By Julianne Campbell
While thousands of world leaders are meeting in Paris this week and next to discuss climate change, students and citizens in the Rockbridge area are joining forces to start a local chapter of a climate-change lobbying group.
Tonight at 6 p.m., Dec. 3, the Lexington chapter of the grassroots advocacy group Citizens’ Climate Lobby will hold a meeting at Washington and Lee University in Elrod Commons Room 114.
CCL is an international non-profit, non-partisan organization focusing on climate change policy. Founded in 2007, CCL has 308 active chapters, mostly in the United States. Lexington’s chapter, on the CCL website, is listed as “In progress” rather than active.
CCL Field Development Director Elli Sparks, who started the CCL chapter in Richmond, said the Lexington chapter will be formally recognized in February after she visits to run what she describes as a “group start workshop.”
The workshop, which is about three hours long, trains those interested in joining the chapter. At the end, the workshop explains how to lobby members of Congress.
“We want to help people understand our values, which are very specific” said Sparks.
After the workshop, the Lexington chapter will be formally recognized.
Tessa Horan, a sophomore at W&L, is a driving force behind the Lexington chapter.
Horan first heard about CCL from a friend in North Carolina last year and began organizing the group in May.
Sparks recently introduced Horan to Don Henke, an active voice in the community, who has been educating the public for over a year through free lectures and sessions on climate change.
Henke, 71, of Goshen Pass, is a retired government and international politics instructor at Piedmont Virginia Community College. He began doing deep climate-change research three years ago.
He first became interested in climate change after several trips across the North Atlantic. When Henke first flew across the ocean in a single passenger plane in 1993, he saw hundreds of icebergs. But when he made the same trip 20 years later he barely saw any.
Henke first learned about CCL when a member of a New Jersey CCL chapter saw a comment Henke left on a New York Times article “criticizing the attitude of some of the leaders of the Democratic party for not reaching across the aisle” to Republicans who might help solve the problem of climate change.
The member passed comment along to Sparks, in Richmond, who contacted Henke.
Climate change is “the leading problem in today’s world,” but it’s not one enough people are paying attention to, Henke said.
He said he is concerned about the world his grandchildren will live in.
“Why don’t people want to learn about this,” Henke said. “It’s not a nice story. Catastrophe is looming.”
Around 10 people are regularly involved with Lexington’s chapter, according to Horan. Currently the group is focused on advertising and raising awareness. Involved students have been writing letters to congressional representatives as well, she said.
The Lexington chapter is a “town and gown group,” says Sparks, meaning one in which a group of college students and community members are coming together to work as a group.
CCL offers weekly calls about climate change on Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. You can register via the CCL website.