Grassroot Activists Gather On Capitol Hill To Lobby For Carbon Tax

*

It was no easy feat trying to keep my cool while racing in my high heels between Congressional and Senate offices in the scorching D.C. heat last Tuesday. More than once I wondered about the wisdom of leaving behind the comfortable Red Lake summer to join nearly four hundred other citizen lobbyists from across the U.S. and Canada who were fanned out across Capitol Hill, making the case to U.S. lawmakers that it was time to put a price on carbon pollution. Was all our effort worth it?

After my last appointment of the day, I walked back to the hotel with George, a commercial fisherman from Alaska. He talked about the devastating impact of the warmer and more acidic ocean on his livelihood. As we said goodbye and I gratefully stepped into the air conditioned hotel lobby, my attention fell on the newspaper headlines about Alberta, where people were losing lives as well as homes during that province’s second “100 year” flood in 8 years. I realized then that although my fellow climate lobbyists and I face an uphill battle to get a carbon fee and dividend bill passed, so did David when he and his slingshot faced off against Goliath. And you know how that story turned out. As Nelson Mandela so powerfully said, “It only seems impossible until it’s done.”

*