Frankie Fachilla from Citizens' Climate Lobby discussed their advocacy efforts to address climate change.
In order to generate the political will necessary for passage of their Carbon Fee and Dividend proposal, CCL trains and supports volunteers to build relationships with elected officials, the media and their local community.
Our speaker, Frankie Fachilla, is a full time professional in the mental health field and also a doctoral student who volunteers with CCL in her spare time. The CCL mission to engage respectfully with our members of congress to influence public policy has been life-changing for Frankie. She is passionate about empowering other citizens to communicate directly with our representatives in Congress to save this one, beautiful planet of ours!"
Climate change has a great impact on Tennessee.
CCL advocates climate change legislation fo carbon fees and dividends to encourage reduced carbon emissions through fees that would be returned to the public the public to offset the impacts of fees.
Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with 408 chaoters across the world advocating climate change legislation, specifically carbon fee and dividend. (Details at
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend/ ) CCL originated in California, and is now an international organization including four active chapters in Tennessee, and looking to create additional community chapters. Their approach is to create grassroots advocacy for their plan, including Letter to the Editor campaigns, community resolutions, and meetings with legislators and their staff. Their focus is on the economic and health benefits of carbon legislation, and their goal with legislation is to “reduce GHG emissions to ten percent of 1990 levels by 2050”. CCL has been endorsed by James Hansen, NASA climate scientist, and their carbon fee and dividend proposal is supported by Exxon and Shell.
Note: Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) does not currently have bill sponsorship in Congress, but similar carbon fee plans have been proposed by Climate Leadership Council (CLC), Americans for Carbon Dividends (AFCD), and others. In 2012, Sierra Club responded to CCL’s proposal: “Various fee-and-dividend proposals have been put forward, including the proposal from Citizens Climate Lobby. Sierra Club supports what Citizens Climate Lobby is doing, along with other proposals to put a price on carbon emissions. However, we also believe that dedicating some portion of carbon fee revenues to be used for public purposes is both good policy and an effective way to ultimately build broad bipartisan support.”
