Climate Activists Head to Washington

Building political will for a livable world is a work in progress, according to Don Matheson, a builder who lives in East Hampton, but if his observations from last week’s international conference of Citizens Climate Lobby are accurate, that undertaking is nearing a tipping point.

At its sixth annual conference in Washington, D.C., some 800 members of the group, which advocates the phased-in imposition of a fee on fossil fuels that would be rebated in full to households, called on members of Congress to find common ground. Members of C.C.L. also heard from speakers including James Hansen, a professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and the former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Katherine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist and co-author, with her husband, a pastor, of “A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions.”

Mr. Matheson, who helped to establish C.C.L.’s eastern Long Island chapter, was one of about 10 members from Long Island to attend the conference. They visited all four members of Congress who represent Long Island, including Lee Zeldin of the First District, which includes East Hampton Town.

C.C.L., Mr. Matheson said, “is growing by leaps and bounds. What five years ago was a few hundred people is now 16,500. Popular support is growing, citizen awareness is growing, and as a result, Congressional willingness to listen is growing on both sides of the aisle.” Members of Congress, he said, “were far more receptive this year. There’s a turning point that seems to be happening.”

The group’s emphasis on cultivating positive relationships may be responsible for its growing influence. Last year, it released a study from Regional Economic Models Inc. concluding that over 20 years, a steadily rising fee on carbon-based fuels, with the revenue returned to households, would result in the addition of 2.8 million jobs to the U.S. economy, the avoidance of 230,000 premature deaths, and carbon dioxide emissions 50 percent below 1990 levels.

The group advocates a fee starting at $10 per ton of carbon dioxide and rising $10 per ton each year. Such a fee would assess the “true social costs” of fossil fuels, proponents say, driving a transition to a domestic-energy economy and stimulating investment in alternative-energy technologies, while providing an incentive for businesses to use energy more efficiently.

The media often paints the proposed fee as a choice between a strong economy and climate-change action, which is false, said Ashley Hunt-Martorano, C.C.L’s director of marketing and events and former co-leader of its Long Island chapter. “There are studies that show acting on climate change will improve our economy,” she said.

“We try to speak about what’s important to [legislators],” said Ms. Hunt-Martorano, who previously advocated for solar and wind energy at the East Hampton-based Renewable Energy Long Island. “In some offices of districts located where oil and gas are big, we talk about public health, air pollution. Those conversations are continuing to evolve, only because we come from a perspective of appreciation for public service. There’s a continuing effort to keep an open dialogue.”

Ms. Hunt-Martorano credited Ms. Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian, for a new perspective that helped her overcome the frustration born of climate-change denial. “You have to meet people where they are,” she said. “There is a lot of resistance to climate change, because the solution suggests we have to change our way of life or our economy is going to tank. Because they are coming at it from a place of fear, if you come from another place of fear — ‘We’re all doomed’ — that’s going to shut them down.”

Ms. Hayhoe, she said, “is coming from a place of love. Now that I’ve been working for Citizens Climate Lobby for so long, I’ve adopted that, and it’s changed my perspective on life.”

Such is the commitment of the C.C.L. members, who came from as far as Alaska and Hawaii to attend the conference and paid their own transportation and lodging expenses. “The congressmen tell us they don’t hear much about climate change from constituents, despite the fact that more than 50 percent of people on Long Island believe in manmade climate change and that something should be done,” Mr. Matheson said. “Staff members tell us they equate one handwritten letter to 1,000 constituent opinions. People should be aware that communicating with their congressman is very, very important.”

Mr. Matheson will lead the eastern Long Island chapter’s next meeting, on July 11 at 10 a.m. at the Amagansett Library. “We have to continue to work as hard as we can,” he said. “It’s a race between ‘when will we seriously begin to address the issue’ versus ‘when will the worst effects of climate change begin to accelerate.’ It’s going to get a lot worse if we don’t start doing something quickly.”