Weekly Briefing: Last Call For Conservative Conference Applications
February 28, 2024
CCL’s Conservative Climate Leadership Conference and Lobby Day is fast approaching! The event program for Tues., March 19 is now available, and it includes interesting, informative sessions that will explore:
- Pushing high-polluting countries to do their part through carbon fees
- Locking in climate funding in the upcoming Farm Bill
- Bipartisan permitting reform opportunities
- How to hit the halls of Congress with this year’s lobbying asks
Our congressional liaisons are already hard at work scheduling meetings for the Capitol Hill lobby day on Wed., March 20, following the conference.
After a busy day on the Hill, we will toast to our advocacy at a post-lobbying reception in the Hart Senate Building. We’ll also present our 2024 Climate Champion awards to three members of Congress.
Applications for the event close March 5, and registration closes March 7, so if you are one of our right-of-center volunteers, be sure to sign up soon.
If you’re not attending the event, be sure to follow CCL on Instagram, Facebook, X, or Threads to see and share our posts from the conference and from Capitol Hill.
In other news this week:
• A path for a carbon price: A new paper out this week from the Hamilton Project and Brookings Institution explores how upcoming tax policy discussions may create an avenue for a carbon price. The paper projects emissions cuts and fiscal impacts of several climate policy scenarios, including a carbon fee. CCL Research Coordinator Dana Nuccitelli breaks it all down in the Nerd Corner on CCL Community.
• Making it fun in Montana: Our Mountain West Regional Coordinator Bill Barron just wrapped up his latest outreach tour, this time through the state of Montana. Check out this social media thread of 20 photos and tour highlights to see our grassroots advocacy in action.
• Save the date for our March fundraiser: Monthly donations from grassroots supporters like you provide reliable funding year round, making it easier to strategically plan and allowing us the flexibility to take advantage of emerging new opportunities. This year, we aim to raise $10,000 in new monthly donations in March. And now, you have the opportunity to quadruple your impact: All new and increased monthly donations started in the month of March will be matched $3-to-$1 for 3 months! So stay tuned and save the date!
Take action this week
If you have a little time: Send your Farm Bill message to Congress. Just a few days left to take our February action! We’re contacting Congress to ask them to protect $20 billion of climate-smart investments in the next Farm Bill, which should be negotiated this year. If your senators and representative haven’t heard from you yet, send your messages with our easy action tool today.
If you have more time: Help get out the environmental vote. CCL’s Election Engagement Action Team is hosting weekly phone banks in partnership with the Environmental Voter Project (EVP) every Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT until election day in November. We will provide training on how to phone bank with EVP and start making calls to get environmental voters out to vote in primaries and special elections around the country. Join us Feb. 28 (that’s today!), March 6, March 13, or on a future Wednesday.
Featured chapter: CCL Middle Tennessee
CCL’s Middle Tennessee chapter formed when the Nashville chapter and the nearby Williamson County chapter combined a few years ago. Led by Fred LeMay, CCL Middle Tennessee has about 12-15 regular volunteers who attend meetings.
“Fred does a great newsletter each month which links to several climate stories as well as announcing the chapter meeting,” Regional Coordinator Jon Clark says. The February meeting took place at a coffee shop, and the group wrote postcards together to help encourage environmentalists to vote in upcoming primary elections.
CCL Middle Tennessee covers four different House districts and includes the CCL liaisons to both of Tennessee’s senators — and their efforts are moving the needle.
“All six members of Congress are conservative Republicans. We have established good relations with the staffers where they seem to enjoy the meetings,” Jon explains. “Both our Senators voted for the Growing Climate Solutions Act,” he adds, which was a bipartisan climate bill CCL successfully supported into law in 2022.
In another recent win, Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN-04) cosponsored the Increased TSP Access Act. His district is in Middle Tennessee but doesn’t have its own dedicated chapter. “CCL volunteers engaged with the office back in August to ask him to cosponsor the bill, and just a couple months later, he signed on! We're extremely motivated to start a chapter in his TN-04 district.”
Two volunteers in the chapter are also working to revitalize chapters or start new ones beyond Middle Tennessee — they have their eyes on Chattanooga and Memphis next.
Great work, CCL Middle Tennessee!
Have you logged your recent activities in the Action Tracker? Tell us what your chapter has been up to lately!
Action Tracker Want your chapter to be featured? Share your info and photos with us.
Upcoming trainings
2/29: New Research on the Benefits from the BIG WIRES Act - Researchers from MIT recently published a paper detailing all of the great benefits that would come from passing the BIG WIRES Act, and researchers from Vanderbilt published a study about the big role household electrification and efficiency will play in realizing the Inflation Reduction Act's climate pollution reductions potential. CCL Research Coordinator Dana Nuccitelli will summarize all of this new info. Join us!
3/7: Planning Your Spring In-District Drop-Off - Your members of Congress (MOCs) will be working in their district/state offices during the last week of March and first week of April. Attend this training for help planning a local drop-off of materials to show that climate policy has strong support in your district/state. Join us!
Need training on the basics? Catch our next session of Core Volunteer Training, made for newer volunteers:
3/5: CCL Media Basics - Join CCL's State and Local Media Coordinator Charlotte Ward to learn about CCL's suite of media resources. Learn to customize and submit one of CCL’s op-ed templates, write local letters to the editor, and more. Join us!
To see other topics and past trainings, visit the Training Topics page of CCL Community.
Nerd Corner Chart of the Week
96% of new power generation capacity built in the US in 2024 will be clean
Join the discussion about the clean energy buildout, especially in Texas and California
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