Citizens' Climate Lobby

How does an American Hindu approach the climate crisis? What ancient values and teachings apply to modern life in America today? And how does this relate to LGBTQ issues and public health? Hari Venkatachalam connects his faith, work, heritage, and even his sexual orientation to living in a climate-changed world.

In the episode Hari reveals how extreme weather, which affects everyone, disproportionally impacts LGBTQ homeless youth. Citizens Climate Radio host, Peterson Toscano, explains, 

Up to 40% of youth living on the streets in the United States and Canada are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and non-binary. Many of them avoid going to shelters because they assume they will received the same discrimination and hostility they escaped. This is especially true for transgender and gender non-binary young people. This puts them at extra risk during extreme weather events.

Hari Venkatachalam also talks about his faith and the principles handed down to him from his father. Hari is an active member of Sadhana: A Coalition of Progressive Hindus, and his activism focuses on environmental justice, LGBTQ+ issues, and public health. He currently works in Tampa, Florida as a public health researcher for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Kathy Baughman McLeod, SVP, Atlantic Council & Director, Adrienne Arsht - Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, also weighs in to talk about the dangers of extreme heat.

The Art House

Joining us in the Art House is Dr. Krista Hiser, with the first in a series of an occasional feature called The Ultimate Cli-Fi Book cCub. The purpose of the book club is to look at climate-themed literature and consider how it can help us engage differently with interdisciplinary topics and existential threats related to the planetary predicament of climate change. 

In this episode Krista reflects on the cli-fi novel, Blaze Island by Catherine Bush, and lets her imagination run wild, as she pulls together some of the greatest minds in climate fiction. 

Dr. Krista Hiser is Professor at Kapiʻolani Community College. Her PhD is in Educational Administration from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She has published on community engagement, service-learning, organizational change, post-apocalyptic and cli-fi literature. 

You can read a written version of Krista’s essay at The Ultimate Cli-Fi Book Club for Sustainability in Higher Education on Medium. 

You can hear standalone versions of The Art House at Artists and Climate Change

Good News Report

Our good news comes from Anthony Leiserowitz at Yale Climate Connections. You will hear about a new fund which aims to bring more people into the climate conversation. 

We always welcome your thoughts, questions, suggestions, good news, and recommendations for the show. Leave a voice mail at 518.595.9414. (+1 if calling from outside the USA.) You can email your answers to radio @ citizensclimate.org  

You can hear Citizens’ Climate Radio on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, SoundCloud, Podbean, Northern Spirit Radio, Google Play, PlayerFM, and TuneIn Radio. Also, feel free to connect with other listeners, suggest program ideas, and respond to programs in the Citizens’ Climate Radio Facebook group or on Twitter at @CitizensCRadio.

Join CCL Strategy Director Tony Sirna for a background review of the budget reconciliation process, understand how this process might apply to carbon fee and dividend related legislation and review additional climate legislation emerging from the Senate and House packages.

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Presentation Slides: http://cclusa.org/reconciliation-explained-slides 

Border carbon adjustments, a mechanism to shield businesses in nations with robust climate ambition, have been a hot topic recently. The European Union has announced it will impose such taxes starting in 2023, and Senate Democrats in the U.S. have included it in the budget reconciliation resolution. To learn more, we turn to Aaron Cosbey with the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Aaron is an economist with 30 years of experience in the areas of trade, investment and sustainable development. He has served on the Deputy Minister for International Trade’s Academic Advisory Council on Canadian Trade Policy and recently wrote a report on the need for Canada to adopt a border carbon adjustment.

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CCL's September Action Sheet: https://cclusa.org/actionsheet  

We're having a surge of new members join CCL! Want to brainstorm ideas on how to best support your own local efforts? Join Elli Sparks, CCL Field Development Director, for a training review that pulls on some of the best ideas from the Onboarding and Group Development Coaches action teams to offer tips and suggested strategies for bringing new people aboard CCL so that they acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become empowered CCL volunteers.

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Join the Onboarding Action Team for more ideas!

Join CCL leaders for a review of CCL's training on our five pillars of transformational organizing to help us strengthen our leadership development and capacity throughout our organization. We'll review suggestions and ideas in our groups will increase the number of highly engaged and motivated people that we work with and enable us to reach our goals!

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Presentation Slides: https://cclusa.org/transformational-organizing-slides 

Chantal Bilodeau tells us about Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA) 2021. Founded in 2015, CCTA is a worldwide series of readings and performances of short climate change plays presented biennially to coincide with the United Nations COP meetings. 

CCTA was originally founded by Elaine Ávila, Chantal Bilodeau, Roberta Levitow, and Caridad Svich following a model pioneered by NoPassport Theatre Alliance. It has since evolved into a U.S.-Canada collaboration between The Arctic Cycle and the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts.

Chantal is a playwright and translator originally from Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal, but now based in New York City, the traditional land of the Lenape People. In her capacity as artistic director of The Arctic Cycle, she has been instrumental in getting the theatre and academic communities, as well as audiences in the U.S. and abroad, to engage in climate action through programming that includes live events, talks, publications, workshops, national and international convenings, and a worldwide distributed theatre festival.

To tell us about one of the plays is Dr Zoë Svendsen, Lecturer in Drama and Performance in the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. Dr. Svendson’s play comes out of a larger project called Love Letter to a Livable Planet. Through collaboration with members of METIS Arts, Zoe created a short play called Love Out of Ruins, where we get to decide many of the details. 

Think of it as a much more sophisticated version of Mad-Libs with the aim to create a vision of the future worth pursuing. The play begins in the present time and moves forward. You get to decide the details that shape the character’s world.

You can read Love Out of Ruins by Zoë Svendsen at one of your CCL events. In fact, having a group of friends, students, or climate advocates sit and each fill in the lines can be a mind and heart expanding activity.  Then you can share the results at a Climate Change Theatre Action event you host and read some of the plays by the 49 other playwrights from around the world. 

Learn more about how you can get your hands on these plays and host your own event. Visit climatechangetheatreaction.com. 

The Art House

As a podcaster and radio producer, our host, Peterson Toscano listens to many climate change podcasts. Every now and then though he hears a well designed podcast that hits him in the heart and the gut. It becomes a transformative audio experience. This is exactly what happened when he first listened to Claude Schryer’s Conscient podcast.

As a sound designer, he is able to reach deep into a listener’s mind and even our bodies. Sound has that power. Peterson chatted with Claude about his podcast and his own journey as an artist addressing climate change. From that recorded conversation, Claude wove in sound effects and personal reflection.  We encourage you to listen with headphones on. 

The conscient podcast / balado conscient is a bilingual series of conversations about arts, conscience and the ecological crisis.You will find it wherever you listen to podcasts. 

You can hear standalone versions of The Art House at Artists and Climate Change

Good News Report

Our good news story this month comes from the US State of Utah. Tom Moyer shares How 25 Republicans in Utah came to endorse carbon fee and dividend.  If you have good news to share, email us radio @ citizensclimate.org

We always welcome your thoughts, questions, suggestions, and recommendations for the show. Leave a voice mail at 518.595.9414. (+1 if calling from outside the USA.) You can email your answers to radio @ citizensclimate.org  

You can hear Citizens’ Climate Radio on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, SoundCloud, Podbean, Northern Spirit Radio, Google Play, PlayerFM, and TuneIn Radio. Also, feel free to connect with other listeners, suggest program ideas, and respond to programs in the Citizens’ Climate Radio Facebook group or on Twitter at @CitizensCRadio.

Whether lobbying a member of Congress or doing grassroots outreach to enroll volunteers, the ability to really listen is a valuable asset. Our guest this month, Pamela Benson Owens, will coach us on constructive listening. Pam is the President and CEO of Edge of Your Seat Consulting, Inc., a consulting firm that is dedicated to helping for-profit, non-profit and faith-based organizations. Pam leverages humor and honest storytelling to create memorable and applicable strategies that organizations can employ to achieve their goals.

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CCL's August Action Sheet: https://cclusa.org/actionsheet 

Join CCL's Media Manager Ashley Hunt-Martorano for a training that will introduce you to TikTok and CCL's active channel on it (https://www.tiktok.com/@citizensclimate) as well as enhancing you and your group’s use of the newer social media platform to support your social media goals and interact with the millions of users online.

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• (0:00) Intro & Agenda

Follow Us: https://www.tiktok.com/@citizensclimate 

Join CCL Executive Director Mark Reynolds, President Madeleine Para and Vice President of Government Affairs Danny Richter for a special CCL webinar for all-leaders because now is the time for a big push in the U.S. House of Representatives.  

Review the legislative landscape as context for this campaign, understand how CCL will amplify our asks to both Democrat and Republican House offices, and take action to help ensure a price on carbon is included in the reconciliation package.

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Take Action on A Price on Carbon in the House: https://cclusa.org/house

#climatechange #climate #reconciliation #priceoncarbon #carbontax

Geraldo Cadava is the author of The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of An American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump published by Ecco. He chatted with Citizens Climate Radio about the long history of Hispanics and the Republican party. He reveals what is often misunderstood about the political diversity of Latinos in America. The most asked question he gets is why any Latino voted for Donald Trump. He talks about this and a lot more. He also considers the question about Hispanic Republicans and climate change.

Geraldo Cadava is a professor of History and Latina and Latino Studies at Northwestern University. He received a Ph.D. in History from Yale University in 2008, and he received a B.A., also in History, from Dartmouth College in 2000. His areas of expertise are Latino History, the United States-Mexico Borderlands, Latin American immigration to the United States, and American politics. 

The Art House

Over 10 years ago Elli Sparks was struggling to make sense of climate change. She said “…that summer in Virginia  was insanely hot. I remember being in the community pool and when I popped my head out of the water, the water evaporated so quickly I felt downright cold!  I also remember walking with coworkers to the cafeteria and thinking, ‘Why in the world are none of these people alarmed about climate change??!!’”

She was really struggling, so she wrote a story for herself. Tell Me A Story is a conversation between a parent and a child, a story within a story. Elli, who is now Citizens Climate Lobby’s Director of Field Development, has shared the story with friends, fellow climate advocates, and at public gatherings. She gave Citizens Climate Radio permission to turn the story into a short radio play. Tell Me a Story is performed by Zeke and Anna Loomis-Weber. 

Anna Weber-Loomis (she/her) just finished her first year at Sterling College in Vermont. She is studying outdoor education and sustainable agriculture. Zeke Weber-Loomis (she/her) just finished her first year of high school. She spends her free time drawing, playing ukulele, and running cross-country and track.

You can hear standalone versions of The Art House at Artists and Climate Change

Good News Report

Hunter Thomas, a Latino and a Conservative Outreach Fellow for Citizens Climate Radio shares good news about productive meetings he is having with CCL’s Latino Action Team. He is excited about reaching out to Latino Conservatives, especially in promoting carbon fee and divided as a bold and effective solution that appeals to the Right and Left.

If you have good news to share, email us radio @ citizensclimate.org

Dig Deeper     

• Politico: Trump Didn’t Win the Latino Vote in Texas. He Won the Tejano Vote.

We always welcome your thoughts, questions, suggestions, and recommendations for the show. Leave a voice mail at 518.595.9414. (+1 if calling from outside the USA.) You can email your answers to radio @ citizensclimate.org  

You can hear Citizens’ Climate Radio on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, SoundCloud, Podbean, Northern Spirit Radio, Google Play, PlayerFM, and TuneIn Radio. Also, feel free to connect with other listeners, suggest program ideas, and respond to programs in the Citizens’ Climate Radio Facebook group or on Twitter at @CitizensCRadio.