Navigating Climate Legislation and Grassroots Activism

The election cycle can feel overwhelming for the average person who is climate-concerned, but not deeply political enough to understand where and how to plug in. If you have money to give, where should it go? If you have time to contribute, what should you do? We could think of no better group than the experts we have here to help walk us through it. 

Tiernan Sittenfeld is the Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at LCV or the League of Conservation Voters, among many other things. LCV assigns every member of the U.S. Congress with a national environmental Scorecard, which is a handy tool for tracking their voter record on issues related to climate change. 

Caroline Spears is the Executive Director at Climate Cabinet, which she describes as Moneyball meets climate policy. Climate Cabinet analyzes local climate and governance data to uncover high-leverage races and candidates across thousands of local offices. Caroline joined us previously on the pod a few years ago for a deep dive about her journey and her work. 

Eliza Nemser is the Co-founder and Executive Director at Climate Changemakers, a modern climate advocacy network built for busy, productive people. They help individuals take productive climate action through action playbooks, issue briefings and hour-of-action co-working sessions. Eliza is also a repeat guest on the show.

A few disclaimers: One, this episode tends to be pretty pro-Democrat. Some of that comes from top-of-the-ticket sentiment such as former President Trump's withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement. Some of it comes from the most recent experience in Congress where the Inflation Reduction Act faced a 51 to 50 vote in the Senate that was evenly split down party lines with Vice President Harris breaking the tie. This is not to say that all Democrats are strong on climate. The Inflation Reduction Act nearly died many times inside the Democratic Party before it passed. And if you look up and down Congress and even farther into state and local politics, there are a wide range of LCV scores for Democratic candidates and there are some Republicans who are strong on climate issues as well. The second disclaimer is that climate is a huge topic. We didn't take time in the episode to talk about what it means to be a "climate voter."

We've learned one thing over the years, that you should never assume that climate-concerned people always agree on solutions. We intentionally didn't spend time going deep into the pros and cons of different policy platforms. And yes, there is an argument to be made that natural gas is a bridge fuel and that replacing coal aggressively with gas will help our emissions problem. But this episode is meant for people who already know they want to see progress around clean energy deployment across our economy and want some ideas on how to get involved in the election cycle. 

*Watch the MCJ Collective member hub for a special Ask-Me-Anything session with Climate Changemakers.  

In this episode, we cover: 

• [5:00] Intro to Tiernan and LCV
• [6:16] Intro to Caroline and Climate Cabinet
• [7:30] Intro to Eliza and Climate Changemakers
• [9:02] Climate stakes in this election
• [15:30] House and Senate race importance
• [21:30] Climate's political divide
• [28:45] House stakes this cycle
• [34:30] Texas election outlook
• [39:20] Key states to watch
• [42:17] Climate champion governors
• [44:13] LCV candidate scoring
• [47:15] Supporting candidates financially
• [57:22] How to participate and engage
• [1:08:21] Improving accessibility and outcomes

Episode recorded on Aug 30, 2024 (Published on Sept 16, 2024)

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant