(Credit to Christine Irvine)
They saw green hard hats in the halls of congress on March 2nd during PowerShift and we warned them they would see us again. They saw green hard hats in their own districts during the congressional recess and started to realize how serious we are. Now they are back in D.C. and we are still there, wearing our green hard hats, continuing to demand a just and bold climate bill.
Congressional hearings for the Waxman-Markey bill started yesterday at 3:00 PM and won’t end till Friday, with 9 panels and over 60 witnesses from corporate America to Big Green. Even though the youth climate movement isn’t being represented on the witness stand, it has been extremely visible, so much so that many representatives called out to us during their opening statements ( “There are young people here wearing PowerShift 09 t-shirts and hardhats. This hearing is about you!” Rep Harman CA-36). Follow the hearings live on ItsGettingHotinHere.org where our people are liveblogging through twitter and text messages (we are so hip!) and learn what you can do to help us get a progressive climate bill passed through congress below the fold.
So far it seems that the bill is relatively safe from Republican attacks as they seem to be stuck on trying to disprove virtually every career climatologist rather than accepting the truth. They aren’t providing any solution, just the same tired rhetoric and debunked studies they have been using since the fight over the Clean Air Act.
The real obstacle comes from conservative democrats who seem to be wedded to local coal and oil interests and unwilling to accept the idea of a world without fossil fuels. They seem to be stuck in a magical world where coal can be clean and corporations behave in the best interest of society. It’s time to WAKE UP Blue Dogs, our future is at stake!
The fight to get a decent climate bill passed won’t be easy, and we need EVERY person who understands the urgency of the climate crisis to call their legislators and demand the passing of a bold and just climate end energy bill. Go to powershift09.org/callcongress for more information.
Check out the table below. If you live in any of these places, then your representative is on the Energy and Commerce committee and your call counts triple (or quadruple, or however much it takes for you to call):
|
State |
Target City/County/Part of State |
|
AR |
Southern half of Arkansas (excluding Little Rock) |
|
AZ |
Northern portion of the city of Phoenix as well as some of its northern suburbs |
|
CA |
Los Angeles (Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Torrance, El Segundo and Venice, Hollywood, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Woodland Hills, and Malibu); between San Francisco and San Jose (San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties, part of Silicon Valley), Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo; Sacramento, its suburbs and the surrounding area; Parts of San Joaquin, Alameda, Contra Costa, and Santa Clara counties; Fresno, Madera, Mariposa, Tuolumne, and Stanislaus; Palm Springs, Moreno Valley, Palm Desert, Hemet, Cathedral City, Temecula, Blythe, Rancho Mirage, Murrieta, Indio, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Cabazon, Anza, Thermal, Idyllwild, Coachella, and other unincorporated areas of Riverside County |
|
CO |
The City of Denver and nearby areas |
|
CT |
Northwestern Connecticut (from Meriden and New Britain in Central Connecticut, to Waterbury, the Litchfield Hills, and the Farmington River Valley) |
|
FL |
City of Tampa and its suburbs and the shoreline of southeastern Hillsborough County; From the St. Johns River and Jacksonville, through the Heart of North Central Florida, portions of Gainesville and Ocala, to the northern tip of the Orlando metropolitan area |
|
GA |
North Eastern (Fairview, La Fayette, Dalton, Gainesville) and Eastern (Augusta, Savannah) Georgia; Bartow County, Carroll County, Chattooga County, Cobb County, Floyd County, Gordon County, Haralson County, Paulding County, Polk County |
|
IA |
Northeastern Iowa |
|
IL |
South and North side of Chicago, the city’s southwest suburbs, the border of Will County, Evanston, Skokie, Niles, Lincolnwood, Morton Grove, Park Ridge and Norridge; parts of Wilmette, Northfield, Glenview, Golf, Rosemont and Des Plaines; Rural Southern Illinois, part of Springfield and the outer St. Louis suburbs |
|
IN |
South-Central and South-Eastern Indiana; Boone, Clinton, Hendricks, Lawrence, Montgomery, Tippecanoe, and parts of Fountain, Johnson, Marion, Monroe and White counties |
|
KY |
Western Kentucky |
|
LA |
Southern tier of the Greater New Orleans area; North, West and South Shore of Lake Pontchartrain |
|
MA |
Eastern Massachusetts |
|
MD |
Annapolis, central portions of the city of Baltimore, and parts of Howard and Baltimore counties |
|
MI |
southwest suburbs of Detroit such as Romulus, Taylor, Inkster, and Dearborn Heights, the western portion of Dearborn, Ann Arbor; Upper Peninsula of Michigan; Berrien, Cass, Kalamazoo, St. Joseph, and Van Buren, Southern and eastern Allegan and a portion of western Calhoun; Clinton, Ingham, and Livingston counties, the southern portion of Shiawassee and the northern portion of Oakland counties. |
|
MI |
Douglas County and the urbanized areas of Sarpy County. |
|
MO |
Southwest Missouri |
|
NC |
Roanoke Rapids, Rocky Mount, Goldsboro, and New Bern; south-central North Carolina |
|
NJ |
Middlesex County, Monmouth County, Somerset County, Union County: |
|
NY |
Bronx (Norwood, Riverdale, Wakefield, and Woodlawn), Westchester County (the city of Mount Vernon and parts of Yonkers), Rockland County (Monsey, Nanuet, Pearl River, and Suffern), Southern Brooklyn and South Central Queens; |
|
OH |
Mt Vernon, Newark, Zanesville, Chillicothe, New Philadelphia, Lorainm Elyria, Strongsville, Brunswick, Cuyahoga Falls, Akron |
|
OK |
Tulsa County, Washington County, Wagoner County, and parts of Rogers County and Creek County. |
|
OR |
East of the Willamette Valley |
|
PA |
Pittsburg; Southeastern part of the state, just west of Philadelphia; parts of Washington County, Allegheny and Westmoreland Counties |
|
TN |
Bedford, Cannon, Clay, DeKalb, Jackson, Macon, Marshall, Overton, Putnam, Robertson, Rutherford, Smith, Sumner, and Trousdale Counties, as well as a portion of Wilson County; southwestern parts of the state, connecting suburbs of Memphis and Nashville |
|
TX |
eastern portion of the Greater Houston, inner city San Antonio, South and North of the Dallas/Fort Worth area, the southeast corner of Tarrant County; northern portion of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex centering around Denton County |
|
UT |
Eastern Utah |
|
V.I. |
Whole Territory |
|
VA |
Southwestern Virginia |
|
VT |
Whole State |
|
WA |
Northwest Seattle, Shoreline, Edmonds, Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace, Bothell, Kirkland, Redmond, Bainbridge Island, Kitsap Peninsula |
|
WI |
Dane County, Green County and Columbia County, portions of Jefferson County, Sauk County, Rock County, Walworth County |