Daily Sitka Sentinel

Sitkans Lobby in D.C. For Climate Action

By BRIELLE SCHAEFFER
Sentinel Staff Writer
    Two Sitkans joined thousands of activists in the nation’s capital last week to ask members of Congress to take action to ease climate change.
    As members of the Citizens Climate Lobby, a grassroots organization with some 450 chapters nationwide, Kay Kreiss and Barb Bingham attended a two-day conference  then met with Alaska’s congressional delegation.
    “We came back really optimistic about the possibility of mobilizing ordinary citizens in Alaska and the U.S in general to bring pressure on Congress in a respectful, nonpartisan way to pass legislation that would put a fee on fossil fuel,” Kreiss said.
    The idea is that the carbon fees would then be paid out as a dividend to individuals in the U.S., similar to the way the permanent fund dividend is distributed to Alaska residents.
    “It would basically go to everybody to help them pay for the increased cost of gasoline and electricity,” she said.
    The estimates indicate about two-thirds of Americans, those who have the lowest income, would get more in a dividend than they would pay in increased prices, she said. Money from dividends will then help stimulate the economy.
    “We think it’s really feasible that this can happen through congressional action,” Kreiss said. “The sooner we start acting the better it’s going to be.”
    If a carbon fee is instated, in 20 years carbon emissions could be lowered to half of what they were in 1990, Kreiss said.
    She said the carbon fee is a well-thought-out solution that’s rapidly gaining ground.
    “One of the things that’s still exciting to me is when I first joined the Citizens Climate Lobby in Sitka there were only 22 members in the House who belonged to a Climate Solutions Caucus,” Kreiss said.
    Just a few months later that number has doubled, she said.
    “A couple Republicans joined just within the last week,” Kreiss said.
    Alaska senators Lisa Murkowsi and Dan Sullivan, as well as Rep. Don Young, were interested and supportive of what the Citizens Climate Lobby is working on, Kriess said.
    “All of them had been concerned about the effects of climate on Alaskan citizens,” she said.
    For Kreiss, lobbying was a new experience.
    “I would have never of thought of lobbying in a million years but I felt comfortable because I had online training in videos the months before I went and a morning of training at the conference,” she said. “We all really felt like we had voices that were being heard.”
    Kreiss and Bingham joined several Alaska representatives while lobbying on Capitol Hill.
    Kreiss told Murkowski, Sullivan and Young that Sitka’s severe weather events spurred her action.
    “I basically talked about how in Sitka the severe weather events including the one that led to 40 landslides within a few minutes in August 2015 were one of the reasons I was interested in doing something,” she said.
    Michele Putz, a member of Sitka’s Citizens Climate Lobby, said she was excited to have representatives from Sitka take part in the national conference.
    “Climate change is something that will affect all of us,” she said. “When a person is willing to travel that far to stand up for something that is important to them and their community it really speaks volumes. When Alaskans speak about important issues like climate change people hear them more.”
    Sitka’s chapter of the Citizens Climate Lobby is part of the Global Warming Group, which has also worked to get more reusable bags at the grocery stores, among other things.
    For more information, visit SitkaGlobalWarming.org.