Let’s Get Our Legislators To Up Their Game And Go For The Gold
You might imagine that Earth got caught up in all the buzz about the Olympics and Paralympics, given all the records it’s been setting, in particular global temperature records. Of course there’s only one Earth so the climate’s been competing against itself, with each of the last twelve months (through September 2016) exceeding the previous record average temperature for that month since records began being kept about 150 years ago.
Climate Change is racing on ahead but the Oregon legislature is falling behind despite climate awareness on the part of many individual legislators.
We need to get our Portland-area legislators to be climate champions, not just supportive of, or “good votes” for, legislation that will contribute to rapidly decreasing greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon. Undoubtedly, several pieces of legislation will be required, over several sessions of the legislature. The last two sessions have seen different versions of “cap and invest” bills (one each in the House and Senate), roughly based on California’s program. These bills were voted out of committee but never reached the floor of either body.
We’ve started the Capping Carbon Team to focus on Portland-area legislators not just during the legislative session, but also during the interim, to make sure they realize just how important climate change is to so many of their constituents, and how quickly and decisively the legislature will need to act.
We’re in the process of identifying sub-teams of volunteers for each Representative and Senator in the greater Portland area – 30+ Districts. We’ll be talking with legislators at public town halls and coffees as well as at their offices or favorite meeting places when the legislature is not in session. We’ll send letters and emails and recruit others to do so. During the 2017 legislative session we’ll help plan, and participate in, lobby days in Salem. For all this we’ll jointly hone our messages and techniques as well as getting training from experts. And as much as possible, we’ll have fun!
Everyone’s welcome, though we’re particularly interested in recruiting people in the following Districts.
House:
- 25 Bill Post
- 37 Julie Parrish
- 47 Jessica Vega Pedersen
- 49 Chris Gorsek
- 50 Carla Piluso
- 51 Shemia Fagan
Senate:
- 19 Richard Devlin
- 20 Alan Olson
- 25 Laurie Monnes-Anderson
You can look up who your legislators are here.
Our next team meeting will be:
- November 17th, 7:00 – 9:00pm.
Come join us! Contact Rand Schenk (randschenck[at]msn.com) or Rick Brown (rtb22[at]outlook.com) Thanks!
