CCL Update 1.12.11

Successes from 2010

As Citizens Climate Lobby gears up for another year of building the political will for a sustainable climate, let us pause for a moment and take in the successes and things we accomplished in 2010.

To say the least, it was a good and exciting year.

A year of firsts

In June, CCL hosted its first national conference in Washington, D.C., with volunteers from across the country gathering in our nation’s capital. They heard from visionary author Lester Brown. They built skills in workshops focusing on the science, economics politics, and messaging of climate change. They took our message to Capitol Hill in meetings with House and Senate offices.

We published our first economic report, “Building a Green Economy” by Joseph Robertson, which is being used as a resource with the media and members of Congress.

We wrote our first legislative proposal, The Carbon Fee and Dividend Act, introduced by climate scientist Dr. James Hansen at an Earth Day rally on the National Mall in Washington.

CCL established a presence on Facebook and Twitter, where we have nearly 1,500 followers.

CCL expanded into Canada with three groups being officially launched in 2011. The Canadians have adapted our group leader manual to work with members of Parliament.

We had our first White House meeting with Todd Stern, the U.S. International Climate Ambassador.

CCL volunteers throughout the country organized or helped to organize events on Oct. 10 with 350.org to raise awareness about climate change and the need to work on solutions to the problem.

We sponsored and helped to organize the Pricing Carbon Conference at Wesleyan University. CCL’s Marshall Saunders and Steve Valk presented at conference workshops, Marshall speaking at the closing plenary.

We launched the Million Letter March, a campaign to generate a million personal letters to members of Congress asking them to enact effective climate legislation.

Talking to Congress

Our work with congressional offices – meeting with representatives and senators, developing relationships with their aides – is central to fulfilling our goal to stop climate change. CCL volunteers and staff held a total of 105 meetings in district offices and on Capitol Hill, 48 with Senate offices and 57 in the House.

Each of these meetings usually requires six or more phone calls to set up. The number of meetings held represents the outstanding and persistent work on the part of our volunteers.

Although their group launch meetings won’t happen until February, Canadians are already meeting with members of Parliament as CCL volunteers.

Media success

All together, CCL was published 65 times last year in the U.S. and Canada both in print and online. What’s really outstanding about this is that the majority of this media was generated by our volunteers, so as we continue to grow, our media hits are going to go through the roof.

We had 36 letters to the editor, an editorial in the San Diego Union-Tribune, and six articles about CCL and its volunteers.

We were on radio and TV in the San Francisco Bay area, in Minnesota, in Seattle and in Ontario, Canada.

CCL was published in Huffington Post seven times last year.

Last and best, I want to tell you about opeds. These are the opinion pieces that take up a significant amount of space on the editorial pages, and they have a headline on them you can read from 10 feet away. They always have a little tag at the bottom that tells the readers that the author is with Citizens Climate Lobby, which is great marketing for our organization. These are the pieces in the newspaper that determine what the public conversation is all about, and they’re very influential.

Well, CCL published 20 opeds last year in the following newspapers: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The North County Times, The Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Tallahassee Democrat, The Nashville Tennessean, The Savannah Morning News, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Greenville (SC) News, The Middletown (Conn.) Press, The Times-Herald of Salano and Napa Counties, The Sacramento Bee, The Contra Costa Times, The Seattle Times, and the Anchorage Daily News.

For a full list of CCL published media in 2010, go to:

http://citizensclimatelobby.org/CCLmedia2010

You can hear more on our January national call. Go here to listen.