A breakthrough in the House with Republican climate change resolution
Months of hard work behind the scenes paid off on Sept. 17 when Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY) and 10 of his Republican colleagues introduced a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives citing the disastrous impact climate change will have in the future and calling upon Congress to work on “economically viable” solutions.
The idea started with the Friends Committee on National Legislation, which came to Citizens’ Climate Lobby and asked if we had constituents in Gibson’s district who would ask him to sponsor the resolution. CCL volunteers Karen Frishkoff and Iona Lutey took the request to Gibson, who agreed to introduce the resolution. That was late last year, and since then CCL and a handful of other organizations worked behind the scenes to bring 10 other Republicans on board as co-sponsors. You can read some of the backstory in this recent blog post.
Since the resolution’s introduction, CCL volunteers have swung into action to acknowledge the sponsors and generate more Republican co-sponsors. Earlier this week, CCL organized a call-in day to Republican offices asking them to co-sponsor the resolution. If you have a Republican representative in the House, you can still call to make this request. More information is available on our Gibson Resolution action page.
CCL views the resolution as a vehicle for starting a productive dialogue between Republicans and Democrats on climate change, a conversation that can lead to discussion of bipartisan solutions like Carbon Fee & Dividend.
Volunteers have also gone to work generating media about the Gibson resolution – editorials, articles, op-eds and letters to the editor. As of Monday, more than 30 pieces had been published. Here’s a sampling:
|