cast none out of my heart, a boat big enough for everyone.
My life changed, inside and out, when I discovered Citizens’ Climate Lobby.
When I moved to Flagstaff in 2013, I knew climate change was happening, but I didn’ t think about it much. Recently married, settling into my routine as an ObGyn at a local clinic, I relished the fresh air, friendly people, and visceral joy of taking care of pregnant women and their babies. I might think of climate change when the unusually warm summer or declining snowpack came up in conversation, but seldom otherwise. I certainly wasn’ t exploring how to listen to someone who doesn’ t acknowledge climate change, or investigating practical solutions.
On Earth Day 2014, Bill McKibben’ s keynote talk at Northern Arizona University hammered home the implications of an unstable climate. In story after story, he explained how poor communities all over the world are already reeling under rising temperatures, rising seas, and unreliable weather patterns. My comfortable life, largely afforded me by fossil fuels previously and currently burned, allows me to ignore climate change in a way others can’ t.
Recognizing that individual actions like changing light bulbs or biking to work aren’ t powerful or fast enough to fix the problem, McKibben recommended global divestment from fossil fuel companies as the only adequate response to business models that are“ incompatible with life.” But I didn’ t see how divestment translated into something I could act on, and I didn’ t have much faith it would work.( As you probably know, I was wrong.)
For the next six months I was in despair, fully aware of the reality, urgency, and injustice of climate change, but hopeless that anything I might do or say could possibly matter. It felt good, temporarily, to let anger at fossil fuel executives and climate deniers build up, but after a while this just fed into cynicism and disempowerment. My meditation practice included exercises to soften my heart, even to those I found difficult, and yet climate activism seemed to call for justified disdain, for self-righteous exclusion.
That fall, a brief line in the paper announced an introductory meeting to Citizens’ Climate Lobby( CCL), advocating policy solutions to climate change. With low expectations, I spent a long evening learning about Carbon Fee and Dividend and CCL’ s methodology of appreciation, respect and relationship-building. By the end of that workshop I knew I had found my home.
Susan Secord, a volunteer from Boulder, had driven to Flagstaff on her own dime to plant the seed of a chapter here. She explained the history of CCL, a national, nonpartisan, volunteer-run group founded by a concerned real estate mogul and his friends. We learned about CCL’ s market-based proposal and practiced explaining it to each other: a fee is assessed on fossil fuels when they enter the economy, whether at the border, wellhead or mine, based on how much CO2 they’ ll emit when burned. The net proceeds are returned to American households as a dividend; we can spend the money how we like. The fee starts relatively low so that the economy isn’ t shocked, rising predictably each year. This sends a clear market signal, allowing businesses and investors to plan for rising costs, and resulting in rapid divestment from fossil fuels, not because it’ s the right thing to do, but because it makes economic sense. Government doesn’ t grow, because all the revenue is returned to the American people; the poor and middle class are protected from rising costs by the dividend landing in their pockets each month. A border adjustment protects manufacturers and keeps jobs in the US. An independent economic analysis of the proposal suggests GDP and jobs would
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