Last week, a couple of days after Harry Reid announced that there would be no floor debate and no vote until at least September on ANY legislation having to do with the BP blowout disaster, energy policy or climate change, I was part of a group of people that went up to Capitol Hill and presented “oily hands awards” to staff people for Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. This action was initiated and organized by the 1Sky coalition.
Unexpectedly, our group of 10 people got into a polite but pointed and direct back-and-forth with one of Lisa Murkowski’s top aides, Chuck Cleeschulte, before we gave him a big foam hand covered in brown paint, the “oily hand.”
The discussion reminded me of when I did a sit-in for two hours last year inside the office of Congressman Mike Doyle, a leader of the efforts in the House last year to come up with a climate bill friendly to the coal industry. I went to his office after I read a news story where he was quoted to the effect that, “we’ve got 40 years to deal with this, the next 10 years aren’t so critical.” That level of ignorance in someone who was playing a big role in the House deliberations was just too much for me to take, and since I was planning on being on Capitol Hill for something else that morning anyway, I decided I would just go to his office to talk to him.
After two hours of sitting there, he did show up, to his credit, and for a half an hour we went at it. I have no idea if it had any impact at all on Doyle, but I felt good about my willingness to take not-your-usual-kind-of-action with this Congressman.
Chuck Cleeschulte works for someone who has been trying to remove the power of the EPA to regulate carbon emissions, and yet he talked to us as if Lisa Murkowski was a great champion of the climate cause. Our group didn’t buy it, and we let him know in no uncertain terms.
It again felt good to “speak truth to power,” so to speak.
Much, much more of this needs to happen in August, September and October, and beyond as well, with those Congresspeople and Senators who are obstructing the efforts to pass desperately-needed climate legislation. They need to know, in Bill McKibben’s words, that “we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.”
Politeness has its place, but so does righteous anger in defense of our planet and all of its life forms. It’s past time for us to rise to the occasion.
