Climate SOS Picked Up by E&ENews

Alex Kaplun, E&E Reporter, September 8

About 60 advocacy groups — including environmentalists, organized labor, hunters and fishers, and military veterans — announced the formation of a coalition today aimed at pushing a climate bill across the finish line in the Senate.

Clean Energy Works’ campaign will feature grass-roots activities in 28 states, as well as paid media advertising. Among its members are the Sierra Club, Service Employees International Union, the American Values Network, VoteVets and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Organizers say the effort builds on coalitions that successfully lobbied for House passage of the climate bill.

“Taking a look at the challenge that we face in getting something through the Senate, it was clear that we needed to take what we have already done and build on that into something bigger, bolder and stronger,” said Joshua Dorner, deputy communications director for the campaign.

Though the most recent effort is far from the first time that environmentalists have worked side by side with labor and others on the left, Dorner said the campaign is unique in that it will put people from the various groups under one umbrella. Clean Energy Works will be staffed by about 35 employees from participating organizations in a Washington office.

The organization, Dorner said, will not push for any specific changes to the climate bill but will work simply to ensure that it passes the Senate and eventually makes it to the president’s desk.

“The purpose of this campaign is really just to galvanize the broad support to pass a comprehensive bill that’s clean energy and climate,” Dorner said. “Everybody who has lobbied on this will continue to lobby on their issue of concern.”

The coalition’s formation comes as Congress and the White House focus their attention almost exclusively on health care. Still, Dorner said the coalition does not intend to sit on the sidelines as Congress debates health care, and will instead launch efforts designed to keep the climate issue in the spotlight.

Later this week, the campaign will bring about 100 military veterans to Washington to push for the climate bill, and it will also start running television ads in the next few days. The groups also have roughly 50 events planned nationwide this week to coincide with the release of a report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy on the potential economic benefits of the climate bill.

Left-wing coalition hopes to stop bill

As Clean Energy Works prepares to promote a Senate climate bill, another coalition of left-wing groups is launching its own effort aimed at killing the measure and demanding new legislation that will be “grounded in science instead of politics.”

The groups — operating under the name Climate SOS — will attempt to meet with Senate staffers in North Dakota, Indiana, Arkansas and Ohio and will cap the effort with “nonviolent civil disobedience, office occupations and protests” on Sept. 22.

The group intends to hold protests and sit-ins in San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and New York and specifically intends to occupy the state-based offices of Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.).

The coalition includes the Climate Crisis Coalition, Energy Justice Network, One Earth Climate Action Group and Progressive Democrats of America.

The groups argue that the climate bill currently under consideration does not go far enough in limiting carbon dioxide emissions and would benefit fossil-fuel industries, utilities and Wall Street.