 Hi, everyone. Good morning. I want to say thank you to CCTV for hosting a conversation among the five of us about Citizens' Climate Lobby and our recent trip to Washington to talk with our members of Congress. Before going there, perhaps we should just each introduce ourselves. My name is Andrew Chanuk. I'm a South Burlington city counselor. My name is Michael Ellis. I'm a retired engineer living in the south end of Burlington. Susanna Cernia, retired marketing manager living in White River Junction. Bob Cernia, living in White River Junction and former business owner, teacher, and publisher. I'm Peter Ehrlich. I live out of Jericho, Vermont, and I'm a software engineer. So we're part of the Citizens' Climate Lobby, and as I mentioned, we traveled to Congress last week to discuss climate change and the solutions that Citizens' Climate Lobby would like our U.S. Congress to implement. We're very fortunate to have Bob and Susanna, who tirelessly work on behalf of Citizens' Climate Lobby and are our leads in Vermont. So perhaps Bob and Susanna can tell us a bit about the organization. Sure. Go ahead. So Citizens' Climate Lobby, or CCL as we like to call it, is an organization that's been around over 10 years. It's a national nonpartisan climate advocacy group, and it empowers people, ordinary people to do extraordinary things. By that I mean that it gives a really good training and background for how to approach climate change in the way that's going to be most effective. And what their primary focus has been for the last 10 years is to put a price on carbon, believing that that would be the fastest and most systemic way to address climate change. And I think I'd start by saying that the organization began in 2006, so 17 years ago, more or less, and there was a business owner in San Diego who was concerned about the fact that there were a few organizations trying to develop political will to address climate change. And he was speaking at a meeting and one of the folks raised her hand and said, well, why don't you start that organization? And that's how the group started. It took several years to grow outside of Southern California, but eventually spread across the country. And to give a little background on when we joined, in 2013 there was a large gathering in Washington. Susanna and I went and it was a good-sized, if you want to call it protest, but attempt to get legislators in Washington aware of the fact that the citizens wanted climate change to be addressed. And when we came back from that meeting, we had pretty much said, well, protests don't seem to be doing, having much of an impact. What would? And we were at a loss as to what was going to solve the problem. And by chance there was a, we were living in Minnesota, there was a gathering of people to talk about climate change and what to do about it. And one of the organizations that sent a table to that conference was Citizens Climate Lobby. We said, well, let's find out a little more. We did. And said, this is something that could actually work. So you want to explain what carbon fee and dividend was all about? I think I can pass it back to one of the other members who would like to talk about carbon fee and dividend. What does it mean? Sure, Mike. So I first encountered the idea of carbon fee and dividend in an editorial, I believe, from Victor Hansen in The New York Times in about 2007. And he laid out what struck me even then as an elegantly simple plan. You tax the fossil fuels at the wellhead, at the mine shaft, at the port of entry. So it's relatively easy to collect the tax money because that's a small number of entities. And then in order to, and of course, taxing is going to increase the cost of fuel. So what's the way to make it equitable to every citizen? And the elegant solution, again, is to give an equal share of the tax revenue, all of it except for a tiny fraction for just the administrative cost, in a monthly check back to every citizen. And so the idea behind this is that it's something that can appeal to both liberals and conservatives. It takes care of, we can show by analysis and by experience in other countries, that it helps the bottom 40, 50, even 60 percent. And at the same time, it provides a market incentive that allows the whole economy to adjust. So it's just one of these beautifully elegant solutions that we have been trying to get across to Congress for, what, 14 years now that, and we make some headway. I'll pass it on. Peter, you want to? Yeah, I think that, like, there's, what brought me, does meet with you guys, really, was I was lying awake in my bed at four in the morning worrying about climate change. And I'm like, hmm, we need a market adjustment or something like that. It sounds corny, but there it is. And I ended up, like, going in and reading, you know, congressional research reports and, like, learning about what's around the world. And there's over 60 of these programs, which exist from Europe to China to British Columbia. And it sort of seems inevitable that the U.S. moves in that direction as well. And so while I was doing this research, I discovered Citizens Climate Lobby and was very excited that there's a group of, you know, U.S. citizens, just random people who are trying to make this happen. I mean, I got very excited about the idea of being able to be somebody. You know, like, it's not every day you have an idea that's relevant on a national scale and just by the power of that idea and by being, you know, a polite, not a protester, but someone who's carrying a conversation forward, then suddenly the doors of Congress are in a way open to you. And so I'm really glad to have been connected with you guys like last December or so, I think, is when I joined. Let me see if I can just describe, though, a little bit more about why we all think carbon feed and divin to putting a price on carbon is something that's so critical for society. So, one, we need to reduce and stop using fossil fuels to have a little future. It's kind of the bedrock of why we're all here. So how do you do that? When things are more expensive, people tend to use less of them. Someone who may not know anything about climate change, not know anything about science, not know where things that he or she buys in the supermarket are coming from. If there's something on the shelf that's, you know, more expensive compared to something that's less expensive, that person's going to buy the less expensive thing. So let me give you an example. If there were a significant price on carbon and there were two apples in the supermarket and one had to be shipped from across the country, but one was grown here in Vermont, then one grown in Vermont would likely be less expensive and folks would choose that. The effect of that would be to reduce fossil fuels and that person wouldn't know that. The person's just making an economic decision. There's hundreds of millions of people in the country making dozens of economic decisions every day. Those economic decisions ripple through the economy and drive emissions down in the most effective way, much more effective than incentivizing randomly different technologies that has overhead and paperwork and you have to know what to do. So it really is the most effective thing to do and because of where we are, because we're in such a climate crisis, we need to use the most effective tools that we have. So that's why we all went to Washington. We went together with a thousand folks in a 200,000 worldwide strong army of the citizens' climate lobby. So what did we all do there? Well, first we started off with a national conference, it was great. They have some outstanding speakers and training sessions and just amazing camaraderie and finding out what's the latest going on legislatively on Capitol Hill. We've got some really great legislative staffers there with CCL to hear what the climate is, so to speak, no pun intended. And then we, on Tuesday morning, we met on the Capitol steps with everybody, almost a thousand of us, with a photo about eight o'clock in the morning and it's a great photo, maybe you'll use it later. And then we all left for our meetings and in the course of that one day, there were over 400, maybe almost 500 meetings with every office on the Hill, every office of the Senate, every office of the House and at every one of those meetings, or most of the meetings, there were maybe five or six CCL volunteers from all over the country and their legislators to talk about carbon pricing. And one of the things that CCL stresses is we are nonpartisan, we don't come in with any kind of oppositional adversarial approach. Their whole idea is to go in with an attitude of gratitude, thanking that legislator, no matter where they are in the spectrum, for their service and to try to build a relationship with that office so that you become a trusted messenger, someone who can offer them good information that they know is going to be reliable. And so that's what we did on Tuesday. It was absolutely incredible walking the marble halls and high-fiving with other volunteers as you'd be criss-crossing paths and meeting and discussing strategies. I know, Peter, that was the first time for you, Bob and I had done this before, so what was your impression? Yeah, I mean, before going, I couldn't really imagine why we kept getting invited back. Like, here's this incredibly contentious issue, and yet, you know, a thousand people get invited back to offices from all the states year after year, and I couldn't understand why, and it's a lot of what you said. I felt like in the first couple of days, I was going into a textbook on nonviolent communication and just like, here's how you listen, like here's how, you know, if it gets to be a heated conversation, you just, you know, you listen, or you back up, or you find common values, which there always are. Like, wanting to exist as a species and go in and find issues that will work for everyone. So it was just an amazing experience to be able to meet with the other volunteers in the group and then to meet with our congresspeople as well. It was just rewarding. Yeah. So this was my third experience lobbying in D.C. The first two were down in North Carolina, and I'd really like to attest to the relentless nonpartisanship of C.C.L. and its effectiveness. I will just say that, you know, at one point we had a meeting with a very conservative representative and his staff, and after the meeting was over, they said, you guys are great. You're not yelling at us. Yep. And I think that's the way that we will eventually, eventually get enough of a consensus on moving forward to actually do something about the climate. And so we were fortunate. We met with Senator Welch. We spoke with him for a bit, and we spoke with the Senator's staff, and we met a bit with Representative Gallant and spoke with her staff. We had an extensive conversation with Senator Sanders' staff. My perspective was that all three of those officers, all officers were very welcoming to our message. It was a safe space. I think we're very fortunate that our representatives in Congress understand that this is a climate crisis, want to do something about it. But what I also heard to echo what all my colleagues here are saying is that even the folks who you think may disagree and who disagree in the media, most of them understand that this is a crisis. Most of them want to do something, and most of them agree in close quarters that this is a great policy. And what we're trying to do is give them the safe space to be able to articulate that in public, to be able to lead their constituents, to build the political will that we need in order to enact this climate solution. The banner in the front of us, the Citizens Climate Lobby's solution to climate change is democracy. That what's really, I think what unites all of us is that we believe that if the American people say they want something, that the government is going to listen and give us what it is we want. And in this case, what we want is a solution to what all of the Vermont legislators would say anyway is a existential threat to our species. It seems like a pretty straightforward, simple request to say we would like to have a livable future. And this is the best way that we've found to be able to bring that about. Without any rules of, all right, here are a bunch of regulations that are going to require citizens to do this, that or the other thing. With carbon fee and dividend, all of the choices remain up to the people who are making the economic decisions. It's like what you were talking about, Andrew. It's like nobody is saying, buy the Vermont apple. It's like people are going to look at it and say I would prefer that based on whatever their reasoning might be. And in a similar vein, corporations are also looking at their pocketbooks. They are going to, when they see that they're going to make less profit on the higher carbon that's in whatever fuel it might be, they are going to pivot to less carbon intensive fuels, whether that's gas or whether it's renewables. They are watching their pocketbooks just as closely. And the point with the fee, it goes up a little bit each year, so they can plan and see going forward, okay, so next year we know it's going to be that much per ton of CO2 if you're BP or Chevron or whoever. So we need to jack up our R&D and make sure that we are pivoting to a more profitable product. And that's the beauty of the market approach. Let me dive into a little detail here. What would you say to folks who argue, oh, but if fossil fuels are more expensive in the U.S., we'll be less competitive and we'll lose out to China and other economies that are not pricing carbon as aggressively? I'd say if we don't move, we're actually going to be on the losing end because other countries, Canada, the E.U., are already imposing carbon fee and dividend and they're imposing what's called a carbon border adjustment so that our goods that we sell overseas in the absence of a price of our own on carbon are going to be taxed and become less competitive to our markets overseas. So I think the pressure as the rest of the world gets ahead, we're going to have to catch up. There's also talk of the fact that because the U.S. is very concerned about pollution and has been for several decades, that our industry in general produces carbon emissions and other polluting emissions at a much lower rate so that if we impose carbon border adjustment, that we will be the beneficiaries because China and India have a much higher rate of carbon emissions. They will be paying more as they... Because they're dirtier. Because their stuff is dirtier to produce. When they ship it here, a tariff, without calling it a tariff, the border adjustment will kick in causing their product to be more expensive than ours. So it's the reverse of what we've been used to where China has been able to undercut American manufacturers. Once a border adjustment is put in place for carbon, now their product will become more expensive and it's more of an incentive for American businesses to make the supply chain here at home as opposed to overseas. So let's see, what would... Maybe we'll go around. What would you tell someone who's concerned about climate change and doesn't know what to do? I've got one, which is besides the obvious of CCL has an open door here. I think one of the things that I was really excited to learn recently was when Yale put out a climate opinion survey and this was like down to the county level and very rigorously checked and they asked people sort of like, are you concerned about climate change? And about 70% or so said, yes, I'm concerned. And then they asked another question. They asked, how many people do you think are concerned about climate change? And the answer was around 30%. And so what we see is like, there's a lot of people sort of like turning inwards and getting worried and maybe feeling very alone over having this concern. And so I think one of the most powerful things we can do to quote climate scientist Catherine Heyho is to talk about climate and like we can unify from there. The thing that struck me at the conference with what was something I learned was that the money in the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, is talked about as the largest amount of money ever put towards addressing climate change in the history of our country or any country for that matter. And it almost sounds like, oh, well then the problem is solved. We don't have to worry anymore about it. The government's behind it. We're putting money to it. And then you read the follow-ups related to the Inflation Reduction Act. And up to 80% of the carbon emissions that could be expected to come from that piece of legislation will not be realized if we are not moving forward with all kinds of other pieces of legislation, such as building more transmission wires so that we can, as we develop solar or wind or geothermal, the electricity that's coming out of those projects needs to be able to get to where it's needed. If we haven't improved, reformed the transmission rules, then we're not going to be able to get the power where it's needed. So that's something where it's like, there are many aspects where citizen involvement is important to tell legislators, don't forget this as you're dealing with this other part of the problem. I would second that. There's an expression, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you look at some of the objections, for example, to aesthetics of windmills or something here that might mess up my view or whatever, whatever the objections might be, that any damage that is caused by putting up these renewables or building these transmission lines is minimal compared to the damage if they are not built. If you simply weigh one against the other, we must build these transmission lines and switch off of fossil fuels if we want to have a livable planet. And yes, there will be compromises along the way. So I would urge, if citizens are concerned about climate change, to really educate ourselves on what is it that we need. We need to be able to transmit the renewable energy that we've now budgeted and are going to build and there's many projects in the pipeline and fix that permitting reform so that they're able to come online and be built. I think that that's just one of the most important things. And then the other thing I would just say if you're concerned is never underestimate the power of a simple phone call or an email to your legislator. When we meet with them, we talk to the staffers and they say, well, sometimes they say this. In Minnesota, they would say this. We just don't hear from our constituents very much about climate change. So as Peter was saying, we need to raise our voices, whether it's talking to our neighbors and friends about it or whether it's just picking up the phone and telling our legislator that we're concerned. Absolutely. I would love to just double down on that. Take your cell phone if you're concerned about climate. Learn what's happening in Congress. Learn about the bills that address your concerns and put your senators and your representatives' phone in. And once a week, make a polite phone call. Praise them if they've done something interesting along the way and make a simple ask. I would like you to vote for this piece of legislation. It doesn't sound like much. You'll get a staffer. You won't get the representative. But they count every phone call. And guess what? They tally those things up once a week. And whatever gets the most phone calls gets on the legislator's agenda. It really does work that way. So I agree with everything. Talk to friends and neighbors. Educate oneself. Call Congress. We really need an all-hands way of addressing climate change. I think that folks have been persuaded, convinced by the media that as long as each of us worries about our own carbon footprint will solve the problem, we need to worry about our carbon footprint. And for my own sanity I need to and for moral leadership we need to. But it's wholly insufficient. The only real way to solve climate change is systemically. And that means having government provide a framework which allows society to address climate change. That's where Citizens Climate Library comes in. That's where everyone comes in. That's calling Congress. Writing letters. Voting for political leaders that understand the climate crisis, that will do something about it. And educating oneself about how to vote. And Joining Citizens Climate Lobby. Yeah. CCLUSA.org. It's easy. I'd like to say one good thing since coming up here. Vermonters. We had seven people there from the whole state. Now that may not sound like much, but when you do the math with the 900 people that were there from the other 50 states and play in the population, we had almost four times the representation of every state. That's right. We set a record. Well, I want to thank CCTV for hosting us to be able to talk a little about climate change, climate change solutions. Personally, I'm so grateful to have made these great friends and really to spend such great time together gives me hope for our future. And with all this together, pushing... Welcome forward for next year. Hopefully we'll get something done. That's right. So about three weeks before the conference scheduled to begin, I got a call from Susanna, our state coordinator, and she said, I know we haven't been extensively involved. I'd reached out in the fall, but our schedules hadn't aligned. But I would love for you to come to this conference. We really value student voices, and I looked it up, and it looked like a great opportunity, and I arranged some flights with my dad, and I got to go. And the thing that stuck out to me most when I first arrived was how welcoming and happy the atmosphere was. I wasn't expecting for a climate change conference. I mean, it's such a serious issue, and has so many serious consequences attached to it for the mood to be so jubilant and excited, but that's what it was. And there were so many other students there. I learned so much about specific policies, like carbon-fee-individend, CBM, carbon border adjustment mechanisms, and then also how to have productive conversations with people who disagree with you, which for me was the most important takeaway. The lobby day was super exciting. We woke up really early, and everyone got to the capital steps to take a picture. There was 1,000 people there, almost, and people started singing, this land is your land, this land is my land, and again, everyone was so happy to be there. And then all day long at the capital, someone said it was like ants. We looked around, and there was just people from citizens' private lobby everywhere. Everyone in the good mood, really, working hard to communicate to lawmakers and their staffers how important the policies that they promote are. And we got to meet with Senator Welsh's staff, and I got to meet Senator Welsh, Senator Sanders' staff, and Becca Balance's staff and her as well. And it was remarkable, especially as a student, sometimes when you're listening to the news and hearing about politics and big decisions that are being made, it feels really far away, but for one day, and now for a couple days after as I think about it, it feels really close and accessible, and like there is still a way for a person to have an impact. It's really easy to get frustrated and to think that there's nothing that you individually can do about climate change. It's a huge issue, and every person is really small. But I would say that to have optimism, regardless, that there is progress being made and there are people who care, and then if you personally want to take action, I highly recommend CCL. But if not, starting small, setting attainable goals is one of the things we talked about at the conference because small steps add up when there's 7 billion people in the world who are trying to achieve them.