bankruptcy and pipeline projects failing all across the nation. Something new that we discovered was that the Acting Director of the Maryland environmental service stated that therefore the decision to forego applications from renewable energy sources was based on a 2012 Request for Information report, where almost a decade ago they determined that renewables wouldn’t be adequate. But a lot has changed in the years since that, and I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that the decision to forego alternatives was based on such an old report. Additionally, the Maryland climate commission or the Commission on climate change, released their 2020 report calling for the state to reach net zero emissions by 2045. And for the state government to consider environmental justice impacts during project planning. I hope you’re seeing a trend here. There is a lot of talk about environmental justice, and that’s because it’s largely been ignored and underappreciated in the past. Additionally, over 700 letters were sent by Eastern Shore residents urging the Maryland Board of Public Works to reject the pipeline’s that’s over 700, specifically from people that are from the communities that this pipeline will impact. So as mentioned, on December 2, the Board of Public Works held a hearing where they voted three to zero to approve a key permit for the Del Mar pipeline. What does this mean? Well, it means that the Board of Public Works ultimately ignored the multiple issues raised by CCAN partner organizations around the state and most importantly, they ignored concerns from residents of the local communities I call the shore home, it means that this fight is not over. And we know that we will not give up. See, Ken will continue to fight and organize against the pipeline, including the upcoming vote for the Chesapeake utilities portion, which is expected to come in the early months of January. I anticipate around March or so we will do everything we can to stand with the local communities and amplify their voices. This is their land, their health on the line. And we want to be sure that we are doing everything we can to advocate for them. It was clear since the beginning that this would be a fight. And I NRC can in the hundreds of concerns Eastern Shore residents will stop fighting. I think it’s worth mentioning that at this hearing many supporters of the pipeline, including the Lieutenant Governor Rutherford, who chaired the hearing, had the talking point that only western shore elitists and big green organizations were posted this pipeline, and we were trying to keep and take away the choice of these communities to use gas. And I think that is a grave. That is willfully ignoring the hundreds of Eastern Shore residents and locals that have put their blood sweat and tears into fighting this pipeline, and who are just very concerned about the health and well being of their communities and their land. And I think the Lieutenant Governor stating that and the supporters of the pipeline stating that was entirely disrespectful to those members. And I also want to mention that there were a number of people in line to comment at that Board of Public Works hearing, including elected officials that were not called upon to speak on behalf of the eastern shore. And I can’t tell you enough how disappointed I am in the way the state has been conducting themselves with regards to the process of this energy infrastructure and the approval process and the hearing process of these pipelines. And I think the eastern shore has been given the cold shoulder often in the past and they deserve better. So what’s next, and how can you get involved? So I only touched on one major issue this evening. And that was Eastern Shore pipeline. But there are many important things that we are working on simultaneously within our new fossil fuels campaign. And I urge everyone to follow a link in the chat that I’m about to put in to sign up for one of the action teams listed here. There’s five major action teams focusing on different issues across the state, methane, the eastern shore pipelines, the Potomac pipeline and the rockwool power plant, public health and environmental justice and of course, no new fossil fuels legislation, which is including the climate crisis and Education Act and the PSE climate test. joining these teams will allow you to keep up to date on everything that’s going on within those issues, but also provides you with opportunities to

act and support our fights for those issues. So please stay engaged, stay informed, and continue helping us advocate for fossil fuel free, Maryland. Thank you very much, everybody. And now I’m going to go ahead and hand it over to Emily.

Emily Frias  44:45  

Thank you so much, Anthony. And go ahead and put that link in the chat for the new fossil fuels teams. Definitely a really important way to fight to stay engaged. Alright, so I’m going to Keep my slides very short so that we have time to get to several questions. I’m just going to go over quickly, how you can stay involved. So we have a number of events lined up for the legislative session that you should mark your calendars for right now. The next one is going to be next Tuesday. That’ll be our letter writing party for climate solutions. Now, we will be watching, we’ll be writing letters and watching a year without a Santa Claus, which is about characters, you’re not familiar with the stop motion animation film from the 70s. And it is about an unseasonably warm Christmas. So very fitting for climate activists, then on the world holiday break, and then well, we’ll, we’ll all have very little time, after the holidays before the legislative session starts on January 13, that Wednesday, is the first day of session. So really coming up quickly. So throughout the session, what we’d like you to do is call email and tag legislators regularly. But especially before the vote, we will be sending you actions. So please make sure that you’re paying attention to your inbox, as well as communicating with us through our smaller channels to make sure that you’re staying aware of when it’s time to really reach out to your legislators. Then, on the week of the 25th, we will be having our lobby week for the climate crisis in Education Act, which is working with our partners on that campaign. So lobby week is obviously going to be a little different this year, we would normally have this one Bobby day. But this year, we’re putting an emphasis on having virtual meetings. So we’ll be walking you through that process, the more that we learn, and hopefully, we’ll have a lot of success in reaching out to our legislators. And then the week of the 22nd of February, we’ll be having our lobby week for the climate solutions bill and the PSC climate test. So the reason that we’ve split up these two lobby weeks is that both the climate crisis and Education Act is a very complicated bill. So is the credit solutions bill. So we wanted to give both bills and equal shots of really, really showcasing what they have to offer in our lobby meeting. So that is why we made that decision. Hopefully, there’s enough time in between that you’ll be able to attend both. And then at the end of March and early April, if our bill has still not moved, our bills have still not moved, we are planning to have some safe in person actions. But we are, you know, we’re it’s hard to plan too far ahead on those things. So we will keep you informed. Okay, so how to stay involved. Stay in touch with Anthony and the no new fossil fuels kit campaign by signing up for an action team, we just sent you that link, you can stay in touch with me and the climate solutions campaign by joining our slack workspace, which I will share in the chat link to join. Or you can email me directly at Emily at Chesapeake comet.org to be added to our smaller Google group. And if you need help with Slack, if you’re new to slack, it is a tool that is used by so many and has been used successfully by so many political campaigns during the elections. And it’s a great way to stay in touch instantaneously with other concerned citizens and concerned volunteers. And if you’re not as familiar, we have done training on slack. We have great training on our website, visit our volunteer resource page. Or honestly, if you have a lot of questions and you really, really want to use a tool, please email me directly. I do occasionally have office hours to be able to explain these tools to folks.

Unknown Speaker  49:03  

Okay.

Emily Frias  49:05  

So with that, we are going to take a few questions. I hope that wasn’t too quick. I’m also going to share our event and our link to our climate solutions slack. And while folks go ahead and join that, I’m going to ask myself to read out a question that we got earlier. So this question was about the carbon pricing bill. And the question was, does this still have any elements? That would be a non-starter for republicans? And how do we address that?

Jamie DeMarco  49:52  

Anthony, do you want to take that ticket?

Anthony Field  49:55  

Oh, feel free Jamie.

Jamie DeMarco  49:57  

Um, you know, Republican In Maryland have a tendency to surprise us. Governor Hogan surprised us when he expressed his strong support for the fracking ban even when democratic leadership wasn’t there yet. And, you know, last year, when we passed the climate solutions act out of committee, two republicans surprised us by voting for it. And that really surprised us there, too. We think this is a really good bill. I don’t think there’s anything in it that will make all republicans flee from it. I think a lot of the extreme ones are not going to be gravitated towards this. But we don’t give up on republicans but at CCAN we’re not necessarily counting on them to vote for this bill. Luckily, we’ve got super majorities of Democrats in both the House and the Senate. We do want Governor Hogan to sign it. So if this bill passes, then if any of these bill pass, then you should be making sure you should be looking after the calling campaign to Governor Hogan to make sure that he doesn’t veto it. Great question. Mike, did you want anything? Anything? 

Emily Frias  51:13  

Okay. The next question is about the PSC climate test. Does the climate and labor test have binding language? Or is it just to consider these things? Like what? What is it that they’re going to be bound to do by the skill?

Jamie DeMarco  51:37  

The labor piece is really binding. If you’re applying, you have to fill this out. This is information that has not been disclosed in the past, and has to be disclosed now under this law. So that’s really finding the climate peace is a considered peace. It’s not saying you have to reject every single pipeline, or every single fossil fuel project. But it’s saying consider climate change. And we know that if we can consider climate change there, then we can win on the merits. We lose right now at the Public Service Commission, because they say we explicitly do not consider climate change. We’re like, it’s gonna destroy the climate. And they’re like, the legislature has not asked us to consider climate change among the list of things that they have asked us to consider. So we are not going to consider that. So this is getting into the debate. And then we are going to have to win the debate at the Public Service Commission.

Emily Frias  52:31  

Great, thank you. And then the final question on the climate solutions now, Bill. So what is different about this bill there, there was a bill last year the climate solutions act, what is different this year? That wasn’t in the bill last year.

Jamie DeMarco  52:53  

This bill is very similar to the bill last year, one of the biggest differences is the tree portion. Last year, we introduced a bill and just said to plant 5 million trees. This year, we said it’s not enough to just plant trees, we need to plant trees, where they’re needed most in communities that don’t have access to green space, and are hurt because of that. And so we added this environmental justice provision making sure that two thirds of all the money spent planting these trees is planted in urban underserved areas that have been historically redlined. That’s one of the biggest differences. A lot of the other provisions are the same. There’s some other pieces like it that require new large buildings with lots of roof space to be solar ready. And that wasn’t in there before. And obviously, a lot of the years have been changed, because we’re one year later now. But for the most part, it’s the same bill. Jamie, if I could add, Yes, Senator,

Paul Pinsky  53:51  

Among the people who helped shape the bill, we call on the architects. And they played a very good role progressive architects across the state. So a lot of the language around either new construction or large renovation or building in schools is more nuanced. And we brought in the experts. So you know, sometimes you take language from another bill, or you do a 30,000 foot statement. But we actually got some of the experts who’ve done some kind of visionary activity. So there are a number of pieces of Bill where it’s more subtle, it’s more nuanced, that we think can apply to the state of Maryland, and really move our environment forward. And at the same time, in many cases, the business community should benefit not lose. So look, well, some of them oppose the bill. Absolutely. But we think we can also make an argument that a strong dynamic environment is also good for the business community. So we touch the trees that Jamie said, ensuring that some percentage goes to the urban area. So, you know, the other fact is that we continued working on the bill in the mid February last year. As someone who was responsible, it probably wasn’t ready for primetime. We spent the summer in the fall with a lot of environmental experts trying to get this right. We think it’s a great bill, we can go put us in the top tier nationally in the top three, or maybe five bills in the country in terms of the omnibus approach to the bill. So a lot of the same, some changes.

Emily Frias  55:37  

Thank you so much. There’s one we don’t have time for many more questions. There’s one that’s very easy to answer that I see in the chat. There’s a 60% emissions reductions goal including only electricity or all emissions, I believe it is all emissions.

Emily Frias  55:57  

And with that, we are right at eight, eight o’clock. So thank you so much to everyone who joined. We had a wonderful turnout for this event and are always honored as the organizer to see that. So thank you, thank you, also to our legislators, and to everybody who joined, we really hope that you stay in touch with us and we can end the session with a number of wins. So thank you, and have a wonderful night.

Charles Olsen  56:31  

Thanks for listening to Upside down. This podcast is produced by me, Charlie Olsen. with incredible support from the entire CCAN staff. Check out the show notes for links to all the things discussed in this episode. If you want to know more about how you can get involved with CCAN and the climate fight, check out our website at chesapeakeclimate.org. If you want to get in touch with us, follow us on instagram and twitter @CCAN. And if you enjoy the work we do, why don’t you share it with your friends. Sharing the show is a super easy way to help spread the word about the work we’re doing in the fight for bold climate actions. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.

Voices of the Climate Movement from CCAN’s Polar Bear Plunge

Voices of the Climate Movement from CCAN’s Polar Bear Plunge

In this episode of of Upside Down, we discuss CCAN’s biggest fundraiser for the past 16. The Polar Bear Plunge has been a staple event for CCAN supporters and this year – due to COVID – the show went virtual. This episode is the audio from our big name speakers that joined us for our favorite event of the year; Congressman Donald McEachin, Bill McKibben, and Reverend Lennox Yearwood. 

Read the full transcript below.

Charles Olsen  0:04  

Hi, my name is Charlie Olsen. And this is Upside Down the podcast from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. Last week CCAN hosted its 16th annual polar bear plunge to keep winter cold. We were joined by guest speakers, Congressman Don McEachin, of Virginia. Author Bill McKibben, and the Reverend Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus. Enjoy.

Mike Tidwell  0:38  

Hi, I’m Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and welcome to the first ever national polar bear plunge to fight climate change and to keep winter cold. As you know, we usually do this plunge on the banks of the Potomac River at National Harbor. But this year, due to COVID-19, we have had to do a virtual plunge- the first ever virtual plunge. So after 15 years of doing the plunge locally, today is our first national plunge. And it’s gonna be great with folks participating from New York to North Carolina, to New Mexico to California. And as of this minute, we have raised an incredible $180,000 on our way to a goal of $200,000 to support climate, the climate work of CCAN and our many partners in the faith, environmental and justice community. Today, I’m broadcasting from the Tacoma Park office of CCAN. And I’m just really, really looking forward to this event today on zoom. We have lots of other people watching on Facebook live, and other platforms. So we want to welcome all of you to this broadcast of our kickoff of the 2021 polar bear plunge. Now we’re usually again freezing and nervous at this point. In the real world, for this rally, you all would want me to be really fast and the speakers to be brief. And to wrap up so that we can get to the fun slash terrifying water part of jumping in the Potomac River. So in an effort to virtually replicate the real experience, we’re going to keep this kickoff pretty brief, just 30 minutes or so. Then we’re going to cut you all loose to get wet and cold and come back later this afternoon to share videos and photos and testimonials. Now again, many of you are indeed about to go jump in rivers and ponds across America after this zoom kickoff, or dunk cold buckets of icy snowy water over your head. But some of you including myself have already gleefully suffered through our plunges. And we’re all about to see some lovely day before Valentine’s Day lovely proof of our watery plunges during this zoom kickoff. And you’re also about to hear some great speakers, including congressman Don McEachin of Virginia, the legendary Bill McKibben and CCAN board member and Hip Hop Caucus CEO, the Reverend Lennox Yearwood, but first, I need to thank all of you for raising money. First of all, you individual plungers have really made this possible. I shout out to April Moore in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia to Laurie Hill, in that Seneca Lake in New York, Paul Lochner in New Mexico, and of course, Obama administration, former Secretary of Education John King, who you’ll see shortly in a video and later this afternoon in person. So special thanks to all of you. And also a special thanks to our progressive business sponsors, who have given generously to the plunge: My Mom’s Organic Market, Neighborhood Sun,  Amalgamated Bank, Green Commuter, Soupergirl, Black Ankle Vineyards, Green Line Paper Company and others. We’re going to talk more about those incredible companies in a bit. Now also a big thanks to the CCAN staff. Somehow despite COVID we have pulled off this virtual plunge due to the hard work and creativity of the staffers here at CCAN. Especially Courtney Dyson, and Janet Redmond, so many thanks to them for helping us to break our plunge fundraising record. We’ve already raised more money this year than ever before, despite the pandemic. And we want of course, to express our grief to all the families who have lost loved ones in this pandemic, a tragedy and many ways made worse by climate change and unless we fix our broken planet, this could reoccur in various ways in the future, unless we create a clean and sustainable world economy, which is what CCAN and CCAN Action Fund are all about. For the past 18 years. We’ve done things like stop the Atlantic coast pipeline in Virginia, everybody. Give yourselves a round of applause for that great victory to pass comprehensive clean energy mandates in the District of Columbia and Lawrence. And launch the beginning of an East Coast offshore wind industry and Maryland. And now- and now we have a new President Joe Biden, who has committed to a $1.9 trillion plan over four years to finally move our entire nation off of fossil fuels for good and on to wind and solar energy and battery efficiency. At the center of the Biden plan is a commitment to pass- In the year 2021, a bill to mandate 100% carbon free electricity by the year 2035, with equity and justice for disadvantaged communities. So that last part 100% clean electricity by 2035 is our rally cry on this, the first ever national polar bear plunge. So with that, I want to turn to our very first video of the day, we’re going to show you see CCAN’s National Policy Director, Jamie DeMarco, the guy who’s going to be leading our work on Capitol Hill, partnering with groups all over the country to pass a 100% clean electricity standard. But listen, It’s now my pleasure to introduce our first featured speaker of this 2021 plunge kickoff. Congressman Don McEachin. Congressman McEachin is an old friend of CCAN. He represents the Commonwealth of Virginia’s fourth district, as a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the House Committee on natural resources and the Select Committee on the climate crisis. And if you can’t tell by the committees, he’s on Don McEachin is one of us. He’s absolutely dedicated to solving the climate crisis as a top priority with justice and equity. And we look forward to working with down the path 100% clean electricity law in the coming months as well as other features of Biden Harris climate plan that Don McEachin himself helped develop. And now I give to you, Congressman Don McEachin.

Congressman McEachin  6:57  

Thank you so much, Mike, and to the rest of the CCAN folks here. Thank you for having me on. To Jamie, if you didn’t have my vote before you certainly have it now. That was just an amazing feat that you just did jumping into that cold water. So God bless you for. To Reverend Yearwood, thank you for being with us. It’s so good to see you again. And to Bill McKibben. It’s good to make your acquaintance. Thank you for all the hard work you’ve done for so many years working in the venues to bring issues like the environment to the fore. And to all of you all who (are) on this call. It’s a new day. It is a new day, I forgive my partisanship. But as a blue Congress, as a congress is actually going to pass the President’s environmental plans, we’re going to get that clean energy plan done, we’re going to get this off of carbon fuels. But we’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then. We’ve got to set up guideposts, we need to help figure out what our guideposts will be. We need your help talking to some democrats and also republicans because this does not need to be a partisan issue. This is about everybody’s children. This is about the one earth, the one gift we have that we all collectively have. And passing along in a better fashion way than we found it. There’s absolutely no reason why we can’t have Democrats and Republicans unite on this claim. It doesn’t have to be my way or the highway. But we ought to be able to agree that we need to lessen our carbon footprint, we need to get off fossil fuels. And we need to move towards a future that our children will thank us for. So I’m not going to take up a whole lot of time you got other folks to talk to, to hear from your other videos, apparently of other people who are brave enough to jump in cold water. But I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, not just for what you’ve done, but for what you’re going to do. Because the grassroots activism that you add to this movement, the intellectual capacity that you add to this movement, is critical if we’re going to be successful, so May the Lord bless you and keep you. Let’s go forward together in a good partnership. And let’s get this done, not just for us, but for the generations to come. God bless you.

Mike Tidwell  9:18  

Thank you, Congress Don McEachin. And I want to hand it over to our next speaker, the one and only Bill McKibben who needs no real introduction. I have to say I’ve known Bill for about 20 years in the climate movement. But I especially remember in I think it was May of 2011. Bill called me up from Vermont. And he said Mike, we got to stop this Keystone XL pipeline to bring tar sands oil from Canada, into the United States and potentially for export around the world. And Bill said, Mike, do you think we can get 1000 people arrested at the White House to draw attention to this issue? And I said, Bill, I don’t know if we can get 1000 people but I know we can get two people because I’ll join you. I’ll get arrested. Fast forward all these years later, nine years later, and the Keystone XL pipeline was finally cancelled by President Joe Biden, on his first day in office, and no one no one played a bigger role in stopping that pipeline, raising awareness about global warming, moving us toward clean energy with equity and justice than Mr. Bill McKibben, Bill, it’s a great pleasure to have you, thanks for joining us.

Bill McKibben  10:31  

A great pleasure to be with you. As always, Mike, this is always a great occasion. But I gotta say you don’t know it has to pay the slightest attention to me this year because I am not going in the water. I’ve just come off a bunch of surgeries, and the doctor says I can’t so I’m a wuss. So you don’t have to listen to anything I say. And I’ll be very brief. First thing, shout out to Takoma Park, and the headquarters of CCAN. We’ve all been watching in great honor this week as your neighbor Jamie Raskin does the right thing in the halls of Congress. And that’s a you know, reminder that he’s a great champion on this issue, too. And the news yesterday that his wife, Sarah Bloomberg-Raskin is going to end up as the climate advisor to the Treasury Department is great, great news. There’s a ton of great news. And that’s what I want to say, the work that we have done together for the last decade set up what we’re seeing now. This stuff doesn’t happen by accident, it’s not just that Joe Biden suddenly decided that he was interested in climate change, he was gonna hire all the great climate thinkers that were to come run his team. And so- no no. This is the work that everybody has done together to build and change those eight guys to make it seem normal and natural and obvious that we’ve got to move on climate, it is an astonishing shift, even from where we were a decade ago. And so that decade of hard work is behind us. Now, now. And I’m looking at Rev’s cap. Now we’ve got nine years left till 2030. When the IPCC says we have to cut emissions in half, we’ve got 14 years left until we’ve got to get 100% clean energy. That means that now we have to push. The pieces are finally in place, because of the work we’ve done. We’ve got a movement that’s able to rouse politicians and punish and reward them. We’ve got the technology now in the form of cheap solar power and cheap wind power to do what needs doing. Now we just have to push. And it seems like we should get a rest and a break and a vacation. But we actually need now to work harder than we’ve ever worked. Not forever, not for 50 years, because 50 years from now, it’s too late to affect the outcome of this. The next decade is what we’re talking about, these next years when things are absolutely on the line. And so CCAN will be at the heart of this, as it always is. It plays this amazing dual role of changing the region that it is in. And because that region is the seat of the most powerful nation on Earth, also changing the politics of that nation and hence of the world. And so its pivotal role in our climate future is as vital, maybe more vital than ever. Now it seems like Washington may finally be going to work on this. So congratulations to everybody. Keeping winter cold is very close to my heart. It was four below zero when I went out this morning to walk the dog up here in Vermont. So we’re very grateful to you all for the work that you’ve done to make sure that we still have some of these days when you breathe in and hairs in your nose stick together. And that’s you know, that’s the future that we need a world that works the way we know it works and it couldn’t be more thankful to all of you for getting it done.

Mike Tidwell  14:20  

Thank you so much Bill and a little bit of Bill McKibben trivia here. I mean, if I don’t know that there’s anyone who loves winter more than Bill McKibben or wants to keep winter cold for them Bill. He’s an avid cross country skier. In fact, he wrote a book about it years ago. So trivia questions, you would put it in the chat. Who knows what obscure continent, unlikely continent, Bill McKibben has competed- actually raced competitively and cross country skiing in the past. If you know the answer, put it in the chat. Because it might surprise you. Bill, thanks again. We always appreciate you.. And now I want to turn this over to our next and final featured speaker, the Reverend Lennox Yearwood, a member of the CCAN Board of Directors, president and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus, one of my oldest friends in the climate movement, a man who, who inspires all of us across the country every day with his passion and commitment to justice and clean energy, Reverend Lennoxx Yearwood.

Reverend Yearwood  15:26  

Hey, Mike, how are you, I somehow didn’t get the memo that we were supposed to do this part inside. So I think that you sent it to McEachin. And to Bill. But somehow, I love winter. And I want to keep winters cold. So here I am. And I’ve been freezing the whole time watching it. So I’ve had the actual effect of what it feels like to be out there by the National Harbor and be this waiting patiently but freezing and can’t wait to go in the water. I’m so happy to be with you. I’m such a, I’m so proud to be on the board to be an active network. And your investment in this organization is worthwhile. And so important. I have called CCAN, literally the first responders to the climate crisis, because of where they are physically placed in our nation’s capital. And the important work they do in regards to Maryland, Virginia, DC. And on the federal level. I got a question for Jamie, because Jamie did something kind of crazy. So you have to make sure. Actually you guys have the right guy to go take on progress, we need a little bit of chutzpah! so we can take on Congress. But I just want to tell you that this organization is critical. And so thank you for supporting CCAN and continuing to support CCAN. But the reality is, we need to win on climate. We’re at a critical moment, as you’ve heard, President Biden is doing some amazing things. The Keystone XL pipeline was stopped. You heard my dear, my dear, dear friend Bill McKibben earlier talking about the Keystone XL pipeline and what needs to still happen. And there are still many pipeline fights that are happening, shouting that we were able to stop the Atlantic coast pipeline. And as we’re speaking now, there are those who are in southern Minnesota, calling for stop line three, and we left stop line three in every single pipeline project across this country, for more important what the Biden plan does is that it calls for 100%, free energy by 2035. And more important, and as a $2 trillion investment toward that. And out of that 40% of that will be put towards an equity process, including putting that money to a disadvantage and poor and vulnerable communities. Imagine that equity as a part of the climate plan, which has been something that Congressman Mceachin has been calling for. So we’re now beginning to see an emergence of environmental justice, climate justice coming together. And that’s what we have to win on climate justice. We have to begin to break the silos down to ensure that we are successful. Another strong reason why I support and love seeking. I want to share this story before you go, because it was very important. As you know, last Memorial Day, we were all shocked and horrified. When we saw George Floyd literally being killed before execution style, very Jim Crow-ish as we would say, in a way that was killing a black man in this country, and we seem to be often black people. But what we saw was that our movement began to connect the dots. We knew that climate justice is racial justice, and racial justice is climate justice. And this movement, our movement began to say that, you know, it’s not just enough to fight for the planet. We must fight for the people as well. This is why I love CCAN- because many of the young people were in the street fighting for black lives, and it’s simply saying that black lives matter. The CCAN board met to pass a resolution and made sure that we understood those cries. That’s the power of connecting the dots. That’s the power of solidarity. That’s what we need to win on climate. We all come together. That’s why I’m so proud to be a board member of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. Well, I’m so proud of this movement, because in the past month since then, I’ve seen Sierra Club and LCB and 350 and network coming together and understanding that climate justice is racial justice. So as we plunge today as you plunge today, I’m going to just be out here in the cold and that’s my

commitment. But as you know this- this is our moment that we have to win. Bill said it, my hat does say nine years. So we’re now fighting for equality. But for existence with a time clock. This is no game. We must do all we can do. It’s not about Republican or Democrats. It’s about humanity. So as you cleanse as you know that this moment we got here, and we will see 100% clean energy and 2035 all power to the people- that’s what I say right now to get you all fired up. All power to the people!  I can’t hear you! 

Mike Tidwell  20:58  

All power to the people.

Unknown Speaker  21:01  

Thank you so much.

Mike Tidwell  21:04  

Thank you, Rev. There’s a reason we always have you back clean up in these events. And thank you so much. Thanks for everything you do, everything you’re gonna do. Thank you. For all of you on the call everybody listening on Facebook Live all over the country.

Charles Olsen  21:35  

Thanks for listening to Upside Down. This podcast is produced by me, Charlie Olsen with incredible support from the entire CCAN staff. Check out the show notes for links to all the things discussed in this episode. If you want to know more about how you can get involved with CCAN and the climate fight, check out our website at Chesapeake climate.org. If you want to get in touch with us, follow us on instagram and twitter @CCAN and if you enjoy the work we do, why don’t you share us with your friends. Sharing the show is a super easy way to help spread the word about the work we’re doing in the fight for bold climate actions. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.

A Bike Ride Across the Permian Basin

A Bike Ride Across the Permian Basin

Author, climate scientist, and CCAN board member Dave Goodrich is an avid cyclist. So much so that he has embarked on a 700 miles journey across the Permian Basin. On his way he has been taking in the sites of the most active oil producing area in the country, and documenting what he sees. 

We are so excited to be have been able to chat with him last week after his first leg of the journey. Stay tuned for the rest of his story! 

Read the full transcript below.

Charles Olsen  0:12  

Hi, my name is Charlie. And this is upside down the podcast from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Janet Redman  0:33  

Dave, how are you?

Dave Goodrich  0:35  

Good, Janet, good talk to you.

Janet Redman  0:37  

Thanks for joining us today. So this will be the first of three interviews that we have with you. And before we jump in too far, I just want to let everybody know who you are. Among other thing here, the chairman of the board of directors with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and you also had a long career as an NOAA scientist, and you’re currently partaking on a bike ride from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Austin, Texas, covering the Permian Basin.

Dave Goodrich  1:12  

That Yeah, that’s correct. And actually, I, I literally came right in from a ride, which is why I’m a little bit a little informal. But yeah, it’s about 850 miles from Santa Fe to Austin. Where are you

Janet Redman  1:28  

on the ride right now?

Dave Goodrich  1:29  

Right now? I’m in Midland, Texas, which is a little past the midpoint of the ride. I did have a guy in one of these man camps the other day. He said, Where are you riding from? I said Santa Fe. And he paused a little bit. So where you going, Austin? He said, I’m on purpose, or did you loopback spike. Okay, so this I haven’t seen too many other cyclists on this particular route? Actually, none. So, uh huh.

Janet Redman  2:00  

And this is, I know, you’ve done a few of these kind of, I call them climate rides, because you always go on these rides with the purpose of kind of educating people about the countryside that you’re crossing along the way. And the last time we talked, you had just done the Alberta, Canada ride the tar sands down to fields. And I’m curious, how did you decide to do this ride? What what drove you to want to do this

Dave Goodrich  2:28  

was a little bit of curiosity, because you can see in the satellite images, there’s a particular channel where you can see the flaring from oil, oil and gas fields where they’re they’re flaring, basically methane gas off of the oil fields. And if you look at the United States, you see a big, a big yellow, yellow blob in North Dakota, which is the Bakken field, but the biggest of them all is the Permian Basin. And that’s the biggest, biggest field in North America right now. It is the biggest producing field. And I thought, okay, be interesting to see, if you if you’re looking at where the carbon in the atmosphere, at least the US come from, this is this is a big place. But it’s also going across Texas. It’s one of the biggest deployments of wind fields. In the US actually, Texas is the biggest state for wind power generation. And I thought of arrived and maybe a book title eventually called the land, land of fire and wind. So I’ve seen quite a bit of both of those in the last the last week and a half.

Janet Redman  3:50  

Well, tell me about your day today.

Dave Goodrich  3:54  

Today was very neat. I mean, I’ve been For starters, I needed to get to a bike shop, because I do carry a frame pump to pump out my tires, but it’s actually pretty hard to do a lot harder a lot easier if you’ve got a floor pump, which they have a bike. So when I last told the last bike shop in Roswell, New Mexico, I said you better give me some really high quality air because it’s got to get me all the way to Midland Texas week away. which it did. Yeah. So it lasted out. So I stopped by the bike shop and probably the most interesting part of the day. I had a visit set up with a petroleum engineer who has worked for oil oil firms for years and years. He was one of the lead people in the Pluto Bay and Alaska, working in the Permian Basin and all around here for his entire career. And it was very neat to talk with him. We have a lot in common. I actually know. He’s from Missouri, and I actually know Missouri pretty well from riding across it. And, and my grandfather commanded to base there. But it’s an interesting perspective from from an oil, mg, you know, he’s an engineer engineers solve problems. And the problem that he has had in front of him his entire career is how do I get oil out of the ground better and more cheaply, and recently, more cleanly? And it’s not like he’s, he’s ignorant to the the issue of climate. I mean, he actually had a pretty good handle on the the number for the current number for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And one of the things that I was most interested in is, how do you get rid of all this flaring in the Permian Basin? You you ride through this land, and it’s there not too many places where you can’t see a couple of flares on the horizon? It’s not like it lights up the sky, which I thought I would see. But it is all over the place. Well, you know, I

Janet Redman  6:16  

on your blog, on your website, you have the map of it looks like a night sky. And you see the Bakken oil field, and then you see the Permian Basin all lit up. So is that is that a nighttime? Or like an infrared kind of visual because it’s very kind of ominous?

Dave Goodrich  6:35  

Yeah, it is. It’s from the NOAA veers satellite, I’m not sure what wavelength they use. It particularly picks up the wavelength of burning methane. So if there’s a flaring going on anywhere in the world, the satellite sees it and picks it up.

Janet Redman  6:56  

Okay. And beyond flaring, though, isn’t methane, just autumn? It just kind of is a byproduct Anyway, when you’re extracting oil. So isn’t there? A lot of methane in these areas that is not seen is not visible? Absolutely. And, and you can

Dave Goodrich  7:14  

actually, my old outfit, Noah has flown research aircraft, basically sampling over the major oil basins, and you can just see huge spikes in methane concentrations. So there’s no question that there’s a a large amount of methane coming off of the, the oil fields. And if you really want to go after climate change as fast as you can, and methane is what you go after, because it’s 180 times more potent than co2, it eventually eventually decays. Which co2 doesn’t but but still want to get a head start on it. And and what my friend the engineer was, was saying it says, you know, I’m not against, you know, I’m, I would be very much in favor of getting rid of the flaring. It’s, it’s kind of an embarrassment on that. Yeah, it’s a waste. I mean, this is the same stuff that that can be used to heat homes. And so there are ways to do it. And there was actually congressional action week. I think about a week ago, that overturned Trump overturned the the Obama era rules on meth. And that actually just got re overturned by Congress by the Senate two weeks ago. And, and the Biden’s ministration is actively working on rules for eggs. That’s that only applies to new wells. They’re working on rules for methane venting from existing wells, which is the major source of it. And the pushback they get from from the independence is, well, if they, you know, if we have to capture all the methane, it makes a lot of wells on economical, and I’m thinking, like, okay, so if you can’t use the atmosphere as a dumping ground,

Janet Redman  9:15  

well, you know, you make a good point, you’re, you’re out there where the oil industry has been established for well over 100 years. And, and it’s it’s helped build economies, it’s helped build wealth. It’s never, you know, it was not a bad thing back when it first started. And I’m, I’m wondering, are you seeing an if the engineering you spoke with today or anyone else along the way? Um, first of all, are they are they are they feeling like you’re going to attack them because of their oil connections? Or are they understanding that they need to work the transition to a clean economy in as well and, you know, renewable energy has to be added to the mix. Is there any resistance to that?

Dave Goodrich  10:04  

Certainly, today with the guy that I was was speaking with, you know, he’s been in the field a long way is certainly a very well educated man. And and he realizes that renewables are coming on very quickly. He points out some of the problems really, with with just the grid, getting the grid in shape for charging all of these cars. He says, you know, you know, how much a Tesla supercharger draws? It’s like, okay, there’s sounds like there’s lots of work to be done. Lots of work for engineers like me. But, um, I think there is an acceptance that this is coming. But that but I think in the back of people’s minds, it’s like, jeez, I just hope I can, you know, it’s like, like the T shirt you see out here in the, in the oil patch, sometimes it says, God, just give me another oil boom, I promise I won’t blow this one. The that’s that’s not, that wasn’t his perspective at all. But I think there is, there is an acceptance that renewables are coming. I’m think there’s certainly a nervousness about how fast they’re coming. Since this, I mean, I was, I was at the, this petroleum museum just a few minutes ago, which is the Midlands museum to the oil industry. And what you see is a lot of looking back about, boy, everybody used to say that we’re at peak oil, and we’re gonna run out of oil. And that’s clearly not happening with the revolution in tracking. But you don’t see the climate word anywhere there.

Janet Redman  12:08  

I am a little surprised to that. Because, you know, it is another way to generate revenue and put jobs in place. And obviously, we know it’s a cleaner way to do things. And I, I’m just surprised that there is not, you know, some sort of a, the beginning of a movement to, to go in a more sustainable way. Well,

Dave Goodrich  12:32  

I’m put a big Asterix there, even before I wrote into Midland, yesterday, I saw the first of many of the massive wind pride projects that Texas is known for this one was won by Duke Energy in a place with the poetic name, no trees. And, you know, there were turbans just as far as you could see down down the ridge. And then you look in the other direction, and there are pump Jacks in two dimensions at the horizon. So it’s sort of like you’re looking at at. Exactly, exactly. And I was talking to another guy at a at one of the man camps the other night, and he was actually from North Carolina, there are an awful lot of people that migrate into the oil patch from long distances, and spend time work there and go back home. He’s from North Carolina, and his house is he’s on Hatteras, and his house has been flooded out twice. And he asked me said, you know, to sea level rise thing for real? And I said, Yes, sir. It is, this is kind of what I spend my career on. And, and he said it curious, they said, No, there’s, there’s there’s some land out here. That’s not near any of the oil fields. That you know, start doing some investing in that. You know, there’s gonna there’s gonna be a need for more wind farms and more, you know, big solar generators. And, and Texas has been the leader, certainly on the wind side. Mm hmm. Trying to kill.

Janet Redman  14:24  

It’s surprising. It’s an X. It’s really it’s got both it’s got the isn’t aviators, one of the largest wind projects out there.

Dave Goodrich  14:34  

Yeah, I’m going to be visiting The Aviator project. Unfortunately, on Sunday on Mother’s Day, I really, like the guy said, Oh, the the guy’s going to make a trip out to open it for you and then I go, Oh, it’s Mother’s Day. But so I’m, I’m in touch with him saying if I’ll make it really quick. But aviator is is a big one. But they’re really all over the place. They’re not necessarily don’t necessarily have the political stroke that the oil and gas industry has. Because they’re after the big Texas freeze, if you call the governor was on fox news like that day, blaming the freeze up and the power shortages on, on the winter events, or as In fact, most most of the problems were with natural gas freezing up and just their general infrastructure is not built for a big hard freeze like they got. And they’re using that kind of an excuse to propose laying all kinds of new fees on

Janet Redman  15:42  

blind misinformation coming out of that.

Dave Goodrich  15:45  

Yeah, yeah. But it may be that the wind industry has enough political muscle here to survive. It’s, it’ll be interesting to see how about that one online?

Janet Redman  16:00  

So how much longer how many more days you have before you are insane? I’m sorry, in Austin,

Dave Goodrich  16:09  

I’m going to be in Austin, I believe it’s on the 16th if I if I don’t get blown out.

Janet Redman  16:16  

If everything goes Okay, um, and what what have been your biggest obstacles along the ride physically mentally with the people you met?

Dave Goodrich  16:27  

The two things I’m out I was, you know, I play when I was was writing with this thought of, you know, oh, scorpions and rattlesnakes and aliens in New Mexico and stuff. But really, the two two obstacles were very clear. To me. It’s wind and traffic. A You know, there’s a reason they put wind farms out here. And I was thinking, Okay, I looked at the wind rose is a, you know, a climatologist, and it’s like, okay, it’s normally coming hard from the south. And then yesterday when I was trying to get to middle and in time to to meet some folks. I woke up in the morning, you know, usually it’s calm in the morning. And it’s this howling headwind. At worst light, it’s and I’m making six miles an hour into the wind and I’m thinking I’m not going to make this I have to peel off early. So that was that’s happened a few times. I went from went from winter to summer in New Mexico. Overnight, the have a 60 mile ride and at the end of the ride was going up over a pass in suddenly 40 degree rain. I that’s not what I expect out of New Mexico

Janet Redman  17:55  

arese and out of elevation because you were back up in

Dave Goodrich  18:00  

elevation there. You know, it does rain, sometimes in New Mexico. And we were going through a mountain pass probably about 7000 feet. And and you know, I had to stop and you know, put on the rain jacket. I still had you know, long tights on and everything. But by the time you know the next after the six miles of downhill into the into the motel I was borderline hypothermia. So that was that was a little crazy.

Janet Redman  18:33  

I was reading your blog about one of the days when you said it was a rare day when you actually had a tailwind. It seems like you’ve been riding into headwinds predominantly here. And I guess was the first week and you still had Lind salvo riding with you and you wrote that you finally had a tailwind and without pedaling you were going 80 miles an hour.

Unknown Speaker  18:55  

Yeah. When we were coming into someone

Janet Redman  18:58  

was just playing with you then right because yeah, I say I’m sure it came right back around.

Dave Goodrich  19:03  

Yeah, I think we were coming into coming into to Carlsbad and yeah, I mean, when it’s good boy, it’s you know, you just stick your elbows out and get night get another couple of miles an hour. So that’s, you know, that’s fun. Um, I think riding with Lynn and I think I’ve told you this but lens, the Guinness Record holder for it. She’s the oldest woman to ride across the US. And also across Canada also holds it for Canada too. Yeah, I mean, she’s just you know, it’s not necessarily she is the the strongest out of the blocks but she owns the route 50 miles now at 50 without, without he owns the road. It’s like, I cannot stay with her. But if it’s not like that, it’s kind of like, I have some strong hours and she has some strong hours. And that really, that really helps things. And when

Janet Redman  20:13  

it sounded like the two of you were great partners riding together. And plus you had your wife helping you kind of a SAG wagon, right? Yes, that would have made it a lot nicer for that first week for you.

Dave Goodrich  20:25  

That was that was a lot that was a lot nicer when they when I saw them, turning head back towards Santa Fe, it’s like, oh, boy, I’m on my own now and into the ninja the Permian. Really, really?

Janet Redman  20:39  

Well. Um, so tell me what are you looking forward to between now and and Austin,

Dave Goodrich  20:45  

a couple of things the I’m interested in, in what this what these big wind projects look like. I mean, they’re the biggest in the country, some of the biggest in the world. And they’re not close to Metropolitan metropolitan areas, because you need big open spaces. And I’d like to see what the inside of one of them looks like. And there’s also a sort of the touristy side of things. Coming into Austin, I’ll pass through Johnson City, which is Lyndon Johnson’s hometown, the the western White House there. And also you wouldn’t think Texas would be a place for the Museum of the Pacific War. But Chester s came from Fredericksburg, Texas, went to the Naval Academy and did pretty well from there.

Janet Redman  21:42  

Crazy. So the Pacific War Museum is in Texas

Dave Goodrich  21:46  

is in Fredericksburg, Texas. And then, and then there’s Austin and Austin’s gosens kind of a whole whole different thing. And I’m looking forward to putting my feet up for a

Janet Redman  22:01  

day, what I really love about the rides that you take is that you are going to places that most people will never see, you know, you’re going through some really difficult terrain, some very bleak terrain. And, and you’re able to show that to people, the good and the bad, which I think is really really helpful. Um, and I appreciated that with with your last ride from, you know, Alberta, and I’m looking forward to what you’re, you know what this looks like to us. Are you going to write another book? Is that your thought or I’d like

Dave Goodrich  22:36  

to I’m trying to think about things quite a bit as I go along and try and preserve some of the the the stories along the way. And, and some of the lines that guy asking me if I did the right on I was doing the right on purpose or if I lost a bet it’s like okay, that’s it uh, so Um, so yeah yeah there’s there’s there’s some times where when you see half the trucks in West Texas coming at you in the in the other direction and you’re kind of on this skinny little shoulders like, Okay, it’s time to find a plan B real fast.

Janet Redman  23:27  

Are you seeing any other bikers out there?

Dave Goodrich  23:30  

Um, I haven’t seen one now, I mean, I had some some very kind truck drivers will will honk at me I think they’re they’re kind of encouraging on or or, or maybe you got to be nuts. clock that that’s there too. But But yeah, it’s it’s different. It’s like there’s there’s almost a royalty to the oil business here. One of the things that stuck in my mind, Artesia, New Mexico is a is an oil town. And they’ve got a whole statue of a wellhead and you know, kind of how it’s done. And on the side are two oilman real people basically cutting a deal on the hood of a pickup truck. And it’s like, yeah, that’s that’s kind of what it’s about here. It’s like here you come here to make your fortune. A lot of people have

Janet Redman  24:39  

very entrepreneurial and and kind of like a How the West Was one idea or restart of these empires? Very much. So

Dave Goodrich  24:47  

very much so and and, you know, the Permian museum is, you know, you build an empire you, you know, you want to, you want to put a monument to what it was about what you were doing.

Janet Redman  25:00  

Yeah, but it should as they should be, you know, that’s what they did was really ahead of the curve, you know that, that they were willing and had the courage to pursue. I mean, now obviously we aren’t. It isn’t how we wish we had done things maybe but at the time it was they were very brave, actually, you know, they were they were taking huge risks

Dave Goodrich  25:25  

to try to go after fossil fuels. Yep, it is, it is a boom and bust business. No question about that.

Janet Redman  25:33  

I was wondering if anything has actually been easier than you expected?

Dave Goodrich  25:38  

Well, there’s one thing. The, the terror of writing in the, in the southwest for for cyclists. What you hear about is goat heads. And it’s like, what is that goat heads are actually an invasive species of weed that are perfectly designed, they’re about this big. And if you look at them closely, they’ve got two thorns that are the perfect size for a bike tire. I’ve run into them before riding out west and, and lens written across Texas. And she said, one thing you don’t do, you don’t put your tire in any kind of greenery, because you don’t know what’s in there. I mean, most most, everything out here has thorns in it. I made from mesquite, and, uh, you know, all kinds of things. So I was thinking I was going to have a lot more flats, and kept expecting them. I’ve got three spare tubes with me and a patch kit. So it’s like, I’m ready. But so far, the tires have held up very well, there’s a brand called schwabe marathon that’s got some puncture protection in it, and they’re really good. So that mechanically, things have held up pretty well. Okay. And

Janet Redman  27:11  

I know you were ultra prepared.

Dave Goodrich  27:15  

Yeah, well, that’s one thing about the big rides, it gets you, if you know, you’re going to do it, then it really you know, it’s kind of like the impending doom the focus the mind wonderfully, that. It’s like, I better be in shape, you know, when the wheels start spinning here, and especially since I was riding with Lynn, who’s, who’s always in ridiculous shape. I mean, she’s an athlete. And the, so I’m it. I was trying to be very prepared. But as you get close, every little twinge in your knee, or, you know, oh, my foot didn’t, didn’t feel right, getting up to you today, is that a problem? And you start getting get paranoid about that. But, um, so far, you know, all with all the tendons and spokes seem to be intact, incredible,

Janet Redman  28:12  

incredible. Dave, I mean, you qualify as an athlete to you know, that you absolutely, absolutely. It’s just, it’s so exciting. And, you know, we’re very proud of you and very excited to follow along with what you’re doing.

Dave Goodrich  28:27  

Well, thank you. Thanks. It’s, it being out here does make you kind of swallow hard about the climate job we have ahead of us. Because there is so much momentum and money and, and people’s livelihoods that are that’s involved here. With changing the economy, and right now, Midland and the Permian Basin is powering a big chunk of our economy, whether we, you know, where we thought and that’s, that’s something that we kind of have to go after. Go after is a bad word find find other you know, find other ways to generate our energy.

Janet Redman  29:15  

Yeah. And and making it a just transition. So we are keeping people employed. as we as we make the transition. It’s so important. I can tell you we owe them a lot actually, you know, we owe the people that are out there in the in the oil fields, a lot that we’re here where we are today.

Dave Goodrich  29:36  

So and then I’ll tell you there there are so many abandoned wells out here too. are in need of capping. capping. Yes. But

Janet Redman  29:47  

that’s that’s one of Biden’s ideas right to tell people to work capping the old abandoned walls out there.

Dave Goodrich  29:54  

I mean, you can see what happened in Pennsylvania from the the coal mine From 100 years ago, are still leaching acid. And so many of the streams in Pennsylvania are still acidified because of acid mine waste. It’s like, we don’t need to repeat that,

Janet Redman  30:15  

in my mind, learn learn from history this time.

Dave Goodrich  30:18  

Yeah. Yeah, I think so.

Janet Redman  30:21  

Well, I know we’re talking again, on one day.

Dave Goodrich  30:26  

Very good. And I should be in in San Angelo, then and I’m looking forward to seeing seeing you again.

Janet Redman  30:33  

All right, thanks. Thank you so much. Stay safe out there. Take care of yourself and eat and sleep and everything else you need to do to be healthy and get through this. We’re looking forward to talking to you again.

Dave Goodrich  30:46  

Looking forward to talking to you, Janet.

Charles Olsen  31:05  

Thanks for listening to upside down. This podcast is produced by me, Charles. with incredible support from the entire weekend staff. Check out the show notes for links to all the things discussed in this episode. If you want to know more about how you can get involved with seeking in the climate fight, check out our website at Chesapeake climate.org. If you want to get in touch with us, follow us on instagram and twitter at seeking and if you enjoy the work we do, why don’t you share us with your friends. Sharing the show is a super easy way to help spread the word about the work we’re doing in the fight for bold climate action. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.

102 Faith Leaders in Support of 100% Clean Energy



On June 9th, 102 faith leaders nationwide on capitol hill to support 100% Clean energy and the American Jobs Plan.

Follow along with our transcript of the event:

 

 

Charles Olsen  0:08  

My name is Charlie Olsen and this is The Upside Down the podcast from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. On June 9 102, faith leaders across the country gathered outside of the US Capitol to urge Congress of the moral imperative of passing a 100% clean electricity standard in order to combat climate change as part of the American jobs plan. This podcast is the audio recording of that event. Enjoy. Good afternoon. 

 

Unknown Speaker  1:02  

Welcome to this 100 faith leaders for 100% clean energy event. Thank you so much for being here today. And I want to also thank our co sponsors for today’s event, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Dayenu Hip Hop Caucus and the Interfaith Power and Light DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia affiliate. I am Reverend Susan Hendershot, and I have the honor of serving as the president of Interfaith Power and Light. And our mission is to inspire and mobilize people of faith and conscience to take bold and just action on climate change. And I am here with my friend and my colleague, Reverend Michael Malcolm, Michael serves as the executive director of the People’s Justice Council and Alabama, interfaith Power and Light. And he and I have just returned from northern Minnesota from the treaty people gathering. Where we had the privilege of just bearing witness with our indigenous relatives who are working so hard to stop the line three pipeline on behalf of all of us and creation. And so Michael, I just want to ask you, rather, you live in Alabama, you just spent in northern Minnesota, and now you are showing up here today to tell us why it is important for you to show up at this gathering today, when you could have just gone home and gotten some good sleep.

 

Unknown Speaker  2:43  

She said that I’m contemplating that now. The reason I’m here is because of my Christian faith, and my Christian scriptures tell me to love my neighbor.

 

Unknown Speaker  2:58  

Right now, my neighbor, people pay up to over 20% of their income for utilities. Right now, my neighbor doesn’t even have the availability or the opportunity to be a part of a renewable energy portfolio. Right now, my neighbor, my neighbor who suffers, who is already impoverished, is paying up to $500 a month for their utility bill. We absolutely need a standard that can be set that can allow for our states to tap into this renewable energy portfolio. That gives us a clean energy standard. I’m also here, because I want to remind us as community of faith and space leaders, that it is our job to be ambassadors for compassion. And when our community is suffering, we ought to get loud, and we ought to make some noise. Can I do that? Because Can you do me a favor real quick and just exercise that? Can we make some noise for our administration to know that we are here and we have justice, equity, we are standing by the rights of our brothers and sisters who are indigenous, we are standing for all of their rights. And that’s why I’m here. And I hope that you are here for the same reason that I’m here, that you are here to love your neighbor as yourself. And that means if you don’t want it in your backyard, you ought not be advocating for it to be in someone else’s backyard. You don’t want it in your community. You ought not be advocating for anybody else’s community. We don’t need all of the above approaches. We need an approach that is equitable and just that does not do harm to the community, nor planet. Thank you. And while I’m here, we just spent three and a half hours together, going from northern Minnesota to St. Paul to get on an airplane. Would not only that you also had to drive three and a half hours after you got off the plane to go to Minnesota in the first place. Why did you put yourself through all of that, knowing that you could have been at home? You could have been relaxing, and getting prepared for this. Thank you.

 

Unknown Speaker  5:41  

Thanks. Thanks for preaching. You know, for me, ultimately, and reading ramset in this work is about love. This work is about love. It’s love for God and love for the sacred. It’s love for each other. And it’s love for all of the inhabitants on the sacred Earth, not just human inhabitants, for the creatures. And First John Chapter 317 says how does the love of God abide in one who sees someone in need and shuts up their compassion. So for me, that means that we can’t truly love without justice. It is intertwined and interwoven. And while there are 100 of us here today, at the Capitol, our message has been shared by more than 1500 faith leaders across the country, in a signed letter to this administration, calling on them to set a strong, clean energy standard. It’s 100% clean energy by 2035. And we can do this, we can do this. But we need President Biden’s initial $2.2 trillion proposal to be the floor and not the ceiling. And we must invest with justice, as Rob said, ensuring that President Biden’s campaign promise of at least 40% of funds going to black, indigenous, and people of color communities and low income communities most hurt by our fossil fuel infrastructure, we have to see that that comes to fruition. And so Proverbs, Chapter 29, Verse 18, says, without a vision, the people perish. And we are calling on the Biden administration to set a bold and just vision. For we know that without a vision, the people perish and without action, to bring that vision to life. All that we hold dear and sacred will perish along with us. So rather than I was just standing yesterday on honest and knobby land in northern Minnesota, and today, we acknowledge that we stand on the land of the necochea tank and piscataway people. And so I’m asking you to join me now in a land acknowledgement. We want to acknowledge that we’re on the traditional territory of the piscataway people past and present. The importance of land acknowledgement is that non-native people are giving this acknowledgement out of respect and honor for what the first people of this nation last and breathe for today, especially in light of recent news of the 215 bodies, discovered at a residential Indian School in Canada 100 such schools across North America in which the indigenous community is mourning over. So can we just join in a moment of silence to honor and remember our indigenous relatives and these 215 children?

 

Unknown Speaker  9:35  

Thank you again for being here today. And I’ve been asked to encourage you to stay through the end of our time here with this program. And we’ll take a group photo following. And so now it’s time for our call to intention and attention. So I’ll turn it over to our next speaker.

 

Unknown Speaker  10:22  

Mr. Robert Davis now I’m representing my communities, I’m filled with new communities. And also if you luchador Shah and, and also, I’d like to also represent my Arthur wasco data center as many, many others and we all represent many, many others. The sound of the show follows a very interesting sound, as I think you all know, it has many meanings and intentions. One is to sound a warning, a warning to the people. It’s a sound of awakening our minds and our hearts to injustice. It’s a sound for liberation, it’s a sound, it’s a call for us to get moving. I’m gonna turn around as I sound of the show far, because the people who need the most waking up are over there. We know we’re over there, and I just been hoping you can, in some ways

 

Unknown Speaker  12:23  

Communitarian Universalist minister, I serve the entire Universalist congregation in Rockville, Maryland.

 

Unknown Speaker  12:31  

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for showing up with your heart and your spirit. We are going to participate in house learning, which is our worship, rituals and promarker. So we’d like to swim in Chalice in the name of justice. We like this wavy Chalice on this sacred space where our bodies are connected to the earth, where we know that the earth is is personally impacted by people who are brown and black and marginalized and queer. We are standing with them and for them, we surround them with our highest intention to send a message. So this is a flame of truth. May our voices be heard and their highest aspirations be heated to in the name of all that is holy, amen. And I say I’m blessed to do it.

 

Unknown Speaker  13:31  

Good morning. I’m Reverend Melanie Mullen and I’ve received greetings from the Episcopal Church from our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and for all those friends and family in our tradition, who pray for more than just solidarity with vulnerable lands and people but to be co-conspirators, in a vision of God’s justice. Will you pray with me the prayers of the people honoring God and creation? What’s the God whose love calls the whole creation into a covenant with you, and he puts in our hands responsibility for the care of the earth. And its creatures, we pray for all who you have given light and being saying, Merciful Creator, keep your planet and people in peace for the well being of the earth, for its resources of water, air, lights and soil, that they may be tinted for the good of all creatures. We crave, Merciful Creator, keep your planets and people in. Well the waters of the earth for their careful use and conservation that we may have the will and the ability to keep them clean and pure. We pray first of all creator, keep your planet and people in peace. For the mineral and energy resources of this planet, that we may learn sustainable consumption and sound care of the environment from which they come, we pray, Merciful Creator, keep your planets and people and for all the animals of the earth, wild and domestic large and very small, that they may know the harmony of relationship that sustains all life. We pray, Merciful Creator, to keep your planet and people end up for the creatures of the earth who do us harm. Those who place in your creation we do not understand or welcome that we may see them as beloved creatures of God. We pray, Merciful Creator, to heat your planet, and people in teams for all to shape public policies affecting the planet and its creatures, especially President Biden, and our leaders in Congress that they may be considering wisely. the well being of all who come after us. Let us pray. Merciful creator, keep your planet and people in peace. We are all God’s creatures and people say Amen. And now I call up Henry Majeed.

 

Unknown Speaker  16:43  

Bismillahi Rahmani Raheem. In the name of Allah. In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

 

Unknown Speaker  16:58  

I’m speaking to all the people who believe in you. I believe I’m speaking to you.

 

Unknown Speaker  17:07  

Is there no where in the Quran? No commandments of God. No statement of a prophet. No, that’s what from a survey that says we must live the most convenient life. Yes, for many of us, our struggle is convenience. Convenience is going to the supermarket year round, and being able to find strawberries and grapes at the expense of workers who are not being paid a living wage. Convenience is knowing that there will be regular trash collection in my neighborhood, at the expense of bracket black and brown people who live near the landfill where my trash is dumped. Convenient convenience is to day delivery at the expense of plein air. Convenience is cheap gas at the expense of Native communities. Convenience isn’t every day to hop and every day personal and communal struggle, where we have to ask ourselves daily, hourly. Am I a Khalifa? Or am I a consumer? Oh Khalifa is a custodian whose duty is to live in harmony, respect, and nurture the place where we live and work and play. A Khalifa is a position of privilege of servant leadership, in which we have the responsibility to care for God’s creation on Earth. It is the trust given to every person by God to care for animals, plants, and water lands. We do not own the earth but rather we care for it until we are returned to the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said the world is beautiful and burdens and barely Allah exalted has made you Stewart’s Khalifa in it, and a lobby how you acquit yourself. A Khalifa is a position of honor. It is a fulfilling and uplifting relationship with God and condition. There’s give and there’s tape. We give effort and time and consideration to Peter to clean air and clean water. A consumer is defined by big business, Coca Cola, Unilever, it is a position of subordination.

 

Unknown Speaker  20:12  

A consumer takes and takes and takes. So, who are we defined by? Are we defined by God? or Amazon?

 

Unknown Speaker  20:28  

How is convenience related to climate, the overuse and abuse of Earth’s resources, in order to provide our endless and fleeting conveniences, has led to the degradation of Earth’s waterways and lands and oceans. And consequently, the Earth’s climate, along with the death of nations, and communities of both people, plants and animals, each individual one being assigned, pointing to the one who created us own. So, the task of wealthy nations is justice within power, justice, when and comfort justice in the midst of can be. So here is today’s tech, today’s daily, hourly tech. Who defines me? Who defines us? God or capitalism? Amalia Khalifa, or my consumer?

 

Unknown Speaker  21:38  

Thank you. Now I like to call prophecy. Good afternoon. How are you all doing? Great. I am Raj from Ito sake. It is an organization of the Sikh community focused on climate issues and climate crisis. And we have planted in the last two years 320 many and large forests in India, in the UK, Canada and in the United States. And our goal is to thank you. Our goal is to plant 1 million trees. This was in honor of the 550th birth anniversary of the founder of the secret guru. And Guru Nanak. South Asia was the first one to call upon the entire humanity to look at the relationship that we have with nature. And I’m going to sing what he said because he was a singer, Barbara. Barney, Barbara, Barney, Martha Davis, Martha, Martha. He says the end is the Guru is the teacher. It gives us the opportunity to breathe, and he treats everyone equally. And gives us the opportunity to experience life and live to our fullest potential. And second is water. Water is our father. That’s where life has originated. And Earth is our mother. So just say we will not honor our own mother or father. Why would we dishonor our mother, the real mother, the real father and the real teacher. And Guru Nanak also said that karma paid Shaka hurry through the fall full era. He says let your life be like a tree, a tree which is doing good deeds, the deeds of compassion, deeds of helping others, deeds of healing the world. And then what happens he says, Shaka Hurry, God becomes a multiplying effect in your actions. God becomes the tea tree. This tree has branches. And then he says, Don’t call. The real religion is when you are doing compassion. It acts, not what you believe, not what you talk, but what you walk, how you act in the world. And the last is that the real wisdom comes out of this compassionate way of living. And the next line is the most beautiful, he says, gum proper Cha 22 common are women. This tree is your life, if you become like a tree, you will provide the greatest shade to others, you will become a healing effect in this world. And the one thing we must check is the effect of our ego, our mind, trying to control, trying to possess things, trying to have the power of nature and other things. So we are here, this is a really a blessed occasion to have these moral voices at a sacred ground, where the future of the planet is decided. And this is our opportunity to raise our voice. Because we have a listener in the White House, who has promised that 40% of his funds will go to the people of those who are in need, those who are suffering because of the fossil fuel economy. And it is our responsibility to keep the pressure on. Do we want clean energy by 2035?

 

Unknown Speaker  26:33  

All right, so we need to make that noise as loud as possible as possible, you know, however we can, because it is really when deciding the future of our children’s children. This is the kind of planet that we want to live on. Every President capsa guts on the pulpit here says, We’re gonna go to the moon, we’re gonna go to Mars, we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that. But no one says we’re gonna save the earth. And this is where we need to start raising this voice that this model agenda needs to become the agenda of the United Nation, United States, because this is a leading nation. Every nation looks up to us, what we are doing, what we are doing to the planet, and we are the greatest polluter. We are the greatest consumer society. And the change needs to start here. And I’m so blessed to be here with you all raising this voice, because it does not matter which religion you belong to. What matters is what is the future of our planet? And how are we going to leave it for our future generations.

 

Unknown Speaker  27:42  

Thank you may call upon Angela Turnbull.

 

Unknown Speaker  27:54  

Good afternoon. I’m so inspired by each of you. I’m so inspired by our commitment to leave a planet that’s beautiful and amazing for our children and future generations that you stand with me to do whatever it takes to make that happen. Hello, I’m Angela Wilson Turnbull. I’m a strategy team leader with the Archdiocese of Washington care for creation committee. Our Archdiocese of Washington care for creation committee is a laid lead organization of Catholics from the district and five Maryland counties that make up the Archdiocese. The committee mobilizes grassroots Catholics for action on care for creating environmental justice in the Archdiocese providing a platform for communication and organization. We work very close, Lee in coordination with the Archdiocese. And we do not officially speak on its behalf. Catholics and all people have an extraordinary opportunity to lead on Caring for Our Common Home and our most vulnerable people together. While many good things are happening every day, there’s still enormous room to provide leadership in these endeavors. It is far from handled. And if you are here listening to this, you are a leader whose initiative can or is already making a difference in the world. As leaders, we create disciples who are students and pupils who work to take our place and not just someday but right now.

 

Unknown Speaker  30:04  

As an inspiring example, like with many of our parishes, churches school in this region, we have a community of African American students right here in DC at St. Augustine’s elementary school, who completed an 18 month study project to reverse the harmful effects of fossil fuels used right here in the nation’s capital. Students are being supported by parishioners. Reginald Barry was a chemical engineer. It is so inspiring what these young people have done. They follow their heart’s desire to contribute, submitting a technical proposal to install solar panels on 3500 square feet of space 200 to 300 panels on their school’s roof, which is currently being evaluated by contractors plus a minority firm who agreed to include the school children in a service learning project. So they can observe the installation as they contribute and witnesses implementation, the students created a comprehensive PowerPoint presentation. And our pastor father Pat was blown away. This is what’s possible. These are third to eighth graders.

 

Unknown Speaker  31:23  

Did you hear me?

 

Unknown Speaker  31:26  

We’re making it happen in the world. I just want to point to the work that we’ve done in our care for the creation committee, you know, all people play a critical role in transforming the vision and the concern of Pope Francis, relating to the climate crisis into real action. I want you all to imagine, hundreds of years ago during the Ice Age, when we didn’t have this crisis, we have the capacity to return to those levels. Cardinal Gregory recently announced that the Archdiocese of Washington will be releasing its own lodato see action plan. Just this past March, he made that announcement. And what that will mean for our communities, our children, our churches,

 

Unknown Speaker  32:18  

our schools.

 

Unknown Speaker  32:21  

I want to share a story. 30 years ago, a dear friend, Sydney, was on Pennsylvania Avenue in southeast DC. A friend of my family’s a 50 year old African American man, there was a gas leak on Pennsylvania Avenue. He cleared the traffic, cleared a Metro bus and then a huge burst of flames engulfed him and took his life. There are gas leaks all over our city. We don’t need gas anymore, right. It’s not just an environmental issue. It’s a human issue. It’s killing our people and our children. I’d like to ask you these questions. What specifically should the money go towards to transform our nation? What will this administration do to ensure those that are suffering the most in our world are taken care of

 

Unknown Speaker  33:26  

as a

 

Unknown Speaker  33:27  

top priority. I would like to close with a powerful poem and prayer excuse me, from Pope Francis’s encyclical, Luddites datos. See, please pray with all powerful God. You are present in the whole universe and in the smallest of your creatures. you embrace with your tenderness, all that exists. Pour out upon us the power of your love, that we may protect life and beauty. Fill us with peace, that we may live as brothers and sisters harming no one. Oh god of the poor. Help us to restore the abandoned and forgotten to this earth. so precious in your eyes. bring healing to our lives, that we may protect the world and not prey on it. That we may be so beautiful, not pollution and destruction. touch the hearts of those who look only to gain at the expense of the poor and the art. Teach us to discover the worth of each thing. To be filled with all and contemplation to recognize that we are profoundly united With every preacher as we journey towards your Infinite Light, we thank you for being with us each day. encourage us, we pray, and I struggle for justice, love, and peace. Amen.

 

Unknown Speaker  35:27  

I’d like to invite Christian Barker, co-founder and director of one Earth thing. Greetings friends, I

 

Unknown Speaker  35:50  

see many friendly faces. Yes. Hi, I’m Kristen Barker, co-founder and director of one Earth Sangha. We are a global, Buddhist and mindfulness community responding to ecological crises with courage, wisdom and compassion. I want to invite you now, to just take a moment to connect with your breathing. Just feel the weight of your feet as they touch this room. Let the attention gather. and invite the mind and body to relax. bring your attention to your hips to your bones, feel that contact with her. Relax your face. Open the crown perhaps to the sky. your spine like the tree of a trunk, connecting or with the sky. Let this mind rest in the heart that the heart rests in the body. And let this body rest on Earth has widened the field of attention now to include those wonderful passionate, committed activists around you. include them in your appreciation, we cannot do this alone. We will not do this alone. Soften the boundary widens even further. include these trees. The grasses yes, even the cars and the buildings and adventures include all of this that is the whitening field of wonder and vulnerable life on Earth. I invite you to bring a warm smile to your heart and offer it to this world.

 

Unknown Speaker  38:16  

My tradition we teach that these bodies are born of life and returned to Earth as our tradition teaches that we can prevent suffering but only by facing the truth of our situation and then acting with courage with wisdom and compassion. Prevent suffering and enable the path of ease and freedom we must actively honor at every level of our being including in our own hearts internally and externally. The three defilements are greed, hatred, and delusion. It is greed, hatred and delusion and disdain for the hate of the fate of others that defends our continued investment in fossil fuels and the exploitation of people and the planet with that. In my tradition, we have this wonderful image of Kuan Yin the Bodhisattva of compassion. She hears the cries of the world. She has 1000 eyes and 1000 arms and she touches our hearts when we breathe and connect with wisdom and compassion.

 

Unknown Speaker  39:37  

Thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you for yelling Yes, yo when it’s helpful. So it is quite the yen and the spirit of Kuan Yin that will help us to counter and defend those near and far human and more than human born and yet to be born. It is up to us Not to give in to delusion, nor denial nor distraction from this cause, we will not give in to despair, for it is despair that thinks it knows where this is all headed. It thinks it knows the answer, we will not give in to the rage or hatred In our own hearts, we can act fiercely, but make enemies of none and I don’t say that just to be nice. It is the sustainability of activism that relies on us metabolizing and retaining the open hearted connection with ourselves and one another. If we get it into hatred of the other side, we are sabotaging our own activism. So with the wisdom Sword of another bodhisatta, cipher manjushree this wisdom sword cuts through the delusion, the greed and the hatred and will at our side help us divest from fossil fuels, and fiercely invest at every level in clean energy infrastructure. This is the protection of our children, the protection of the entire web of life, the protection of Earth, and we can do that all with a beautiful smiling heart.

 

Unknown Speaker  41:23  

Thank you.

 

Unknown Speaker  41:29  

So I give you now Lisa Sharon Harper, a speeder speaker, writer, activist and artists president of the

 

Unknown Speaker  41:36  

founder of freedom road.

 

Unknown Speaker  41:51  

So friends, thank you so much for the introduction. I am the author of the very good gospel,

 

Unknown Speaker  41:58  

how are they rocking today, right? And one of the chapters in that book is about creation and just accretion care creation justice. And what I want to share with you is about a public theology that I’ve kind of just deepened for like the last almost 20 years. When I think about the biblical call, to shalom to radically good relationships, with all things with all people with all of creation, I’m drawn to the reality that we are all created in relationship with each other. And that relationship was meant to be overwhelmingly good. And all creation is sacred, this blade of grass, the blades of grass that you are standing on are sacred. You are sacred, sacred. Because the breath of life lives in this grass. And the breath of life lives in you. The image of God lives in you and all of us, including the most marginalized. Humanity is called to steward the earth. And in Genesis, the second chapter of Genesis, we see a clearer picture of what that stewardship looks like, looks like killing and keeping. And when you translate that from the Hebrew, it actually translates to serve and protect Hello, somebody Hello. So what would it look like? What would it look like? How would the ways that we like our churches, our places of worship change if we hated God’s call to serve and protect the Earth? How would the ways that we power our infrastructure change if we hated God’s call to serve and protect the Earth? How would the ways that we grow our food change if we heeded God’s call to serve and protect the Earth? It is true that yes, we need a thriving economy. But a fundamental principle of the very goodness of the gospel is that we are all tied together in an inextricable relationship with each other. Our actions grow well, but damage our capacity to drink clean water, or breathe without wheezing, or eat the fruits of our labor or enjoy the beauty of God’s creation, then we are not well and the humans that bear the brunt of our sin, against creation are the poor and marginalized and the integration is broken. And it stands as a witness.

 

Unknown Speaker  44:55  

It bears witness to our broken relay. With God, we are breaking the only planet that we have been given.

 

Unknown Speaker  45:10  

We are exploiting and consuming the rest of creation. So we were charged to serve and protect. We must repent. I was on the train all the way down here. And I don’t know exactly what the context was. But somehow I heard this music. I think it was worth it. And they were, Oh, no, no, it wasn’t, it was in the taxi all the way over here. That’s what it was. I’m texting way over. The man was listening to worship music. And what his music was saying is, we got to go down to the river and pray. We got to go down to the river, the toxified river, the river full of teeming fish, the blue river, the river that gives us life. We got to go down to the river and pray and get clean.

We got to repent of our way of life. Because our way of life is going to end our lives. In my tradition, we call on the name of the one who commanded the wind to be still and listen. We have one shot one. Now, right now is the time we can do this. Amen. Foreword, by Danny Rosen. Thank you.

 

Unknown Speaker  47:07  

I love Rabbi Jenny Gerson of dayenu, a Jewish call to climate action. We’re building a Jewish movement, confronting the climate crisis with spiritual audacity and bold political action together with communities across the country. thrilled to be here 100 faith leaders for 100% clean energy around 100 is such a fitting number. as Jews, we require a minion in a group of 10 for public prayer. This is a kind of public prayer. And it’s a privilege to be here engaging in this holy work with my fellow faith leaders, we are a minion of minions. And it feels like an especially great privilege, out of our ability to gather safely today. How many people saw or even dared to say a hug to someone for the first time today. It’s a sign that we are emerging from this past year of great struggle and hardship. For many of us, these past 14 months have felt a bit like wandering in the desert, unsure of our collective future a bit lost. But as we emerge together towards recovery, we’re reminded of what God tells the Israelites wandering in the desert. Lo busha mine he is not in heaven. God reminds us that the path forward and our redemption is not in the heavens are beyond our reach. Lo bisha mine, redemption is in our hands. Today we face intersecting crises, the pandemic and the economic devastation it has wrought in cities racial inequity and injustice and climate destruction at an unfathomable scale. And we have the opportunity to address these colliding crises to re envision and rebuild a just and sustainable world for all people for generations to come. It’s difficult to overstate the potential of this moment. You said now is the moment for our nation and our collective future. We can transform our society and economy lobuche amiami. But in order to do so, our policymakers need to have vision and courage to pass economic recovery and infrastructure legislation at the scale that justice and science demands. We need big and bold investment. Clean energy and transportation, a target of 100% clean electricity from wind and waves and solar and geothermal heat. And critically, we need a commitment to environmental justice. President Biden has put forth a multi trillion dollar recovery plan to rebuild and transform our nation’s infrastructure, putting millions of Americans back to work, investing in renewable energy, and pledging to leave no one behind. This plan could serve as a roadmap for a just green recovery that our nation so desperately needs. But only if Congress acts. We call on Congress to pick up the legislation to build back bolder with clean energy and with justice. Please, next few weeks, these next two weeks are critical and Congress must not give into the insidious attempts underway to delay, distract and to dilute. This is not a time for backing down. But rather a time to stand strong with vision and courage. This is nothing less than our shots at adjusting to a livable and sustainable future. As we begin to move out of this year of darkness, this year of narrowness and loss, we have the opportunity to create a profoundly different future. Facing the climate crisis requires us to remember and access our collective power. Because we have tremendous collective power. We gathered today knowing we are just one small part of a much larger movement, and much larger, collective power.

 

Unknown Speaker  51:53  

At the Passover Seder, when Jews tell the story of our Exodus out of Egypt, wandering in the desert, we sing a joyous song of gratitude, recounting all we’ve been given we say if God had taken us out of Egypt and not given us the Torah dayenu it would have been enough. Today we say dayenu we have had enough environmental injustice, enough valuing fossil fuel companies over human life, and not having the brunt of climate change fall on black, brown and indigenous communities dayenu. But we also remind ourselves that we have enough, enough resources, in a policy know how to use enough technology to avert the worst of climate disaster. We have what we need so that everyone can have enough. We call on you, our leaders and representatives hear our cries. It is time to act so that all people and their children and their children’s children can live with enough for generations to come.

 

Unknown Speaker  53:16  

Thank you so much, Jenny. Before I tell you anything more about myself, I just do a little bit of housekeeping. Right after we’re done, we’re going to take a group shot. So ravio was about to speak, and then the speakers will be complete. And we’re going to take your group shot. So we’ll give you instructions on that just don’t leave. And by the way, unfortunately, we were not able to get 100 faith leaders here today. We have 102 Exactly. That’s great organizing, we’re gonna take a picture of all 102 with the capital behind us. I also want to say if you’re parched, and hungry, thirsty, we’re going to gather at the pavilion cafe, which is right down here. It’s about a nine minute walk. If you could stick around Seventh Street and constitution Northwest, get some food and hang out a little bit more. For those of you who could stick around, we’d love to see more of you. So again, my name is Mike Tidwell. I teach youth Sunday school at Takoma Park Presbyterian Church, and I’m director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. I now have the honor of introducing the Reverend Linux Yearwood who serves on this E camp board of directors and he’s president of the Hip Hop Caucus. But first First of all, I want to thank the guy who lives right over here President Joe Biden for being a practicing Catholic Yes. for understanding. Joe Biden understands what it says in the book of James which is Faith without works is dead. The American jobs plan is a great policy. And in the era of rapid climate change, it is a moral document. I often talk about climate change when my middle school Sunday school class, I tell my students that for two centuries now our nation has gotten most of its energy by digging deep, deep underground, and pulling up the dark energy of coal and oil. It’s the energy well from hell. And then we burn out and we create hell on earth through rapid global warming. So what do we need? Do we need the energy from heaven? from the sun, the wind, from the tides, am I right? So thank you, President Biden, for this $2.3 trillion moral investment. Thank you most of all, for the bill’s commitment to 100% clean electricity by 2035. I am proud to be among 102 faith leaders here today, who are for 100% clean power. And thank you, President Biden for the 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations and the hundreds of billions of dollars for home weatherization, and for modernizing our grid. And thank you finally, Mr. President, as has been said here multiple times today, thank you that 40% of all the investments and benefits will accrue to disadvantaged communities. And thank you Congress in advance for passing this bill. We’re not being distracted by petty politics, and staying the course is the ethical course. And now I want to present to you one of my personal heroes, heroes and friends, the great climate optimist, the great spiritual voice in our nation, the Reverend Linux your way.

 

Unknown Speaker  57:11  

It is an honor to be here with you. Mike, you said 102. You know that that works. There’s a gospel song, River Markham, that has 99 What We’ll Do What We’ll Do. I want to thank all of my faith leaders, you are leading by example, what it means to show what is really important, to be clear, to be very clear. As many members of the faith tradition, we don’t agree that that is the nature of being of different faith traditions, we literally believe very, very different things. The one thing that we shouldn’t believe in, is that we should believe that whatever is happening here, on this side of Jordan, that our faith, our spirit, our whatever we believe in, should be comforting you and encouraging you to have comfort on this side of joy. And so I start with that, because while we may not all agree on the exact same thing, we all have gathered here today, because we agree on this. We are in a crisis. We are in a climate crisis. We are in a crisis. I see it again, because maybe I didn’t get through a pandemic. Maybe y’all woke up in March, and didn’t understand that there was a virus, a pandemic that was going through that you couldn’t see. And then literally as we went through life, literally just 12 months ago, we were then changing our life, putting on masks, putting on gloves, we were afraid to no longer see our grandchildren or children. Go on traveling. Can we all forget about what happened when a crisis hits you? Thank God for a

 

Unknown Speaker  59:40  

get away. Oh, come on. You get one. Okay, you need to get a vaccine so that we can get it. But I gotta tell you, there is no vaccine for the climate crisis. There was no shot that we could take to avert the climate. crisis. This is not a game. For time’s sake, what might have broken down? I won’t go through all the things that have been put forth in the American Job plan put forth by this president. I won’t go for it. But there are some highlights that are there. Yeah. That the key highlights that we must have clean standards. What’s he 35? That’s key in this process. So let me just say this, because I want to keep it real. The good news. The good news is that we’re here today. But I gotta give you some bad news. That’s all right. I’m serious. Can I do that? Because I do. Okay, so I do a show, a podcast called the coolest show. They go so much. Check it out. We’re at Reverend Michael, Michael manakamana, a few weeks ago, he was amazing. It really focuses on the issue of racial justice and climate justice focuses on a black indigenous woman leader for the climate movement. Please check it out. I also do a radio show here in DC, for climate Friday, on WP Fw A 9.3. Talk about this thing all the time, where I kind of say to you, this is my daily thing. So the bad news is this, as we are meeting here now, the American Petroleum Institute, the group that organizes the fossil fuel industry, is literally meeting at the White House at the same time. Now, the reason why that’s problematic, for a lot of reasons, is that their business plan means a death sentence for us. The more they make money, the more that we die. So the other bit of bad news in this process is that the Senate is playing games with the filibuster. And so I feel we can get rid of the filibuster to move things forward. It will be problematic. But I stopped here to give you some good news. Or some bad news, though, right? Come on. Now, y’all y’all. Y’all know that grant? Is that? All right. Come on. Now. Right here, in this same spot. I stood here with the gwitchin nation. And we stood right here in this box and protected the Arctic. And lo and behold, that president who’s pretty with those, all of us right now, this last week, said, No more drilling in the Arctic.

 

Unknown Speaker  1:03:26  

Because I stood by the monument right after President Obama had been reelected. And because climate change is not a Democrat, or Republican issue, it’s an issue of humanity. We stood there to hold him accountable. And we stood there to say you must end the Keystone XL pipeline. My good friend, he told me, he said, I’m sorry to tell you, but the Keystone XL pipeline is a done deal. Secretary Clinton is going to sign the paperwork. I said, van, I’m sorry. But what I read was that what two or three are gathered? Your money is in the midst. And we’ve marched from there to the White House. Now, that was in 2013. And we had setbacks along the way. Let me tell you something. Here’s a president who came after that President. And he was a climate denier. And they got really dark with them and many folks who are giving up but we said we can’t give up. That’s right. So we can’t do our gears and say we’ve got to stop the Keystone at Sell pipeline. Well, in January of 2021, a new president came into office named Joseph Biden. And the first thing that he did was to pursue the Keystone XL pipeline. They may have a filibuster. Yes, sir. Senate rules but we got some will tell you some normally, Abby covenant Christian preachers. Today, I was here with some Buddhists, Sikhs, Muslims, Catholic. We’ve got to do some real business. And so when they stood there, and they said that we have the CES, and we’re now moving, putting 100% clean energy right now in June 2021 102 minutes is enough. Fossil Free, Fossil Free, Fossil Free. We demand clean energy. We demand a clean electricity grid. We demand because to me, my children want to have a future if this doesn’t happen, and we go fight for our children and for the next generation.

 

Unknown Speaker  1:07:16  

Next up, we have cancer. Rachael rose, the tip of rotor shalom Thank you Robin.

 

Unknown Speaker  1:07:28  

As we say yes, your co-op power was beautiful. I would just like to invite everybody to come a little bit closer because we’re about to raise our voices in song and it has been too long for me since hearing each other’s voices. It’s been too long for you as well. I’ve missed that so much so come close I want to hear everybody fill me spaces here there’s no boundary come close come close. I’m here with Rabbi Jeff Sachs from PEPRA shalom

 

Charles Olsen  1:11:39  

Thanks for listening to Upside Down. This podcast is produced by Charlie Olson with incredible support from the entire second staff. Check out the show notes for links to all the things discussed in this episode. If you want to know more about how you can get involved with C kin in the climate fight, check out our website at Chesapeake climate.org. If you want to get in touch with us, follow us on instagram and twitter at sea kin. And if you enjoy the work we do, why don’t you share it with your friends. Sharing the show is a super easy way to help spread the word about the work we’re doing in the fight for bold climate actions. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.

 

 

For more information contact Charlie Olsen at charles@chesapeakeclimate.org

All About the Biden Climate Plan w/ Leah Stokes, Ben Beachy, and Andres Jimenez

In this episode, CCAN hosts our second federal webinar! This time about President Biden’s climate plan. Included in the American Jobs Plan. We’re joined by guest speakers, Dr. Leah Stokes of Evergreen Action, Andres Jimenez of Green 2.0, and Ben Beachy from the Sierra Club. 

Read along with the full transcript here:

Charles Olsen  0:04  

My name is Charlie Olsen and this is upside down; the podcast from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. In this episode, CCAN hosts our second federal webinar. This time about President Biden’s climate plan. Included in the American jobs. We’re joined by guest speakers, Dr. Leah Stokes, Andres Jimenez, and Ben Beachy

Mike Tidwell  0:48  

Welcome, everyone to the zoom event to break down the amazing new climate and infrastructure plan from President Joe Biden, called the American jobs plan. This webinar will focus more on the climate, the clean energy, jobs and climate justice features of the plan. And we’re so thrilled to have you all join us on my kidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and he can Action Fund and until this year, my team has been mostly state focused on successful clean energy policies in Maryland, Virginia and local dt. So it seems logical for us now to host this webinar from the DC region for all of you nationwide as Congress soon takes up the President’s $2.8 trillion climate and infrastructure plan. Among other things, that plan would mandate 100% clean electricity in our nation by 2035. Building 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations creates a $10 billion climate crisis core and mandates that at least 40% of all climate investments and benefits accrue to historically disadvantaged communities. Today we’ll cover not only the substance of the plan, but also the politics, laying out the pathway for Congress to make it law this year. With your help. Today’s webinars co hosted by T can Action Fund and our friends at evergreen action, a nonprofit inspired by the work of Governor Jay Inslee of Washington State. evergreen is devoted to rapidly solving the climate crisis with justice while creating millions of good paying new union jobs. Much of Biden’s climate plan, in fact, is inspired by evergreen work. Speaking of jobs, this plan would create a lot of them 19 million according to the White House. So we thought we’d show this quick video from the group climate power just to give you a sense of what we’re talking about. Calling all builders, all welders and roofers, engineers and electricians, calling all brick masons and Boilermakers, steel workers and steamfitters. Your country is calling you to rebuild America to create a cleaner, safer, more prosperous future. We’re all tackling climate change. This is the job of our lifetime, it’s time to build back better. Let’s get to work.

The work that certainly is inspiring. So let’s jump into the details of the plan with our inspiring speakers. today. We’re going to start with Dr. Leah Stokes of evergreen action, who will explain the core feature of Biden’s climate plan: a 100% clean electricity standard by 2035. Lia will break down that policy including the infrastructure investments needed to make it happen. Next we’ll hear from Ben Beachy, director of the living economy program at Sierra Club, he’ll ask the question, is the Biden plan really enough to meet the climate and economic crisis? And how can we improve it? Then Andre, tremendous of the group 2.0 will dive into the equity and justice features of the plan, of which there are many laws Quintin Scott of seeking an action farm will tell us more about jobs, especially jobs that would accrue to the key state of West Virginia under the binding plan. So let’s get started. And by the way, if you have questions for our speakers, you can place them in the q&a tab. Also know that this program is being recorded. And if you joined us a few minutes late again, I’m Mike Kidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and we’re breaking down the details of Joe Biden’s American jobs plan. Our first speaker again is Dr. Leah Stokes, a professor of political science at UC Santa Barbara, and who sits on the advisory panel of evergreen action. She’s a rising star in the climate movement whose advocacy on 100% clean electricity has been featured in national publications and the new climate podcast by legendary blogger Dave Roberts. Leah Calla if you can, more about the 100% clean electricity standard and why it’s so important that President Biden included it in his American jobs plan.

Leah Stokes  5:08  

 Well, thanks so much for having me, Mike. And it’s so wonderful to be here with my co panelists to be talking about this really crucial issue today. And as Mike said, I’m going to break down what’s in the Biden plan. So as you may know, about two weeks ago, they released the American jobs plan, and I’m going to help you understand what’s in it.

So the first thing to know if you want to know about the American jobs plan 101 is spending. The spending is a little complicated, actually, because it turns out that some things were not fully costed in the estimates that the White House put out, specifically, tax credits. So the plan is somewhere in the range of between two and $3 trillion, probably closer to $3 trillion, to invest in infrastructure and job creation, some of the really key components in terms of where that spending is planned to go, according to the White House is into transportation. There’s a lot of detail there for things like rebuilding roads and bridges, but also really key climate investments like electric vehicle investments, and charging infrastructure, and public transit. Another really big tranche of spending is the power sector, where it’s likely that the spending is around 500 billion. And that’s because there’s both direct spending of 100 billion, and potentially up to $400 billion in tax credits for the power sector. So that could combine to about $500 billion. And that’s a very good number, if that is the final number that Congress comes out with, because that’s what a lot of folks have been saying, we likely need to make this transition in the power sector, which is what I’m going to focus on a lot today. There’s also money for lots of other things like affordable housing, investing in electrifying and making affordable housing more sustainable to the tune of $200 billion. And they’re spending for research and development for key breakthrough technologies like hydrogen, of 180 billion. Now, many groups were calling before the plan came out. And after the plan came out for more spending, there was a letter just a few days before it was signed by labor unions, environmental groups, environmental justice groups, calling for $4 trillion in spending. And there is a very prominent move with the thrive agenda, which I’m sure Ben Beachy will talk about calling for more like $10 trillion in spending. So you know, many groups are saying this is good, it’s a down payment, but it’s not enough. And it’s important to remember that this is just really the opening salvo from the White House that Congress is actually ultimately responsible for setting the scale of spending. Now what Congress could do is they could go bigger, or they could go smaller. And of course, all of us want to be pushing for Congress to be going bigger as this develops.

Now, what in the American jobs plan? What’s the 101? In terms of the policies? Well, of course, there’s a clean electricity standard, which is really monumental. President Biden ran and one on a 100% clean electricity standard by 2035, which is a really landmark idea that came from the Inslee campaign and the Warren campaign and eventually made its way into the Biden campaign. And Biden talked about this goal when he was signing the executive orders on climate during his first few weeks in office. But you know, by putting it into the plan, it seems like a lot of folks in Congress and other places are really saying, Wow, this is real, this is a big focus. And notably, the budget that came out yesterday, also included spending for the Department of Energy to set up a clean electricity standard program and actually implemented it. There’s also extensions of really important renewable energy tax credits, and specifically converting them to direct pay. What does that mean? It means that you don’t need to have tax liability in order to use these policies. These are called the investment tax credit, or the ITC, and the production tax credit or the PTC. And these have been really important policies to building wind and solar across the country. And they have a huge support of the industry in terms of extending them. So that’s a very important policy as well. The environmental justice movement has been very vocal in saying that 40% is a really important number in terms of making sure that investments are going into disadvantaged communities. And the plan says that 40% of the benefits of investments will be flowing to disadvantaged communities. And there are folks like Shalonda Baker, who was hired into the Department of Energy who’s actually tasked with trying to think about how to implement those policies. There’s really big investments in transportation, probably folks have noticed that the Secretary of Transportation Pete Buda judge is up there every day, biking around and talking about TVs and trains. And he seems to be like a mini President Biden, very excited about the future of transportation. And so that’s probably the biggest ticket item in this plan is investments in the transportation sector. There are potential huge investments in building electrification. And what I’d really like to see in that area is rebates. So that

Every consumer No matter how much money they make, or how much tax liability they have, can electrify their homes because we know we can deliver really important public health benefits by getting people off of fossil gas, especially for cooking, which turns out as the science is becoming clearer and clearer, it’s actually creating quite dangerous indoor air pollution. And so building electrification is going to be really important to be doing all across this country, for everybody. And something that’s gotten a lot of folks very excited is a plan to eliminate all fossil fuel subsidies. This is something that President Biden has talked a lot about. And there’s a plan here to actually do that. And lots more. So let’s dive into the clean electricity standard. My personal favorite thing, what is a clean electricity standard? Well, it’s a requirement. So it’s not an option, it says you must do something. And the requirement is for electric utilities to increase their clean electricity by a certain deadline. So we could think about 80% clean power by 2030, which is directly on the road directly on that path and the straight line to 100%. Clean Power by 2035, which is President Biden’s landmark goal. So this is a really important policy. And it’s not, it’s not market based. It’s not an option. It’s a requirement. And it’s important to note that it’s not really a new idea. This is something that environmental advocates have been pushing for including C can in states across the country for decades. And therefore it’s a very proven policy, we know how it works. So already one in three Americans live in a place that’s targeting 100% clean electricity. So all we’re trying to do here is scale it up.

So can Congress do this? Yes, it can pass a CES, there are three options for how to do this. The first is passing a CES through regular order. Now, as you know, we only have 50 votes in the Senate, but the democrats have. And so if you want to do it through regular order, you need 60 votes in the Senate. So if we were to be able to come up with a clean electricity standard that 10 Republicans would vote for, it could be bipartisan, and the White House and Senate mentioned and others have said that they want to try to do things in a regular order way first. So I think that that’s likely what we’re going to see in the coming weeks now. Former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said consistently that he has no interest in doing these things. So that may not go very far. But there are efforts to try to do it with maybe some senators, like perhaps Senator Murkowski, who are more willing to come to the table. Now, there’s a second option, of course, which is if you get rid of the filibuster, then you only need 50 votes to do it. But again, Senator Manchin has said that he doesn’t want to do that. Now, there is a third option, which I think in the long term is likely to be what we see get done to pass the American jobs plan. And that’s the same way that the COVID relief package that was just passed, was passed, and it’s called budget reconciliation. And it requires 51 votes in the Senate. So basically, 50 democratic senators plus vice president Kamala Harris, and what we have been doing at evergreen action, in partnership with data for progress is figuring out how to do that through budget reconciliation. And there are many options to do it. And you don’t have to take it from me, you can take it from the Secretary of Energy, Granholm today, who said that in the media, which is very exciting that she also agrees with this view. And of course, the Biden administration does not have to wait for Congress to start making progress on clean electricity, it can already take action through the Environmental Protection Agency. And administrator Reagan has said many times that he plans to start doing that. So utility should recognize that there’s already existing authority to make progress on these power plants. And perhaps they’ll get a better deal if they come to the table and negotiate.

Now, you might say, do we really need a clean electricity standard? Absolutely, we do. And let me tell you why. If all we do is extend the renewable energy tax credits, which I support, and is very important, it will get us some of the way there but not all the way there. What models are showing is that it’s only going to get us to between 44 to 50% 56%, clean power by 2030. Keep in mind, we’re at 40% right now, okay, so that’s going to only increase us by 16%. Over this decade, and we don’t want to increase by 16%, we want to double the amount of clean electricity over this coming decade, we want to get from 40% to 80%. So this policy is going to be an absolutely important floor and foundation for our work. But it is not sufficient. And it’s really important that everybody understands that. And this isn’t just my modeling. This is modeling that comes from an example from rhodium, who’s been very much out there supporting the tax credits. Now, a clean electricity standard, by contrast, will give us much more, it’ll give us 80% clean power, of course by 2030. But critically, what the models are showing, and this is a bunch of models from a bunch of independent groups and analyses. It’s on they’re all converging towards really exciting

numbers that will get 86% reduction in carbon pollution below 2005 levels, that’s amazing, we’ll get 93% reduction in co2 emissions, that’s really, really important. And we’ll get a 76% reduction in NOx emissions. And we don’t have the data yet. When it comes to mercury pollution and particulate matter, other really hazardous pollutants that overwhelmingly are in communities of color. And that leads to facts like black children having asthma rates two times as high as white children. But the point is that this clean electricity standard will fundamentally deliver pollution reductions in disadvantaged communities in communities of color, and we’ll deliver on the environmental justice goals that we all have. So I just want to really emphasize this point that this is all about pollution reduction at the end of the day.

Now, why are we so focused on electricity? Shouldn’t you know why is this so important? Why do I go on and on about this every day? Well, a clean electricity system. So our clean electricity standard gets us to 80% by 2030, plus electrification, meaning things like electric vehicles, electric buildings, those two powerful ideas combined can give us between 70 to 80%. Economy wide carbon pollution reduction, how does that work? Well, here’s what the current pollution looks like: the economy wide electricity sector is the second biggest source really closely tied with trends with transportation, we can zero that out. Okay, so we eliminate that one, transportation, we can cut massive amounts of emissions. If we electrify that sector, you know, it’s not going to be easy to electrify aviation or some long haul trucking or certain things are going to be hard. So we won’t get to zero. But maybe we’ll say around 5% emissions will stay in that sector. Industry. folks think that we can electrify about half of heavy industry. So let’s say we can cut that about down to 10%. And buildings, we can just electrify buildings. So what does that get us? That gets us if this is the correct math 75% reduction in carbon pollution and what will that mean for two for nitrous oxide for particulate matter for mercury for all these conventional air pollutants, those are going to go really, really small as well. So this really is a pathway to climate stability. It’s not just a pet project of mine. It’s a vision for how we actually get economy wide decarbonisation. Last couple things come from my friends at data for progress, where they have been doing insane polling. But how popular these ideas are, as you can see, they have polled almost 17,000 likely voters across the country, which is an insane number of polling. As a person who does polls, that’s very big, you can see that we get majority support strong majority support amongst Democrats were in the 80 percentage point support, that’s huge independence of majority support. And republicans if we take those don’t know we’re just about 50%.

Now, this is a particularly popular idea amongst communities of color amongst black and Latin x communities. Why because these communities are on the frontlines of pollution. And they understand that clean electricity will really deliver those benefits that I’ve been talking about for those communities. So we have way above average support in both black and Latin x communities. If you’re interested in learning more about all these ideas, we’ve published two reports, a roadmap to 100%, clean electricity by 2035, and a polling memo with data for progress. So really excited about all this hope that everybody will join in on this. And it’s a really big fight we have ahead of us. And let’s try to get to 80% clean power by 2030. 

Mike Tidwell  18:30  

Leah Stokes, thank you so much. That was Leah Stokes. She is a professor of political science at UC Santa Barbara, and also on the board of advisors, that evergreen action. And if we could just, you know, sort of harness her energy alone, I think we could power Chicago for a couple of years. Thank you, Leah, for everything you do in our movement, for how clearly and passionately you argue for these common sense policy options. And we really appreciate it. And now three games of common sense actions. I want to introduce Jamie DeMarco, he is the federal policy director for Chesapeake Climate Action Network and he can Action Fund. And Jamie, can you tell everyone how they can take action right now in support of this 100% policy that Leah just laid out? 

Jamie DeMarco  19:20  

Absolutely. So the Americans job, the American jobs plan, as Leo was talking about is by far and away the strongest climate plan ever proposed by a US president. But it doesn’t matter how good of a plan we have, if we can’t get it passed in Congress. So we have to work our butts off these next few months to make sure that this plan gets even stronger, and to make sure that it gets passed. And I’ll tell you one thing.

If the only people pushing for this policy live inside the DC beltway, then it’s going to fail. All politics is local, and the only way the American Jobs Act is going to move through Congress is if it is being pushed

By every corner of the country, and so my colleague, Charlie is going to share in the chat a link to a resolution, explicitly stating support for the 100% clean electricity standard that Leo was talking about, and urging President Biden to pass that in urging Congress to pass that. And when members of Congress when senators, look at a list of who’s signed a letter like that, a senator will, you know, look for some of those big names

that, you know, have influence in DC. But then the next thing they’re gonna look, it’s, they’re gonna see, do I see any local groups whose names I recognize, it’s clear they live in my state, and that more than anything, I think, is going to influence whether they listen to this letter, or toss it in the recycling bin, the 10,000 other letters they got that day. So what I’m asking you is to take that link in the chat, and give

and ask one local organization in the state where you live, to sign that letter. I mean, it doesn’t have to necessarily be a climate organization, it could be a high school club, it could be a local church. I mean, think big and broad, the more grassroots, if there’s an organization that meets and has a name and has membership, then I encourage you to ask them to sign this resolution. We’re just getting started with it. I think we’re going to get a lot more. And I hope after this webinar, that’s the first thing you do. Mike, alternate back over to you. 

Mike Tidwell  21:26  

Thank you, Jamie. And also, we’re going to post into the chat, a fact sheet that we have about all the climate features of the American jobs. So look for that, as well. It’s a fact sheet that you can actually find put together. So as you’re asking your friends to sign the petition in favor of 100%. You can have this handy fact sheet that we’re also posting in the chat and that will have on our website at sea can action fund.org. And so we’ve heard about the 100% feature, the Biden American jobs plan. And again, I want to tell you if you’re just joining us or if you join late on Mike Treadwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network NC can action funding, you’re tuned in to a webinar where we’re breaking down joe biden’s American jobs plan. So I want to bring up our next speaker, Mr. Ben beachy, and Ben is director of the Sierra Club living economy program. He has worked on economic policies for over a decade in organizations fighting for workers rights, climate justice, public health and self determination, then and Sierra Club have been vocal advocates, along with sunrise, many unions and progressive legislators on Capitol Hill for the thrive agenda. And that agenda, as many of you know, calls for the spending of not $3 trillion over eight years per Joe Biden, but $10 trillion over 10 years to solve the climate crisis and build the just economy. So Ben, welcome to this webinar and tell us first, what are your thoughts about the Biden plan? And how might it be changed to think of better with the thriving agenda? 

Ben Beachy  23:18  

Thanks, Mike. And really glad to be with y’all. It’s a really pivotal moment. It’s hard to talk about this moment, without using hyperbole about the extent of the opportunity that comes for us. We really don’t get many chances like this. This is really truly a once in a generation opportunity to remake the economy. So what is our take on the American jobs plan?

I look at that question as Mike teed up and Leah teed up through the lens of something called the thrive agenda, which many of you are familiar with. But for those for whom thriving is new. Starting about a year ago, it was just when the pandemic started to spread across the United States, Union, racial justice, climate and other grassroots groups came together and began to assemble a bold Crossman plan for economic renewal, a plan to tackle mass unemployment, systemic racism, the climate crisis and public health all at the same time. In September, we launched this plan in a congressional resolution that came to be known as thrive. Over 100 members of Congress endorsed the plan, along with several 100 of the nation’s largest labor, racial justice and climate groups. Thanks to this broad backing, the Senate leader Chuck Schumer pledged that thrive would form part of the governing agenda for 2021. To fulfill those words last month, those same movement groups joined together with congressional leaders to launch the thrive act, a bill with a detailed plan to build an economy that actually fosters justice, not crisis. So over the last two weeks, activists have held over 200 events across the country, from Alaska to West Virginia, to call on their members of Congress to back a recovery package.

That is as bold in scale and rooted in justice as thriving. And right in the middle of all this organizing is actually the first day that people started organizing across the country that President Biden launched the American jobs plan.

The American jobs plan and thrive are singing from the same hymnal. Both of them start from the premise that we cannot afford to return to the pre pandemic normal, because normal was fundamentally unjust, unhealthy and unstable. Both of them offer solutions that are as interconnected as the crises we face. Recognizing that a strong jobs plan is a strong climate plan is a strong racial justice plan. So we see echoes of Thrive throughout Biden’s plan. And that’s why many of the movement groups as Mike and Leah spoke to many of the groups that have been working to thrive have been celebrating the American jobs plan as an encouraging start. And now we are asking Congress to go even bigger and bolder to match the scale of the crisis that we face. So thrive calls for an uncommon real plan to do three things that would be bold in scale, wide in scope, and strong and standards. The men do a quick overview of each of those and name how the American jobs plan stacks up. So first on scope. The thrive act calls for investments to be economy wide, so that we tackle pollution, unemployment and injustice in every sector that we find it. And here the American jobs plan largely delivers. I mean, this is not merely the pothole filling plan of 2021. Like thrive, the American jobs playing calls for replacing all lead pipes, electrifying Postal Service vehicles, expanding clean and affordable public transit, achieving 100%, carbon pollution and free electricity by 2035. As Leah spoke to upgrading millions of homes and buildings supporting clean manufacturing, creating a civilian climate corps to restore our lands and expand, expanding access to affordable care for the elderly. The only sector in thrive that American jobs plan omits is investing in regenerative agriculture, to support family, farmers and climate resilience. So that’s one area where Congress has the opportunity to go further.

Second standards, all these investments that I just named will create a ton of jobs. But job quality and job access are just as important as job quantity. The latest labor data we just crunched in a report last month shows that if we just pump money into the economy without strong labor and equity standards, we would be actively reinforcing the unjust status quo. In short, we would create millions of mostly mediocre non union jobs for predominantly white men.

Instead, both thrive and the American jobs plan recognizes that building a more just economy requires all of these investments to be paired with strong wage and benefit standards, access to unions, and equitable hiring that favors women and people of color.

And both thrive in American jobs playing Call for these investments to go first and foremost, to frontline communities who’ve endured decades of divestment due to redlining, exclusion and structural injustice, thrive specifically calls on Congress to dedicate at least half half of these investments to frontline communities.

Finally, to determine the scale of investments that thrive would call for us to ask the economist at the University of Massachusetts, how big this economic recovery package needs to be to meet our jobs, justice and climate goals. And you can find their analysis in the report that we launched last month, the economic modeling produce a very clear answer, $1 trillion per year, for a decade

$1 trillion per year would create and sustain over 15 million good jobs. That’s how many we need to create an end to the unemployment crisis and get the job to everyone who’s currently out of work. $1 trillion per year for a decade would cut our climate pollution kneeling in half by 2030. And $1 trillion per year with at least half going to frontline communities would meaningfully counteract systemic racism, and economic gender and environmental injustice. So scale is where we’re going to be focusing most in pushing Congress to go further than the American jobs plan, you know, at nearly $3 trillion, the American jobs plan is definitely large. It’s just not as large as the physical reality of the climate of the climate crisis, the economic reality of 15 million people being out of work, or the structural reality of systemic racism. It’s an encouraging start. And now in most sectors, Congress needs to take that investment amount and multiply it by three.

So use an architectural metaphor, Biden just lay down the foundation of this house we’re building. It’s a broad foundation. It’s a really strong foundation. Now it’s on Congress to build a couple of stories on top of it.

To see why scale matters, I’ll just use a couple of examples. First electric vehicles. The American jobs plan names $174 billion for electric vehicles again,

Good start and Congress needs to go further. Senator Schumer, for example, has a clean cars for America proposal that would invest nearly three times as much to replace over 63 million gas vehicles. So Congress should fully fund Schumer’s plan to replace 10s of millions of gas vehicles with clean electric vehicles, instead of leaving those gas vehicles on the road.

As another example, look at public housing. The American jobs plan includes a $40 billion investment in public housing, Congress should go further to upgrade the full public housing stock, which would cost about three times as much as reflected in the green new deal for public housing. Relative to the American jobs plan, investing at the full amount would improve living standards for an additional 1 million public housing residents, cut an additional 4 million metric tons of carbon emissions and create an additional over 100,000 good jobs. That is why scale matters.

Now, some people may argue that this call for Congress to go even bigger, bumps up against another reality that we face the political reality of our Congress. First of all, Joe Manchin has called for at least $4 trillion for this package. So we haven’t yet hit that current, that political ceiling.

But second, this political reality, unlike the physical reality of climate change is one that we can actually bend. And it’s on us to do that bending. And right now, as I started with, we have a bigger opportunity to bend Washington, then at any point I’ve seen in my career, there are precious few moments when all of the requirements for big structural change, line up, broad public support, strong organizing, elected leaders we can work with, and cross movement unity, now is one of those unicorn moments. So let’s seize it to bend Washington to deliver an economic renewal plan as big as the crisis we face. 

Mike Tidwell  31:56  

Ben, that was an incredibly great summary. And I’m especially encouraged that our good friend, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has set its sights and at least he has on record is setting sights even higher than that 2.8 trillion or the Biden plan.

I do I do want to say real quick, put it in a plug for Stephanie Kelton book, anyone who knows me knows I talked about this book all the time, the deficit myth, if you haven’t read it, you need to get it, you need to read it, you need to listen to it on books on tape. Because it makes clear we have the money. We have the money, we have the money for 10 trillion over 10 years, despite COVID spending despite deficit spending, yes, we can raise taxes as the President wants corporate tax rate taxes on folks making more than $400,000. But even beyond that, there’s so much capacity in the economy. There’s so many people unemployed, there’re so many factories, still not at full capacity, that inflation just isn’t a problem and isn’t expected to be a problem for a long time. And as long as inflation is kept in check. Honestly, deficits are a mess. They’re not a problem.

And deficit spending is just investments in society. So wonder, make a plug for Stephanie Kelton, plug the deficit. And I want to ask you, Ben, how can folks plug in with zero carb and others? What are some concrete steps people can do to make pushing the thrive agenda and getting the biggest Biden plan across the finish line? How can we make it part of part of our lives? What are a couple of things we can do as activists to get involved with your club? 

Ben Beachy  33:42  

Another great question, Mike. So I actually just dropped into the chat a link that helps to answer that question. So I mentioned that it was just last month, the same week, actually, that the American jobs plan drops.

The cross movement coalition that has been pushing thrive, drops and launched the thrive Act, which is a new bill that lays out in detail, how we can mobilize the public investments at the scale of the crisis that we face, with strong equity and labor standards attached to them to invest in, in bold climate, jobs and justice solutions across the entire economy. Right. That act, we’re trying this month in the month of April is a critical month to really shape what this congressional package is going to look like. So we’re calling on everyone to ask their members of Congress to indicate that we need a big bold package that is as big and interconnected with the crisis we face. By signing on to the Thrive Act, the more members of Congress, we get to sign on to the thrive acts, the more that we show that there is broad political support for going bigger and bolder. And now is the moment to do that. And so the plan is to really introduce this bold legislation towards the end of this month. And so right now is the critical window to get members of Congress

To sign on as original co sponsors of this legislation. And so that link I pasted in the chat is just an easy way to do that has called scripts if you want to call it has an email if you want to email has tweets, if you want to tweet it, you remember Congress to urge them to co sponsor the thrive but I can say go big and bold. 

Mike Tidwell  35:16  

Great and everyone who’s RSVP for today’s webinar, we’ll follow up with an email with all these links to Leah Stokes’s report on 100% clean electricity from evergreen to action items from Sierra Club, to sign petitions that will send you from seeking an Action Fund. So that all becomes in one email as a follow up to this webinar, including a recording of the webinar that we hope that you’ll share with your friends. So Ben beachy, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re now going to turn and focus a bit more on the equity and justice features built into the American jobs plan. We’ve invited Andre temenos to give us his thoughts today. Andreas is a longtime activist in his home county of Fairfax, Virginia, and a former staffer at the citizens climate lobby, he now serves as executive director of the group 2.0, whose mission is to advocate for greater diversity and inclusion in the American environmental movement and across corporations and governments. Andres welcome and what are your thoughts on the American jobs plan? 

Andres Jimenez  36:23  

Mike, we’re gonna start. Thank you so much for having me. This has been quite the amazing journey from the last time you and I spoke on a call like this, where we were pushing for something different to where we are now really bringing out what the change that Leah was talking about. You know, one of the things to keep in mind is, is it perfect? Is it exactly what we want? No, but boy, are we in a better place than we were this time last year. So that gives me hope. It should give your listeners hope I’m excited. But there is lots and lots to go through. So let’s get started. But an amazing job by Ben and Leo, so awesome to hear their comments, and hear what they had to say. So thank you for that. So first, I want to thank everyone for attending today’s discussion. I’m honored to be here. My name is Andres humanas. And I am the Executive Director, as Mike mentioned the green 2.0. So just to tell you a little bit about us green 2.0 is an organization that aims to hole environmental organizations and the people in charge of climate actions accountable for including the very people who are most affected by environmental issues, people of color.

For far too long decisions about environmental practices were made in communities of color that ultimately have long term consequences. rarely, if ever were people in those communities brought in to decide and implement those decisions. And that is why it’s important for the Biden administration to build a diverse coalition to ensure that frontline communities are centered. The American jobs plan has some key equity and justice related provisions, as Mike Lee and Ben mentioned, first and 85 billion investment in modernizing public transit. While emphasizing that communities of color are more likely to use public transit than their white counterparts. It’s essential the budgets understand how issues this proportionally impact communities of color. The plan also calls for 20 billion for a new program that allows communities harmed by highways and other infrastructure to have key decision making roles and new projects that promote access and advanced justice while addressing previous malpractices. There is also an investment in the healthy ports program to mitigate the impacts of air pollution on communities of color near ports. There is a 5 billion investment in the redevelopment of brownfields and Superfund sites with corresponding economic and workforce development plans. This includes funding to support community driven environmental justice efforts, emphasizing grants to address pollution, and other hazards frontline and fenceline communities are based. There is an 111 billion investment in ensuring clean and safe drinking water in all communities. We know that lead pipes and unsafe drinking water poisoned communities in Flint, Baltimore, Newark and that 9.2 million households in the nation still have lead pipes. This plan calls to replace all lead pipes in homes. It also caused calls to modernize wastewater and stormwater infrastructure across our nation and its territories. In this plan, there is also an emphasis on resilience in all services, including related to climate change and extreme weather to ensure related disasters that disproportional

Impact communities of color are both prevented and mitigated. There is a $50 billion investment in infrastructure resilience that includes building above codes, and a 100 billion investment in electric transmission infrastructure. As we continue to face extreme weather conditions like those we’ve seen in Texas, Puerto Rico and throughout our nation, we will need large investments and these kinds of projects. Additionally, as part of an $800 billion investment in schools, the administration is focused on building and operating school facilities that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and spurred green spaces and safe air. In this plan, all schools environmentally speaking, would be a safe space for young people and communities to gather and learn. There is a $2 billion increase overall for the EPA, including 936 million for a new accelerating environmental and economic justice initiative. This includes a community air quality monitoring program that includes the investment in the water infrastructure that I discussed earlier. And investment in this EPA, in particular, is an investment in combating the climate crisis and supporting marginalized communities who have been ignored for far too long.

The plan seeks to build the capacity of the existing workforce by calling for a $100 billion investment in workforce development, infrastructure and worker protection. A key component of this is apprenticeships, creating roughly one to 2 million new apprenticeships and targeting those opportunities for people of color. This also includes key provisions on programs that support middle and high school students of color and connect them with STEM programs. through partnerships with employers in higher education. The plan calls for a $40 billion investment in a new program for dislocated, dislocated workers, which funds workers who have lost jobs through no fault of their own, to gain new skills and emergent sectors. Additionally, there’s a $12 billion investment in targeting workforce development opportunities in underserved communities that specifically calls out structural racism and urges that all clean jobs need to be accessible and open to communities of color.

The jobs plan also focuses on eliminating racial and

ethnic inequalities in research and development instead. In order to address this there is a $10 billion dollar investment in historically black colleges and universities and other institutions that serve students of color specifically, there is also an additional 15 billion investment in research and a billion dollar investment in research incubators to provide graduate fellowships and other opportunities to students of color. Lastly, as the plan looks forward to the future, it creates a $10 billion investment in the civilian climate corpse, which is tasked to serve and kind of as conservation and resilience workers who conserve public lands, and advanced environmental justice with a strong emphasis on diversity in that workforce. There are also examples of a plan that reflects and understands the need for under-representative communities to have a just transition and clean energy economy. This coupled with the Justice 40 plan to ensure that 40% of all of the benefits of relevant federal investments go toward disadvantaged communities. And the goal of establishing an environmental justice scorecard shows a commitment to beginning to address the root causes of an environmental malpractice, diversified and diversifying the environmental movement during a time when the administration has pledged 40% of the Climate Action Plan to frontline communities is vital. With this plan measuring benefits over funding it requires for the administration to work directly with environmental organizations. If these organizations aren’t as diverse as the communities impacted. Mike, how can we ensure these plans are effective? Study after study shows that communities of color suffer from our dirty energy economy, the air is more polluted, the water is more dirty. And these communities often live near toxic waste sites. The oil and gas industry dumped 9 million tons of methane and toxic pollutants into the air each year disproportionately impacting the health of these communities. If anyone can address these issues, it’s the people that live it. These are the people that should have positions at all levels of environmental organizations, people of color care about the environment, but their expertise and knowledge often aren’t tapped into it. We are seeing progress in the movement.

As shown in our last report card, but there’s still a long way to go. This is why we’re expanding the number of organizations we serve a greentube window from 40 to 80. This year. This is exciting because as the movement grows and climate increases climate action increases, we can continue to hold accountable organizations accountable to do the right thing. Environmental leaders cannot claim to care for the future of the planet while ignoring so many. Mike, we must work for change. But we also must keep in mind that this change needs to be accelerated. 

Mike Tidwell  45:33  

Thank you so much. Andre. I know I know why you began with the question, Where do I begin? And there’s so much to like in this plan? There really is and you enumerated a lot of them under the heading of equity and justice.

I do think though your work at Green 2.0. It’s so pivotal. If folks haven’t checked out green 2.0 check out their website, and sign up for their email alerts. Because Andreas and his staff are doing amazing work, holding groups accountable to implement a vision of a truly just and fair build that better vision and I think you’re right Andres, how are we going to implement these plans were 40% of benefits and investments go to disadvantaged communities, if our groups themselves are diverse and and include them. So thank you for your work. Thank you for joining us, and drop your website in the chat. And we’re all included in the follow up email that we send to everyone. But thank you again, Andre 10 minutes, Executive Director of green 2.0. And now we will move to our last speaker. And let’s move back to the topic of jobs and these closing minutes. Climate policy is a jobs policy. So says the white house so we thought we would ask one more speaker to touch on some of the jobs components of the American jobs plan that haven’t been covered in full yet including how this plan would create jobs in the critical state of West Virginia. And so Quintin Scott is the federal policy associate of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and secant Action Fund. Before coming to see Karen Quintin worked as a legislative staffer on Capitol Hill and served as Chief of Staff, right, state senator in his home state of Illinois Quinten What else do we need to know about jobs within the American jobs plan? 

Quentin Scott  47:38  

Thank you for that introduction, Mike. Really appreciate it. And labor is going to be a big part of the American jobs plan. And so the American jobs plan is a pro worker plan designed to address climate change and get America back to manufacturing. The plan impacts labor across multiple sectors from repairing roads and bridges, retrofitting buildings for efficiency, upgrading electric grid and replacing 100% of lead pipes and much much more. My analysis plan in Pittsburgh surrounded by labor, he recognizes we don’t have to choose between good paying union jobs and doing what’s necessary to tackle the climate crisis. We have a moment to do it all. His policies have been proposed with labor in mind and labor at the table. Biden’s plan will create high quality jobs with prevailing wages come with worker protections in our field with workers from communities where the projects are located. How will Biden actually accomplish this? Which is the big question. The American jobs plan calls on Congress to pass the protecting the right to organize act or the proact. The proact would allow us to override so called Right to Work laws and over two dozen states can collect dues from those who opt out in order to cover the cost of collective bargaining would make employee interference and influence and union elections illegal would allow newly certified unions to seek arbitration and mediation and to settle impasses in negotiations. prevent any employer from using an employee’s immigration status against them to determine their employment establishes monetary penalties for companies and executives that violate workers rights. The house has already passed it proactive March now we need to send it to do the same. In addition to supporting the pro it the American jobs plan provides $10 billion for labor enforcement and increased penalties and employees violate workplace safety and health rules. The plan provides $25 billion to upgrade childcare facilities and build new ones. The plan also creates tax credits for businesses that build childcare facilities providing employees with greater access to on site childcare. This would ease the pressure of working parents and allow greater participation in the workforce. The American jobs plan has $500 billion to build out renewable energy 230 213

billion dollars to build 2 million low emission and affordable homes $175 billion towards electric vehicle adoption 80 billion to improve rail services and passengers for passengers and freight. These historic investments come with attachment requirements for prevailing wages. Like I mentioned, buy American made materials to rebuild infrastructure, job training, and strong labor and installation standards. Here at Chesapeake Climate Action Network, we see how jobs are going to impact West Virginia. In West Virginia, there’s 1500 bridges and over 3200 miles of highway in poor conditions. 24% of West Virginians live in an area with no broadband infrastructure to deliver acceptable speeds low income families spend 10 to 12% of their income and for their home energy costs by retooling West Virginia’s economy, we can create 50,000 jobs in the first year alone according to the new jobs, West Virginia new jobs coalition, over 16,000 jobs in manufacturing 6400 drives and clean energy 2400 jobs and building retrofitting buildings for efficiency and 6000 jobs in the care industry. The American jobs plan for $16 billion to cap abandoned oil wheels, oh wells and continue to leak methane into the air and contaminate waterways. In West Virginia alone, it is estimated that 440,000 abandoned wells exist and require 3500 workers to plug them. Like Andreas mentioned already $10 billion to the civilian climate courts, which will put young people to work and good union jobs and pass environmental justice and build community resilience and preserve public lands. We hear the question all the time in West Virginia. What about the coal miners? Well, the American jobs plan supports a just transition, which will ease the cost and hardships that some workers and communities will face as we transition away from fossil fuels. The plan invests 100 million in workforce development and infrastructure 40 billion of that 100 billion with support workers who have lost their jobs for no fault of their own, and to provide Career Services and skill development for jobs and clean energy and other sectors. Another $48 billion to strengthen connections between high schools and community colleges and technical schools and additional 12 billion explicitly target workers penalised by structural racism and economic inequities, especially people of color women, and formerly incarcerated individuals.

To create an economy of the future we must meet. Our climate goes by creating windmills, solar panels, batteries, electric charge stations, plug orphan oils and more. But these technologies don’t come out of nowhere, we need to work with people to build, install and maintain these technologies for decades to come. And Biden’s American jobs plan gets that done. And that’s why it’s so essential that we tell Congress that they need to support Biden’s American jobs plan so we can get this historic moment pass. 

Mike Tidwell  53:10  

Thank you Quentin. I mean, just just hearing what this plan will do for West Virginia alone is amazing. We have talked for years and our movement about investing in communities, investing in transition, investing in healthcare, investing in, in equity, and the features that you just named are amazing. I had no idea Additionally, that there are that many unplugged wells, or leaking wells in West Virginia alone. I know the other day, Joe Biden, throughout the figure of the number of uncapped wells across the country. And he, after he stated that number, he just said, what are we doing? You know, it’s just the way he said it? What are we doing? Why are we letting these wells leak that those are jobs that not only benefit workers, but benefit the climate? So thank you, Clinton very much for that for that update. And now I’m just gonna pitch it back to Jimmy DeMarco, federal policy director. He can tell us, Jamie, one last time, what are some things that folks on the call can do to be part of this historic moment? I mean, I thought that Ben Beachy put it so well, it is so rare that you have public support. You have a broad coalition, ready to work at the same time that you have leaders ready to take action. I mean, we cannot blow this, y’all. We can’t. We cannot blow this moment. And so Jamie, tell us what we can do. 

Jamie DeMarco  54:47  

Thanks, Mike. Yeah, this has been incredible. I’ve learned a lot and I am blown away because in the past half an hour or so. The folks on this call have gotten seven more organizations to sign

The resolution supporting 100% clean electricity by 2035. So we are not just here listening, we’re like doing the work as we’re listening. This is like, superhuman group of people we got right here, though I know we put a bunch of links in the chat. And so everything people have shared is going to be shared in an email afterwards. And we really encourage you to, you know, check out diverse screen, check out the thrive agenda at Sierra Club. These are the incredible people and incredible organizations that are doing exactly what the world needs right now, the last thing that we’re going to put in the chat, it’s just an opportunity to message your senator about

You know, I think the message is going to be pre filed, or prefilled, to talk about 100% clean electricity by 2035. But if you want to talk about five agenda, if you want to talk about replacing lead pipes, whatever

you want your senator to know about the American jobs plan, and how important it is to pass and how it needs to be stronger. Still, just put that in the message and let your senator know, you know, we all know senators get a lot of emails, but it still counts, and it still matters. And like I said, it only works if we work from the grassroots up. 

Mike Tidwell  56:07  

Thank you, Jamie. And I want to thank everyone for joining us all across the country. I want to thank especially our members in the states of Maryland, Virginia, DC and West Virginia who’ve joined the call. They’re very many of you on this call. Thank you. Thanks for everyone watching on Facebook Live and YouTube. Thank you, Leah Stokes, it is always great to get recharged by your great passion for these issues. Thank you, Leah Stokes of evergreen action. Quintin Scott, of course, if you can, then Vici we’re going to bug the heck out of you to give versions of that of the things that you said on this call over and over again in different formats. Same with you, Andre, 10 minutes of green 2.0. Thank you all. And Jamie DeMarco of C can and we will be in touch will be a follow up email, we’re going to answer some of your questions that we were not able to get to that were posted in the q&a, we’ll do that in a follow up email. And everybody stayed close, we got a lot of work to do. This is the sprint we told ourselves over the years, over the years, solving climate change, we can’t burn ourselves out. It’s a marathon we got to. We got to know one stuff in front of the other. But right now it is a sprint between now and the August recess, when Nancy Pelosi and others have said they want to wrap this, this American jobs plan up, which means we’ve got to work. You know, sleep is overrated, you know, get as much as you can. But, you know, let’s, let’s do everything we can to get this path. Let’s make this part of our life. Let’s tell our friends. Let’s get our group signed on to these ladders. It’s worth the extra effort because our grandkids and kids are going to ask us what we did in that moment when all these historic threads came together, and we had that rare once in a generation chance to really, really, really change society and save our planet. That’s the moment we’re in right now. Every second is precious. Thank you for spending a few other seconds with us today. We’re honored to have you with us and we will be in touch. And everybody. Have a great day. See you later.

Charles Olsen  58:43  

Thanks for listening to the upside down. This podcast is produced by me, Charlie Olson. with incredible support from the entire weekend staff. Check out the show notes for links to all the things discussed in this episode. If you want to know more about how you can get involved with seeking in the climate fight, check out our website at Chesapeake climate.org. If you want to get in touch with us, follow us on instagram and twitter at sea kin. And if you enjoy the work we do, why don’t you share us with your friends. Sharing the show is a super easy way to help spread the word about the work we’re doing in the fight for bold climate actions. Thanks again for listening. I’ll see you next time.

Quentin Scott – CCAN’s Federal Campaign Associate

For the past few months CCAN has been boldly going where we have never gone before (excuse the star trek references) into a massive federal campaign! For about the same time we have started the Upside Down podcast and have been introducing you to our staff (albeit slowly) and today I am beyond excited to be talking with our new Federal Campaign associate Quentin Scott. 

Quentin Scott joined CCAN in January 2021 as the Federal Campaign Associate working to build political will for groundbreaking climate justice policies in the Executive Branch and Congress. Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, he got a first-hand look at the two Americas and sought to bring the two Americas closer together through advocacy. Quentin’s passion for math and science landed him at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Instead of using his skills for engineering, he uses his knowledge to build data-informed campaigns. Before joining CCAN, Quentin was chief of staff for an Illinois State Representative and a legislative correspondent in the US House of Representatives, and has led numerous issue and candidate campaigns across the Midwest. In his roles he has stood with neighborhood advocacy groups to hold industrial polluters accountable in communities of color and looks forward to bringing that fight to the federal level. Quentin enjoys exploring new places and has been to 36 states. When he is not traveling you can find him engaging in some form of competition, whether that’s video games, board games, or on the basketball court.

Check out the full transcript here:

Charles Olsen  0:06  

Hi, my name is Charlie Olsen. And this is Upside Down, the podcast from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

For the past few months CCAN has been boldly going where we have never gone before, please excuse the Star Trek references, into a massive Federal Campaign for about the same time we started the Upside Down podcast. And we’ve been introducing you to all of our staff albeit kind of slowly. And today I’m beyond excited to be talking with our new federal campaign associate Quentin Scott. Quentin joined CCAN in January 2021, as the Federal Campaign associate, working to build political will for groundbreaking climate justice policies in the executive branch and in Congress. Growing up on the south side of Chicago, he got a first hand look at the two Americas and sought to bring the two closer together through advocacy. Quentin’’s passion for math and science landed him at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. But instead of using his skills for engineering, he uses his knowledge to build data informed campaigns. Before joining CCAN Quintin was Chief of Staff for an Illinois State Representative and a legislative correspondent in the US House of Representatives and has led numerous issue and candidate campaigns across the Midwest. In his roles, he has stood with neighborhood advocacy groups to hold industrial polluters accountable in communities of color and looks forward to bringing that fight to the federal level with CCAN. Quentin enjoys exploring new places and has been to 36 states. Quite impressive. When he’s not traveling, you can find him engaging in some form of competition, whether that’s video games, board games, or on the basketball court. Quentin, how are you doing today?

Quentin Scott  1:50  

Well, thank you for that introduction, Charlie. I really appreciate it. And I am doing really well, it’s an exciting time here at CCAN.

Charles Olsen  1:57  

It’s really good to have you. It has been a pleasure to have you on the staff- all of this federal work that we’ve been doing is really exciting. It’s kind of upsetting that both of us have started at CCAN in the work from home remote world. So we’ve never actually met in person. So that is a whole nother dynamic to add here.

Quentin Scott  2:19  

Yeah, I’m looking forward to finally crossing that off the list of things to do. I think I’ve only met Mike and Jamie in person. Yeah, it’s everybody else.

Charles Olsen  2:28  

The see can happy hours are lackluster, until we’re done. That’s for sure.

I’m very excited to get to know you a little bit more. But I’m even more excited for our listeners to be able to get to know you and the awesome work that you’re doing. Your background and advocacy stretches back up quite a ways. Can you just tell me how you got your start in climate advocacy? 

Quentin Scott  2:55  

Yeah. So just taking a little step back I know, about 10 or 11 years ago, you know, I didn’t know anything about politics, or, quite frankly, didn’t pay attention to it. And then all of a sudden, you know, I come back home to Chicago after college. And I didn’t recognize my neighborhood. There were vacant properties, there was, you know, seems to be police officers on every corner patrolling. And so I just didn’t really recognize what had happened in the four years that I left Chicago. And so I decided to dive into policy and advocacy and in solution dive into know those spaces, you quickly realize there are a lot of intersection between so many different issues and climate and environment became one of those and you see it all the time. On the south side of Chicago, when we have a major snowstorm or rain that thunderstorm. You see streets flooded and infrastructure, not capable of withstanding these super storms. And then you trace that back to, you know, the fossil fuel industry and everything around climate. So, you know, I didn’t really get into climate for environmental reasons I got into it because of racial justice issues. But once you get into those spaces, you quickly realize that so many other aspects of our lives are affected by climate. And, you know, that’s a space that I didn’t see too many people of color in my community I occupy. So I took it upon myself to occupy that space and bring more attention to climate issues, environmental issues, and the black community of the Southside of Chicago.

Charles Olsen  4:47  

Could you take a moment to highlight some of the work that you did while you worked at the state level and in the House of Representatives before climate policy, just to give us a sense of some of the stuff that you’ve worked on?

Quentin Scott  5:00  

Yeah. So a lot of it was as Chief of Staff, we had inside the district is the Port of Chicago. And so we dealt with a lot of dredging issues. And there are a lot of factories along that area that dumped a lot of pollutants, quite honestly, on neighboring homes. So constituents would come into our office and, you know, complain about how, when they wake up in the morning, there’ll be a thin layer of like, soot on their cars, and things of that nature. So I worked closely with the Illinois EPA, to, you know, investigate those claims and to, you know, put stronger standards on our corporate partners and industrial partners in those neighborhoods. So I did a lot of, you know, at the state level, making sure that we’re enforcing policies and writing letters and helping organize hearings and meetings down in Springfield, and make sure that the voices of our constituents were heard. And so really, I just made sure that I made my boss a partner to environmentalists in our neighborhoods.

Charles Olsen  6:15  

Thank you. I want to come back later, to your experience in Chicago and the work that you did there. But you’ve talked in the past about the importance of data informed campaigns, and I’m not quite sure what that means. Could you enlighten me a little bit?

Quentin Scott  6:34  

Yeah. So data informed means that we are taking the time to use science to help inform the messaging in our strategy, we don’t want data driven campaigns, because then that’s taking it a step too far. And I’ll give you one prime example. In 2016, the data suggested that Hillary Clinton did not need to go to certain Midwest states of Wisconsin, and Michigan, because historically, the data suggested that there was no need for a Democratic presidential candidate to go there. And now we know the results of that 2016 election. But a data informed campaign would suggest that we use resources more wisely. And as we used to always say, it’s about reels, not fields, because sometimes you feel like something is a big issue within the community. But when you really do the data, you realize, oh, only one or two people are impacted by this thing. And we want to make sure that we’re using resources that influence the entire campaign and move voters in the most effective way.

Charles Olsen  7:52  

Can you tell me how this applies to the climate work that you’re doing now?

Quentin Scott  7:56  

Yeah, absolutely. So I know, taking data and making sure so for example, we’re doing a lot of work in West Virginia. And so with this climate movement, we want to make sure that we’re now doing polling, and we’re doing listening sessions. And we’re gathering up all this data to help inform Joe Manchin and Senator capital of West Virginia, this is what their constituencies want. As well as that gives us a little insight of where we need to do more work. Where do we need to do more education? Where do we need to do more organizing? So we’re gathered up all these different data points, so we can sort of plan out our work and use that those results to ultimately influence those two senators,

Charles Olsen  8:46  

You’ve already kind of touched on this in a variety of different ways. But what role do you see yourself filling in the climate movement at large? 

Quentin Scott  8:58  

So for me, I pride myself on being a team player and versatile. And so not only do I bring sort of this data, analytical perspective to things, but also I have a lot of organizing experience. And so use my diverse background. You know, I see myself as filling in those gaps, where we need somebody to learn a skill or become an expert in a certain area and not do that. For example, with CCAN, we’ve been pushing Biden’s American jobs plan, and part of that there are a lot of jobs coming out of it. And so for CCAN I’ve played this role as a job expert, so in the last six weeks, I have read everything I could get my hands on in terms of how much does will be created for individual states. The White House actually released the report today, breaking down how jobs will how the investments in jobs will go to each of the 50 states and sort of dive into even those numbers, but so it’s for me, I just want to make sure that I’m feeling with ever to spaces needed connecting people to whatever communities that need to be connected to. So I just want to be a versatile advocate and flow between roles and, you know, take on whatever challenges when needed.

Charles Olsen  10:20  

Can you tell me a little bit more about your organizing experience? Are there any moments from that work that you’ve done that stand out prominently in your mind?

Quentin Scott  10:32  

Yeah, absolutely. One of my first projects I ever worked on was the fight for 15 in Illinois. And so I spent the summer of 2014 going around to communities across the Chicago land area, collecting petition signatures, and asking for small donations to support, you know, raising the minimum wage in Illinois to $15. And I know those were some of the toughest conversations I’ve had at doors with people. But it was also very rewarding to sort of like engage with somebody who was a small business owner, and they are pushing back on, you know, why the $15 minimum wage wasn’t good for their business, and then sort of laying out all the different reasons why it was important, and how it was doable for their small business. And then at the end of that five to 10 minute conversation, they signed the petition in though and donated like $5 to the cause. And so like getting those, it takes some time to get those victories. But those conversations were well worth it. And ultimately, Illinois did pass, you know, raising the minimum wage, and so to see sort of the star on the front end of that fight, and persuade some folks who might not be natural allies to that fight, and then ultimately passed it into the law was something that, you know, I was very proud to sort of be on the ground floor, so to speak, of the 15 fight in Illinois,

Charles Olsen  11:58  

From that experience, how, how does that influence the way that you tackle advocacy in your work now?

Quentin Scott  12:05  

So I think that that experience taught me, number one, to sort of meet people where they are. And sort of, it’s really important to listen, because the easiest way to turn someone off is to just sort of like blow past their concerns, and not sort of like acknowledge that you hear them. And I acknowledge that that’s a legitimate concern. But there’s also a solution to their problem. I think that’s very important in this in the climate work that we’re doing this year, and right now, is that now where as we make that transition from fossil fuels to renewables, there’s a lot of know coal miners and fossil fuel workers who are getting very concerned about their livelihood changing, and so that it helps me in West Virginia to have a difficult conversation with coal miners, in terms of I have to listen and appreciate where they come from, and understand that, you know, I’m not a coal miner. That’s not my experience. I’m not from West Virginia. And that needs to come in and be respectful of that. And to help move the conversation along and it’s not just one conversation is being patient and having multiple conversations. So I feel like that those are lessons I learned very early on in my advocacy work. And I’ve seen this be successful throughout. And so and what we’re having probably the most important conversation of this century, right now, I’m able to sort of draw on those experiences and be effective.

Charles Olsen  13:34  

Well Quentin it sounds to me from what you’ve said that you are a natural bridge builder, between people who need information and you going out of your way to learn everything you can about it and provide it to them. So I’m going to echo the Twitter trend: Quentin Scott, you are infrastructure.

Quentin Scott  13:55  

I appreciate that.

Charles Olsen  13:58  

I want to hear more about you now. I know you grew up in the south side of Chicago. And I grew up in New York. So naturally, I’m sure this debate is going to be had for for decades, centuries to come, but I got to know pizza man.

Quentin Scott  14:21  

Oh, I knew that was coming. Um, I’m gonna be honest. I am not really down for the Brooklyn style slices, you know, folding it up. I’m not for that. But on the flip side, Chicago is known for deep dish, but that’s more of a tourist attraction with anything. Chicagoans don’t eat deep dish as much as the world thinks we do. We’re in between with like, you know, your natural sort of thin crust. We just don’t do the whole folding thing. 

Charles Olsen  15:00  

Okay, I can respect that. That’s like in New York, there’s a bunch of dollar pizza slices that are all the fake dollar pizza slices. Yeah. Okay. I respect that. Back to a more serious note, you have talked a lot in your bio, about the two Americas in your experience of that. Can you explain what that means and what that means to you?

Quentin Scott  15:31  

Yeah. So the two Americas are, you know, acknowledging that we live in the same country, but the systems and institutions that we interact with, treat us vastly different. And you don’t even realize it because your whole life you live in one or the other America. And only in certain moments, do you realize that there’s actually another side to this coin. And I think that college was the place I first realized that to be true. As you said, in my bio, I went to Embry riddle Aeronautical University. The student population is I think, 93%, white. And so you know, all my friends, and my classmates are people who know where I had come from. And so those four years really showed me this the different way, they think the different way that because I spend, like, spring breaks with my roommates, families and different vacations, and it really just showed me just how there’s just different approaches to America. And then, so that was the beginning of that process. And then as I started to venture out more into America and experienced more of the workforce and different other aspects of life, I realized that the Chicago that I grew up on in the south side is not with a lot of people experience. And that there are other options, because so many boats that I grew up with think that this is how things are. And I remember distinctly, my mom is a fourth grade teacher, well she was a fourth grade teacher at this time. And I, when I moved to DC, herself, she was telling her students that I’ve moved out to DC. And so their first reaction was, oh, why did he move out there? Because he got some woman pregnant? And my mom just thought that- that was why would he move somewhere? Because he got someone pregnant? Why couldn’t he have moved to DC because he was doing a job or had opportunity. And that just shows you sort of the mindset of some of the children that come from the south side of Chicago, that everything is that people don’t move from Chicago, because of opportunity, they’ve moved because they’re running from something or running to something, you’re, like I say, running away from something. So that’s just just really sort of highlights sort of, why don’t they think that they had these opportunities in front of them? And I think, quite honestly, that’s a lot of work that we’re doing right now. And I think what environmental justice is, know, providing these opportunities that historically have left communities of color behind that these jobs and opportunities that are going to come with Biden’s plan are jobs and opportunities that historically people communities of color haven’t had don’t think that they are entitled to. And we know and I want to change that narrative. Because that, you know, we are as American as anybody, and we should be able to have access to resources and opportunities. And we don’t have to think that, you know, we aren’t capable of doing these things.

Charles Olsen  18:49  

I appreciate you sharing that experience with me. You spent a lot of time working on more local level politics. And I’m just curious about what made you take the jump from the more local politics where you were more into the community to federal big picture work.

Quentin Scott  19:09  

When I made the decision to get into policy and organizing work. I honestly didn’t know what that meant and where that started. And so that’s why I was doing a lot of stuff at the local level, because that’s just the only entry point I knew how to get into. So that started with me volunteering for my alderman. And working for things like rainbow push in the Chicago Urban League and places like that. But in my personal life, I always paid attention to what was happening in Washington DC. And so I finally started working for my alderman, who was in I guess it’s okay to say her name now, ultimately Sandy Jackson, and she was the wife of former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. So once I started working for her, I then started making connections to his office. And so after about 10 months working there, you know, I reached out to his office and, you know, inquired: How do I go about, you know, doing more. And because I, you know, it’s one thing to have an impact in your neighborhood where you grew up in, or on the south side of Chicago as a whole. But I started thinking more nationally, like, I want to impact communities in Chicago, and Philadelphia, and Houston and Oakland, and DC. And so how do I do that? The only place I could think of was at the federal level. So that’s why I started asking those questions and plotting out my plan to go to work in Congress. And, you know, in 2012, I ended up there, and that was a great year because of Obama’s re election, there’s a lot going on. And so I got the opportunity to really, you know, work on the appropriation bills and see how the house operating worked and how legislation is passed. And you realize that what they teach us in civics isn’t exactly how it happens in actuality. So, you know, it was a very good experience, and you’d learn, you know, if two things kind of happened, one, I learned the process, and it’s very exciting to pass legislation, and you realize how powerful the Capitol building is, like impacts not just this country, but globally, like it changes the course of like history when they do things right there. But that’s also the depressing part is that when they choose not to pass meaningful legislation, or, you know, it doesn’t get out of one chamber, and it’s just like, we’re wasting years and time, you know, and so, you know, most days you feel really great about the work that you do. And other days, you just feel like, man, like, how do we not do that? And it’s all because maybe one or two senators or whoever it is, and I feel, I think that what I felt in 2012 has gotten worse. And we all sit here in 2021. And we can all see those things. No, the hyper partisanship is at an all time high. And, you know, we’re sitting here debating, should we do something about climate? When we all know we do? Well,

Charles Olsen  22:22  

Well, now you’re working on it. And that is, that’s my next question for you. You have been since you jumped in at CCAN working on our first big Federal Campaign. Can you give us the explainer, what are you working on here right now?

Quentin Scott  22:45  

Yeah, like I said, at the very beginning, exciting, exciting times at CCAN, we’re doing some big things. And we’re part of some historic legislation or trying to push them to historic legislation. So in short, we are working on a clean electricity standard by 2035. And so the goal is to have 100% renewable energies being the source of our electricity for our country. And so right now, there’s several different policies that get us there. But basically, if we can get 80% by 2030, which is the next 10 years, it puts us on the pathway to get to 100% by 2035. And so we’ve already seen the House of Representatives get on board with this, they introduced the clean future act last month that has 100% 2035 standard. And then last week, Biden and his American jobs plan also announced the same standard of 20 100% by 2035. So we have the house, we have the White House, now we’re working on the Senate. But to get it passed, Biden has attached a lot of investment to it. And that’s actually the key to it. Having a standard alone does not get us to 100% by 2035. Having investments in tax credits doesn’t get us there either. We have to have both the standard and the aggressive investments to get us there. And Biden has promised $400 billion in direct investment for renewables, and then another 100 million to upgrade our electric grid soakin. We can connect all of the solar and wind generation to the grid that we have also include battery storage. So we’re talking about millions of jobs to do all this work over the next few years. next decade, I should say. So it’s exciting times and a lot of money. And so we look forward to helping carry that war for Biden.

Charles Olsen  24:57  

So it’s a pretty big deal for the climate.

Quentin Scott  25:00  

Yeah, pretty big deal. A little bit like $1 trillion, big deal at the end. And when it’s all said and done, it’s gonna be about a trillion dollars spit.

Charles Olsen  25:10  

So most people, when they hear that that’s, that’s a pretty big number to them. But I know from conversations that you and I have had, and from our previous episode where we had the economist Stephanie Kelton, for our first federal webinar, we learned that a trillion dollars for the US federal government, isn’t that big of a deal. Can you kind of explain that for our listeners?

Quentin Scott  25:37  

Yeah. So I think this kind of goes against conventional wisdom of what we’ve been talking about econ 101. But we have to remember that the federal government’s budget does not work, like your budget that you make for the grocery store, and all of that, because the US government is his own sovereign nation with his own currency, they can essentially print as much money as they want. Now, you have to kind of worry a little bit about inflation. But particularly in this moment, the argument is that this money would not give, it would not create inflation, because it’s not necessarily printing more money than we need. It’s just replacing and allocating resources to places they’re already gaps. And the thing is, we’ve already done this, and there was no inflation. We all know about the bank bailout that was just under a trillion. And there was no inflation after that. And, matter of fact, we had, like, record high growth in the economy. So it has been done in the past. We know that we can do it again, especially since it is replacing money, not necessarily just overflowing the economy with new dollars. So I think that, you know, I suggest everybody check out Stephanie Kelton. She’s way better at explaining it as one of the foremost economists in the world. So check it out. Stephanie, Dr. Stephanie Kelton, or our webinar where she can go into more detail about it, but we do have the money, and we should spend it.

Charles Olsen  27:24  

So this is a pretty big investment. You started talking about the jobs, can you tell me a little bit more about the impact that CES will have on people across the country?

Quentin Scott  27:37  

Yeah, so it creates jobs, simply because there are a lot of technological advances we need to make in order to make this a reality. So we need to build batteries that could store all of this energy that we’re going to be creating, we need solar panels installed, we need windmills installed, we need to just upgrade the grid which generally hasn’t been upgraded since the 1950s. So there are a lot of ways to plug in jobs. Because right now, China and Europe are leaders in all of these areas. And we have like one battery factory in the whole country. So we obviously need more. And there are a lot of rare metals that go into batteries and solar panels that we have to bring in from other countries. But we have those resources right here. And we don’t have any Korean mines that mined for these rare metals. And so they’re mining jobs, they are battery building jobs or installation jobs. They’re like, like Biden’s plan suggests there are millions of jobs that need to be created just first to catch up to what the rest of the world is already doing not to take a leadership role, but just to catch up. So we need to make that investment because otherwise 15 years from now, when we have no choice but to make these changes, we’re going to be so far behind that we won’t even dictate how those industries play out.

Charles Olsen  29:10  

How can people listening get involved and help us get a CES pass this year?

Quentin Scott  29:17  

Yeah, so you heard me mentioned that the house is on board. Now that White House on board. We are lacking some support in the Senate. There’s about 45 senators who we feel confident are going to vote for this, but we need to get to 50. So we need to put pressure on the Senate to pass this reconciliation. Sure. That’s some words that if you don’t know what it means, at least you’ve probably heard it because reconciliation seems to be the only way we can pass things in the senate these days. In short, the reconciliation is sort of the workaround to the filibuster is a special budgetary instruction where you only need to get to 51 votes. To pass anything through, but it can only focus on budgetary and taxes. And so we can do a lot of the budgetary investments to see reconciliation. But that still means we need every democrat in the 50/50 Senate to vote for it, including Joe Manchin in West Virginia, including Cinema in Arizona. And so those are two standouts that we want to make sure that we’re putting pressure on them. And to be honest, put pressure on all the other rank and file democratic senators, because the best way to influence other senators is to get their colleagues to influence them. So we want to make sure that we reach support, and Tina Smith, who’s leading this CES fight in the Senate, we want to support her and keep reminding her that she has our support back here in the States. So she can when she’s engaging in those difficult conversations with Manchin, she doesn’t necessarily have to give that much back, as we were actually having a conversation in an earlier meeting, that in order to pass this $2.2 trillion bill, at some point, the administration is going to have to give 10% of the bill back to Republicans. But we want to make sure that the 10% that they give back, it’s not the clean electricity standard. So we want to make sure that we put pressure on all the senators that they hold the line on 100% see as by 2035. So yeah, reach out to your Senate.

Charles Olsen  31:32  

Great. And we’ll include links in the show notes, of course, to ways for people to do that. Great. And I have one last question for you. Before I let you go today. And this one has been burning, since I started prepping for this episode. In your bio, you said that you love to play strategy board games. And so do I. Okay, what’s your favorite board? game?

Quentin Scott  31:57  

Risk is definitely at the top. Oh, we got to play. Okay, you look like a risk guy. We definitely like risk. Very much. So yeah, yeah. And then sort of like equal to that. Have you ever played Go? 

Charles Olsen

No, I haven’t. 

Quentin Scott

Go is basically a strategy game, a Chinese strategy game, it’s about how to occupy the most space with the fewest amount of stones. And so it’s a lot of complicated sort of placement and how to like defeat your opponent. But it’s, it’s similar in some ways to chess, and which is another one of my favorite board games. So just go and risk. Any of those I’m down to play,

Charles Olsen  32:44  

we’re gonna have to play, you’re gonna have to show me how to play go. Is there any wisdom from that game that you take into your work? You know, how to take up the space?

Quentin Scott  32:55  

Absolutely. I think it helps really, with planning out your work, right? So you want to because we have a finite amount of time that day to get anything done. So it’s like, how do you plan out your work? And where are you going to place your piece on the board? So what am I going to do every day, that’s going to lead to me dominating this board. Because ultimately, you want to dominate the climate space. So in using the least amount of time possible, so I think go is a really good way of developing the sort of priority skills that you need.

Charles Olsen  33:29  

Awesome. Well, Quintin, thank you so much for talking with me. I’m super grateful that you’ve shared your experience, and I’m really excited to continue all the federal work.

Quentin Scott  33:41  

Charlie, thanks for having me. It’s an awesome time and I look forward to coming back here.

Charles Olsen  34:00  

Thanks for listening to Upside Down. This podcast is produced by me, Charlie Olsen, with incredible support from the entire CCAN staff. Check out the show notes for links to all the things discussed in this episode. If you want to know more about how you can get involved with seeking in the climate fight, check out our website at Chesapeake climate.org. If you want to get in touch with us, follow us on instagram and twitter @CCAN. And if you enjoy the work we do, why don’t you share us with your friends. Sharing the show is a super easy way to help spread the word about the work we’re doing in the fight of bold climate actions. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.