Part of the Series
Moyers and Company
Faced with a presidential debate season that lacked any real discussion of an issue that the current occupant of the White House, Barack Obama, has identified as a “terrifying” threat, a small but well-connected group of California activists have decided to take matters into their own hands.
They’re building a tool to raise voter awareness about where candidates stand on climate change and they’re focusing their attention not on the White House, but on the institution at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue that’s been most resistant to respond to the problem.
Earlier this month, the group launched Climate Congress, a website that aims to provide basic information on where every incumbent member of the US House and Senate and their challengers stand on key environmental questions. The mostly volunteer team behind the project began with an aim of capturing information on the candidates in the 33 Senate seats that are up for grabs in November’s election as well as candidates for 51 competitive House races where there’s a significant difference between the candidates on climate issues. The site has its own Wiki, allowing for group collaboration on the project, and founders are encouraging the public to fill in missing information.
To see more stories like this, visit Moyers & Company at Truthout.
“Every day we are adding,” says Felix Kramer, a self-described “frustrated climate hawk” who helped get the site off the ground. “We’ve started to get crowdsourced information.” He says he and several allies, including Mike Mielke, who handles environmental issues for the influential Silicon Valley Leadership Group, decided to launch the site after discovering there is no one-stop shop for voters to learn where politicians stand on climate issues.
“The information is scattered around,” says Kramer, who sees that as a “sign that people don’t recognize the urgency and don’t think there is anything they can do.”
The site addresses the latter problem by calling for volunteers to help with a range of chores, from writing and editing to social media promotion. Researchers will help get information to answer three basic questions about each candidate for congressional office:
- What are the individual’s views on whether climate change is real and caused by human activity?
- What votes, actions and governmental/organizational activities on climate change and clean energy has the individual led/supported/opposed?
- What has the individual said about local and regional climate-related impacts and activities?
The effort is unique in its single-mindedness and comprehensiveness (unlike a tool like the League of Conservation Voters congressional scorecard, it focuses solely on climate change, and includes information on challengers). Kramer says he hopes crowdsourcing will keep the site nimble: Rather than waiting for a once-a-year compilation of roll call votes, Climate Congress can update as candidates change positions or make their positions known. And unlike many other environmental groups, Climate Congress is organized as a nonpartisan 501(c)3. That means it can’t make endorsements, though Kramer says “our goal now is to show that what we’ve done so far can have some impact before Nov. 8” by motivating more voters to press candidates on climate change issues.
Already the project has gotten an influential thumbs-up from one of the nation’s best-known environmental activists.
@ClimateCongrss Where do legislators stand on climate? See https://t.co/nlKA3Z74Fi for ALL Senate races & some House. A useful resource!
— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) October 20, 2016
Kramer, who says he got technical help creating the Wiki from the Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, encourages voters to adopt the list “bring it to your town hall and ask questions.” He plans to keep the project going well after the Nov. 8 election and hopes that, over time, it will help elect more climate-change-minded senators and representatives.
Finding a gap in the ecosphere and taking it upon himself to plug it is typical for Kramer, a transplanted New Yorker who cut his teeth as an environmental advocate back east. While living in New York City, he says, he became director of now-legendary effort that put a windmill atop a tenement. After heading west to join the California tech rush, founding an internet startup and selling it, Kramer has devoted himself full-time to environmental causes. He drew national attention for CalCars, another DIY venture in which he and some like-minded tinkerers did automakers one better by taking apart a hybrid Prius and remaking it so it could be plugged into an electrical outlet and fitted with a longer-lived battery. The story of Kramer’s efforts earned him a chapter in the 2013 book about the clean energy economy, Apollo’s Fire, co-authored by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat. Former President Bill Clinton wrote the forward.
Now that automakers are manufacturing the cars of Kramer’s dreams, he has declared victory for CalCars and is looking for a new world to conquer.
Congress is hereby forewarned.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 231 new monthly donors in the next 2 days.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy