January 2018 Meeting Notes

John Macatee, Linda Quinn, Chris Bergan, Miriam Kashia, Deborah Dee, Peter Rolnick, Nadja Krylov, Eric Johnson (note taker), Barbara Eckstein, Jim Throgmorton

Peter highlighted all of our accomplishments in 2017. We did a lot!!

4 Letters to the editor

11 Op Eds

572 letters and cards to members of Congress

1 Climate Advocate Training Workshop

2 Newspaper Editorial Board meetings

11 Meetings with members of Congress or their staff

13 Tabling events

9 Other outreach events or actions

6 Endorsements/Resolutions passed

5 Attendee at two Regional Conferences in Okoboji

2 Attendees at National Conference and Lobby Day in DC

Supervisors decided to not hear any more information about a revenue-neutral carbon tax. At issue is their concern that it will incentivize biofuels and nuclear. Chris B. knows an expert who is familiar with nuclear and doesn’t think that a carbon tax would make nuclear more competitive. Peterhas heard that ethanol is now more carbon friendly due to advances in ethanol. John Macatee pointed out that we have limited resources and if the supervisors are refusing to even talk with us, then we should move on to other “low-hanging fruit”. Chris agreed to put together information related to this topic for reference.

John noted the power of motivational interviewing (https://community.citizensclimatelobby.org/learn/communications/motivational-interviewing/) and he wants to focus on increasing our chapter membership and help start other chapters. He also suggested we watch a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my19I9NYaMA) showing all the capabilities of the CCL website at our next meeting.

John, Miriam, Eric, and Peter volunteered to participate in meetings with Grassley and Ernst about starting a bipartisan climate group in the Senate.

John and Linda volunteered to table at the Prairie Preview on March 1 [Linda has since handed over that role to Terri]. John talked about how powerful and fun tabling can be, and Linda chimed in with some negative experiences she’s had tabling, namely lack of visitors/disappointing turn out.

Peter is working closely with a person in Fairfield to start a chapter there. He also has some leads on starting a chapter in Cedar Rapids. John said he would reach out to Cornell and City High to see if he could speak to environmental groups there and start CCL chapters. Miriam wanted copies of our tabling postcards so she could distribute them at the Unitarian church. John agreed to give some to her. Peter will give a brief (3 minute) presentation about Carbon Fee & Dividend to the Johnson County Republicans on February 12, and a 45 minute talk to the University of Iowa Young Americans for Liberty–the student Libertarian group–on Thursday March 8, 7:30 pm in Schaeffer Hall on campus (public invited).

There’s an Iowa CCL Ag Group now and they’re looking for local ag liaisons to meet with Farm Bureau and other organizations. No one volunteered, but Eric has an ag background of sorts and could do it if he had more time.

John recommended CCL’s speaking to liberal and conservative podcasts

Peter announced the sign up for the June CCL conference is open and Barbara and John said they were planning on going. John also offered carpooling and hotel room sharing to the national conference and the regional conference (Rapid City, September)

Peter announced Iowa’s Grand Canyon Project, where we form a group where each person will call a congressional office once per month, but the calls will be scheduled to cover every business day of the month so the office is getting at least one climate change phone call per month. Everyone in attendance volunteered to be part of this project. [Thanks to everyone, and to volunteers elsewhere in the state we have enough people to begin the project, so you will all be hearing from Peter soon!]

John expressed interest in pursuing the climate grants (http://www.press-citizen.com/story/news/local/2017/07/10/iowa-city-offers-grants-creative-climate-action-collaborations/460531001/) from the City of Iowa City and Nadja said she would work with him to look at the RFP.

Peter talked about Reaching Out to other communities. The ideas are good, but we need people to actually do the leg work. Peter wanted people to think about what chunks of activity they can personally take on. Jim brought up the concept MLK’s Beloved Community which is a vision where all people share in the wealth of earth. He suggested a way to work towards this would be to simply have ICCA members regularly attend monthly meetings of other groups and become links between the communities. Miriam said that made her feel like a spy. Barbara talked about Social Justice and Peter asked her to summarize so ICCA can start a reference file for future endeavors.

Jim mentioned another community we could try to connect with is latinos, particularly those who are in the Forest View housing area near Foster Road. They are being re-housed as part of a development project and we could connect with them and help shape the eco-friendliness of the housing.

UI’s theme semester is starting on January 16 and is a good opportunity to connect with the University community.

Eric- We have secured Merge in the Iowa City Ped Mall as a meeting place for the next 4 meetings [thank you Eric and Jamie, for arranging that]! They will be from 11:45 to 1:45pm, next one February 10.

The nation CCL video call can be see here:

2017 stats for the international organization:

457 CCL chapters

92,000+ CCL members

2,000+ conservatives joined CCL

2,535 endorsements

1,656 meetings with members of Congress

One takeaway from the guest speaker: People have a finite pool of worry, so try to find what their pool is filled with and talk to them about how climate change relates to the worries already in their pool.