Many of us would like to take climate action at the national level as well as here in Maine, but, for various reasons, we don’t. For one thing, the national political scene seems like an intractable, completely dysfunctional mess. For another, the scale of the national government is so much larger than, say, the city council or the Augusta legislature.

However, I recently had an experience that left me convinced that it’s very doable for average citizens to have an impact on climate policy in Congress. A number of months ago I joined the Citizens Climate Lobby — an international grassroots group that helps volunteers build relationships with their elected officials in order to influence climate policy.

Charles “Tex” Haeuser attended a Citizens Climate Lobby conference in June in Washington, D.C. Haeuser, second from left, is pictured outside Rep. Patrick Ryan’s office on June 13, the Citizens Climate Lobby Day. Courtesy photo

In this connection I went to a Citizens Climate Lobby conference in June in Washington, D.C. where we learned about our primary and secondary “asks” (the bills or policies we want our representatives to support) and then had a lobbying day where over a thousand volunteers had over 400 meetings with members of Congress and their staff. I participated in three such meetings, one of which was with our own very impressive Rep. Chellie Pingree.

Here are my take-aways from this event:

1. There are certain climate action efforts that are a lot more effective than others in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Two of the top priorities we should be focusing on now are permitting reform (so it doesn’t take 10-plus years to get approvals for all the green energy projects enabled by the Inflation Reduction Act) and enacting a carbon fee and dividend program (see https://citizensclimatelobby.org/price-on-carbon/).

2. Washington, D.C., isn’t as much of a madhouse as we see on the news — bipartisanship is possible and does happen.

3. The D.C. legislative scene isn’t that much different from the one in Maine. Just like in Augusta, you have representatives crammed into small offices with various staffers and a cafeteria in the basement where people hang out between meetings.

4. The set of people who will decide and shape what does or doesn’t happen with climate change at the national level–congress people, staff, policy outfits, media, etc. — adds up to a finite number and we mostly know who they are. Therefore, consistent, concerted effort on this limited number of people can achieve results. The more people getting after them in a coordinated way the better our chance for success (and human survival).

The Citizens Climate Lobby is an international grassroots group that helps volunteers build relationships with elected officials in order to influence climate policy. Courtesy photo

5. Organizations like the Citizens Climate Lobby do a wonderful job making it easy for average folks to learn about climate policy, and provide a ton of support and easy tools for lobbying from home or in person at national, state, and local levels.

I joined the Portland Committee of Citizens Climate Lobby and there are Citizens Climate Lobby committees in other Maine communities.

For more information, please feel free to contact me at tex@haeuserplanning.com and/or visit the Citizens Climate Lobby at https://citizensclimatelobby.org/.

Charles “Tex” Haeuser is a member of the South Portland Bike-Ped Committee, Brownsfield Advisory Committee and vice president of the South Portland Land Trust. He was South Portland planning director (1990-2020) and can be reached at tex@haeuserplanning.com or 207-671-7645.