Federal Climate Bill -

Federal Climate Bill

UMD for Clean Energy will continue to advocate for strong federal climate legislation in 2010. The Senate is now considering a bill sponsored by Senator John Kerry (D, Massachusetts), Senator Lindsey Graham (R, South Carolina), and Joe Lieberman (I, Connecticut). The bill will be a comprehensive bi-partisan bill that can get the necessary 60 votes. Harry Reid has said the legislation will reach the Senate floor in the spring and we plan to advocate for as strong a bill as possible. We are working to bring Senator Ben Cardin to campus later in the semester to talk about the need for a climate bill.

Background

This past June, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) passed in the House of Representatives. As always, the polluters sent their big-time lobbyists to bring down the bill, but ultimately the voices of climate activists were louder. UMD for Clean Energy made its own significant mark:

Last May our group hosted a town hall meeting with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on our campus at the Stamp Student Union. More than 300 people were in attendance, most of whom were students. At the meeting, students were eager to discuss the topic at hand - energy and climate legislation, and were not afraid to ask the Congressman tough questions.
This past June a group of UMD for Clean Energy students joined constituents from Maryland’s congressional district 1 (Eastern Shore), to lobby their Congressman Frank Kratovil to support the ACES bill. Despite representing a relatively conservative District, Kratovil ultimately voted in favor of the bill.

In the fall of 2009, the Committee for the Environment and Public Works began drafting a Senate version of the climate bill, and UMD for Clean Energy continued to advocate for strong legislation. We were lucky to have our Senator Ben Cardin sitting on the committee, giving us the opportunity to voice our concerns to the drafters.

During the fall semester we held lobby meetings with both Senator Ben Cardin’s office and Senator Barbara Mikulski's office to demand a Senate bill that was at least as strong as ACES with certain criteria that would strengthen the legislation.
In our meeting with Senator Cardin’s office, we submitted a letter that outlined our criteria for the bill, which was picked up by the Washington Post’s Maryland Politics Blog!
Our then Media Director Kenny Frankel had a letter to the editor about the climate bill in the University of Maryland’s newspaper the Diamondback (here), and our Campaign Director Matt Dernoga had letters to the editor in both the Gazette (here) and the Washington Post (here)!
We participated in 350.org’s “International Day of Climate Action” on October 24, in which thousands of actions took place around the world to advocate for the implementation of strong global climate action. Members of our group attended the action in Washington D.C. where we marched to the white house to demand US leadership on climate change.

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