On Wednesday May 7th, Campus Progress joined the Chesapeake Climate Action Network for an action in front of Blue Dog Democrat Congressman Boucher. We targeted the South Western Virginia representative because of his ‘negotiator’ (i.e. polluter) role in the committee talks to get climate legislation passed in congress. Among his extremely disturbing recommendations  for changing the bill are:

• To increase in total amount of permissible offsets
• To dissolution of the Energy Efficiency Resource Standards
• To weakening of the Renewable Portfolio Standards

Boucher is leading his gang of polluter-friendly blue dogs in  asking for the transfer of wealth from taxpayers, ratepayers and young people to the most polluting industries disguised as an attempt to do the opposite. In his efforts he is either demonstrating utter ignorance about climate science and energy economics, or that he just plain doesn’t care about working families.

 The action was a resounding success. About 10 of us sat in front of Representative Boucher’s office making phone calls to his own constituents to inform them about just the kind of representation they had in the federal government and to urge them to take action. After about 20 minutes, Boucher himself walked by and, on his way to his office ran into Climate champion Ethan Nuss from CCAN who confronted him about why he continues to turn down meetings with young people in his district. Finally realizing how serious young people are about protecting our future (…duh!), he hurried up inside and sent out his chief of staff to take our heat for him (sweet negotiator). She took the list of over 33 students from Virginia Tech that requested a meeting and promised to find some time for a meeting next week.

We’ll see if this is just another empty promise from a coal-loving politician or if they are serious about recognizing the depth of young people’s passion for solving the climate crisis. Either way, those 33 students (plus constituents from other schools) will be coming to D.C. next week to either meet with their ‘rep’, or to have a sit-in his office and invite the media to whitness who Boucher and other Blue Dog Democrats really represents. 

That is why it is more important than ever that you call YOUR representative and tell them to stand up to the Blue Dogs in demanding a science based climate bill, that supports working families and invests in clean energy jobs.  Call 1-877-666-3393 to get connnected directly to your representative’s office. 

* In future posts I plan to dwelve into some of the details about some of the most problematic aspects of the bill (the billions of pounds… literally… of offsets, support for the clean coal fairy tale, etc) and some of the most essential ones (renewable portfolio standards, money for adaptation, etc).