Earth Day: A time to recommit to preserving a livable world
Earth Day: A time to recommit to preserving a livable world
NEWSLETTER, April 2024—CCI media successes around Earth Day; Mother-daughter team are dynamic duo on climate change; Canadian volunteers on a roll; CCI joins Good Food Finance Network.
When Earth Day debuted more than 50 years ago, it marked the dawn of the environmental movement and an awareness that nature is an incredible gift that humanity mustn’t squander. Initially, actions focused on ridding our air and water of toxins that were slowly poisoning us. People organized clean-up crews to pick up trash and return green spaces to pristine condition. In the last couple of decades, the focus has shifted to climate change and the existential struggle to free civilization from its addiction to fossil fuels, which must be done to preserve a livable world for the people who inhabit it. CCI is empowering citizens to engage their governments and the media to generate the political will for us to be proper stewards of this unique and beautiful planet.
CCI media successes around Earth Day
April 22, otherwise known as Earth Day, each year presents an opportunity to lift our message about the need to act on climate change and what to do about it. CCI took advantage of that opportunity by offering an opinion column by Executive Director Joe Robertson touting carbon pricing as the tool that can speed the phaseout of fossil fuels. CCI volunteers in several countries took Joe’s piece — What To Give Our Planet And Its People For Earth Day? Climate Income Is The Perfect Present — added information about the local impact of climate change, and submitted it to their newspapers. The result: a total of seven placements in Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and India.
Here’s an excerpt that was published in Ghana:
“As we pause this Earth Day to appreciate our life-sustaining planet, let’s resolve to take meaningful action to preserve a livable world by speeding up the transition away from fossil fuels. Climate income — a carbon price with revenue given to households — is an effective tool for achieving that goal.”
CCL Canada, which is defending that nation’s carbon pricing system, also published an op-ed in The Telegram in Newfoundland — Celebrate the carbon rebate this Earth Day and also in Milton, ON.
Joe also had an op-ed about climate change and food security that was published in The Hill, a media outlet that covers the U.S. Congress. His piece called for more funding to help “farmers to employ more sustainable methods that provide resilience to our changing climate and also sequester more carbon than they release.”
Mother-daughter team are dynamic duo on climate change
Seventeen-year-old Sophia Mathur, a CCL Canada volunteer in Sudbury, Ontario, was recently named to Maclean’s Magazine’s Power List of 100 Canadians “shaping the country in 2024.” Maclean’s acknowledged her as the nation’s “No. 1 climate crusader.” Among other things, Sophia is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit holding the province of Ontario accountable for failing to do enough on climate change. A few years back, inspired by climate activist Greta Thunberg, she initiated the first School Strike for Climate in Canada. And since the age of seven, she’s lobbied legislators to enact effective climate policies.
It should come as no surprise that Sophia has become the voice of her generation on climate change in Canada. She’s the daughter of Cathy Orlando, program director of Citizens’ Climate International. Cathy launched CCL Canada in 2010 and played a key role in Canada enacting a federal price on carbon with revenue given to households. She, Sophia and the exceptional volunteer network in Canada are currently defending Canada’s carbon rebate program ahead of next year’s federal election. Read more about their story in a new CCI blog post.
Canadian volunteers on a roll
Our Canadian volunteers have been on fire during the first four months of 2024, with 557 contacts with legislators and 404 media hits. CCL Canada is on track to exceed its best yearly performance for volunteer actions by the month of June. Some recent achievements include:
CCL volunteers in Manitoba joined with other groups for a lobbying event on April 4 with provincial legislators.
On April 9, National Director Cathy Orlando and Caterina Lindman, leader of the Waterloo region, delivered a presentation in the House of Commons based on CCL Canada’s laser talk, “The Uninsurable World.”
The comms team created a really smart-looking handbook for volunteers.
Canadian volunteers helped generate a fair share of the 1492 signatures on a House of Commons petition urging legislators “to fully support the planned increase to the Federal Carbon Tax in April of 2024 and to renew their commitment to current Federal Carbon Tax legislation for the good of all Canadians.”
In April CCL Canada published a First-Quarter Report for 2024 that has detailed metrics of their work and getting what they lobbied for again.
CCI joins Good Food Finance Network
When it comes to climate change adaptation and mitigation, few things loom larger than agriculture, where climate-smart farming can help provide sufficient, nutritious food and also bring down carbon emissions. Funding is needed to help farmers, especially in developing countries, transition to more sustainable practices, and the Good Food Finance Network was created to support critical innovations across the landscape of food-related finance.
Citizens’ Climate International is pleased to announce that we’ve joined that collaborative effort and will lead coordination of the GFFN's Integrated Data Systems Initiative. The first major output from CCI's engagement is release of a ‘Blueprint for Good Food Finance Data Systems Integration’—which aims to guide development of exploratory integrations of data systems, technologies, platforms, and metrics.
Learn more about CCI’s partnership with GFFN in our statement.
Workshop sharpens carbon pricing advocacy
To equip climate advocates with the knowledge to engage elected officials about effective climate solutions, CCI held a workshop in April — Climate Income and Redirecting Financial Flows — led by Program Director Cathy Orlando. People from dozens of countries participated in the training. After a brief overview of climate income, Cathy used Climate Interactive’s C-ROADs simulator to show what would happen to global temperatures if various countries made good on a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent per year between 2025 and 2030. The impact was not what most people would expect, but it showed how important it is for every nation to do its part in order to keep warming from exceeding 1.5° Celsius. Switching over to En-ROADS, an interactive simulator that allows users to pick and choose combinations of tools to solve climate change, everyone learned that the tool with the biggest impact is a price on carbon.
In remarks delivered during the workshop, CCI Executive Director Joe Robertson said, “There are many opportunities this year for major progress. But too often, governments look to other nations to lead. We all need to ask our governments to lead. Instead of incentivizing pollution; we need to incentivize innovation that avoids pollution. Climate Income is leverage to lead: Put a fee on pollution, return all revenues to the people, steadily increase both the fee and rebates so more money goes into people’s pockets while polluters feel direct cost-pressure to evolve better business models and stop polluting.”
Cathy also showed participants where to find resources for the workshop, including the Climate Income and Redirecting Financial Flows Booklet that contains a collection of laser talks on the various ways to price carbon emissions. These laser talks are quite useful when lobbying legislators.
Updates
Catherine McKenna, former Minister of Environment and Climate Change of Canada, will be the keynote speaker for CCL Canada’s national conference and lobby days — Dream No Small Dreams — which takes place in Ottawa June 2-4.
CCL France’s Marin Chaveyriat has worked behind the scenes in the Civil Society C7 network to get carbon pricing in the final communique to the G7 leaders. Here is the final paper that will go to the G7 Leaders and the quote: "In line with the Nairobi Declaration agreed in September 2023, strengthen the implementation of carbon pricing mechanisms, including taxes, on fossil fuel trade, maritime transport and aviation and channel revenues to compensate those vulnerable and finance the green and just transition."
In Mexico, volunteer Alba Peña continues her mission to engage 5,000 students with interactive EnROADS policy workshops. She was featured on Climate Interactive posts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Additionally, for the first time ever, in the presidential election in Mexico, a candidate for the presidency said that polluters must pay.
In Zimbabwe, our climate leaders continue to defend the beautiful lands of their country. Most recently, they are focused on preserving wetlands and conducting meetings. They regularly publish empowering reports on their MAYA website that we helped them set up.
In India, Rituraj Phukan was featured on a Women's 7 post on LinkedIn announcing that he will present a talk about climate justice and eco-sustainable businesses at the W7 Rome Summit May 8-9, part of the G7 Summit hosted by Italy. "Enthusiastic to share that Rituraj Phukan, Environmental Writer and Founder of the Indigenous People's Climate Justice Forum will join the W7 Summit, May 8-9, to talk about climate justice and eco-sustainable businesses. The W7 Rome Summit is part of the G7 Summit hosted in Italy.
In South Sudan, CCI volunteers lobbied another government official in April. They have met several times as a group and are working as a team. We continue to support as best as we can. In March the country experienced an extreme heatwave that closed schools for two weeks and over 6,000 internally displaced people being relocated due to overcrowding. This is happening while over thousand people a day are fleeing the war in Sudan and going into South Sudan for the past year.
Coming up
Get-To-Know-Us: Join us to learn how you can help drive evidence-based and socially just climate action on one of three calls around Wednesday, May 15. In 2024, the agenda has been revamped to include an introduction to the EnROADS policy simulator and a primer on redirecting financial flows. Register here.
Global climate leaders are invited to our monthly CCI Global Check-In Calls on Tuesday, May 14. Check your emails, global leaders! This month, our focus is on "Canada's Global Carbon Pricing Challenge". We will provide resources for you to take action that include: sending a personalized letter to your politicians and pitching an Op-ed to newspapers ahead of the G7 meeting in June to address the Challenge.
The 2024 cycle of Earth Diplomacy Leadership workshops providing insights on the Journey to COP29 in Baku continues with preparatory sessions ahead of the SB60 round of mid-year negotiations. The workshops will run as follows:
Mon, May 20 – The Process
Thu, May 23 – The Stakes
Mon, May 27 – Cooperation
Thu, May 30 – Implementation
To learn more, and to register, visit EarthDiplo.org
