It is my great privilege to be working for Citizens Climate Lobby. After four years volunteering with this tremendous family of committed, engaged citizens, all collaborating to ensure a safe, secure climate future, through genuine democratic process, this month I was hired as Strategic Coordinator. I don’t think it would be possible to find a more rewarding and inspired group of people to work with on a day to day basis, and the work itself allows me the blessed experience of using my abilities to help others to be the constructive future-builders they long to be.
The organization has doubled in size every year for the last five years. There were fewer than 15 local chapters, when I first joined, and now we are approaching 150, most in the US and Canada. But we have begun to expand into Sweden, Bangladesh, India, France, the UK and Switzerland, and Australia and New Zealand are likely to follow. I have the good fortune to be helping to oversee that expansion, and to strategize our central policy aims, our organizational strategy and just to provide support to our volunteers.
The thing about this organization that is so special is that to be part of it, to do the work we do, you have to transcend the temptations of cynicism and commit to believing that a positive outcome is possible. Our volunteers tend to believe in doing hard, good work in the right way. This entails putting your faith in people, including in people you don’t know and who may be working hard to defeat you. As Marshall Saunders says in the short film about us above, this “peaceful army” is characterized by “respect and admiration for those who would oppose us”. We really believe that by treating other people as people, with rights and a voice, we can expand the space for doing this for all people, and reach more collaborative, constructive solutions.
This is why we are non-partisan, and why we believe the coming coalition of climate heroes will not be from the stereotypically “green” segment of the political spectrum. We believe we have a chance, as citizens, to bring a truly diverse and ideologically inclusive coalition along, to help build the most necessary reform policy of our age. If you believe in democracy that works like that, where people gain favor because they are part of the solutions to our society’s major challenges, then please visit CitizensClimateLobby.org and get involved.
In the words of Dr. James Hansen, “If you want to join the fight to save the planet, to save Creation for your grandchildren, there is no more effective step you could take than becoming an active member of this group.”
The Poet Economist 
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