Ariel Burgess, adjunct faculty in the Core, is acting as the Vermont State Lead for a national virtual capitol hill lobbying day for ocean climate policy.  It may be a neat way for students to get involved in a direct lobbying event and hopefully talk to their representatives! (….we may be landlocked, but we need more people representing VT! 🙂 )

Here are the details:

The climate crisis prompted millions of youth around the world to demand a “Green New Deal.” But the Green New Deal lacked the “Blue.” Over two years and in collaboration with industry leaders, marine conservationists, academics, and frontline communities, the non-partisan Ocean Climate Action Plan (OCAP) was developed by co-convenors Center for the Blue Economy at the Middlebury Institute and Blue Frontier to put oceans, coasts, rivers and the Great Lakes front and center in climate solutions. The plan calls for bold and strategic investments that help decarbonize American industry, create new jobs in clean energy and climate adaptation, while addressing climate injustices of the past, and honoring Indigenous knowledge and innovative solutions for the future. 

Several prominent allies and supporters have become Primary Signatories to the plan, including Vermont’s own author, educator, environmentalist, and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben; climate youth organization Earth Guardians’ Tamara Rose Roske, Climate Envoy John Kerry, Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and the father of the environmental justice movement, Dr. Robert Bullard.  Roughly 50% of the OCAP policy recommendations are included in HR 8632 the Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act, but the work does not stop there. 

The OCAP team invites you and your community to join Ocean Climate Action (Virtual) Capitol Hill Lobby Day, April 14, 2021. Participants will join state delegations and meet (via Zoom) their elected officials in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate to push for common sense, job-creating, and equitable solutions to the climate crisis.

Sign up to be a part of winning ocean and coastal climate action!

For more information, please contact:
—Vermont State Lead: Ariel K. McK. Burgess, akblackburge@gmail.com or 802-233-5569
—Or the OCAP Lobby Day Coordinator: Ms. Lauren Townsend, lauren@oceanclimateaction2021.org or 215-939-7621