This Was Never Going to Be Easy – Climate Advocacy in the New Normal

We’re All in This Together

This Was Never Going to Be Easy
Climate Advocacy in the New Normal

By Peter Dugas, Citizens’ Climate Lobby Northeast Regional Director 

Strap in Maine climate advocates. We’re in for choppy (and rising) seas. 

It is official, 2024 is the hottest year on record. Images of the Appalachian Ridge devastation from Hurricane Helene and the incineration of southern California (in January!) make ever more obvious that climate change is no longer a future concern. It is here, it is now, and it will only intensify.

Human activity, predominantly burning fossil fuels, has pushed our atmosphere to the brink. Our common home is groaning under the manmade stress of continued greenhouse gas pollution (carbon dioxide and methane). The calculated costs are $16 million dollars per hour.

The UN reported that climate change intensified 26 out of 29 major weather disasters this year. Further, these disasters killed more than 3,700 people and displaced millions more.  Add to those horrors news that the new administration has declared its intention to rollback recent climate progress and recommit American energy to fossil fuels. One can’t help but be discouraged. 

But giving up is not an option. We can’t change the past, but there’s still a lot we can do to change our future trajectory and stabilize our climate. Now is the time to organize for the immediate battles. To prepare ourselves for our next opportunities for robust climate action (which will inevitably come).

Here are some quick and easy ways to move climate advocacy forward in these hard times:

Our federal lawmakers need to hear from us to protect the record-breaking Inflation Reduction Act and its transformative allocations towards clean energy and climate mitigation. Many conservative lawmakers (including Senator Collins, who has never had more influence on policy) understand that the IRA was an incredible investment in America’s future. While the executive branch may boast about their plans to scrap it, prudent lawmakers understand that doing so would only impede our economy and competitiveness with foreign adversaries. Ask our lawmakers to defend the IRA now through https://citizensclimatelobby.org/get-loud-take-action/protect-climate-ira.

With the recent wildfires in all of our minds, please tell our lawmakers that climate is a growing concern for you, their constituents. Please contact them at https://citizensclimatelobby.org/get-loud-take-action/address-wildfire-risk.

Also, keep up the pressure to get the US to join every other developed nation and price industrial carbon pollution. Visit https://citizensclimatelobby.org/get-loud-take-action/price-carbon.

Bonus Maine action:

Maine lawmakers passed LD99 in 2021 requiring Maine Public Employment Retirement System (Maine PERS) to divest from fossil fuel investments. Yet it has not been enacted. Contact Maine PERS and ask them to develop a plan to comply with LD 99. Let’s move our investments away from continued damage to our atmosphere.