This week featured the Ides of March, St. Patricks Day, and the NCAA basketball tournament tip off. Oh, and some other stuff happened too.
Welcome to the team: We are thrilled to add to our 38-member Spokesperson Team the esteemed Jim Tolbert, a longtime EcoRighter and friend of republicEn.org. We look forward to his writings and his wise counsel.
For those unfamiliar with the Spokesperson Team, these are our EcoRight Super Volunteers. They write op-eds and LTEs, amplify our message on social media, participate in panel discussions, get interviewed by journalists, help organize events (virtual and eventually, in person). We’re always looking to expand our team. If you think you’d be a good fit, reach out for a chat.
EcoRight Speaks, season 2, episode 10:
Talk about a fun episode to record. Dr. Jessica Moerman, the Senior Director for Science and Policy at the Evangelical Environmental Network, is truly someone you want to know. She and I have recently become acquainted working on a joint project, and I knew right away that I wanted to have her on the show.
Jessica received her Ph.D. in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences from the Georgia Institute of Technology and has held research positions at John Hopkins University, University of Michigan, and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where she researched how climate has changed throughout Earth’s history. Jessica previously served as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy. Jessica is passionate about leading church communities towards positive solutions to safeguard our cities, neighborhoods, and the next generation from the effects of a warming world and has been featured on the NBC Today Show, the Washington Post, Christianity Today, and numerous podcasts. (We were honored to get her on ours.) In her spare time, Jessica volunteers at her church, which she co-founded in 2016 together with her husband Chris in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC.
If you’re hungry to know more or to join her faith-focused bookclub, you can contact her through the EEN website.
Enjoy the show!
Tune in next week, before we take a Spring Break pause, for my conversation with Natural Gas Vehicles America President Daniel Gage. If you don’t know anything about natural gas vehicles, I encourage you to listen and learn.
This week’s must watch: Check out this conversation between Heather Reams of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions and EcoRight fave Rep. John Curtis, who delivered the keynote for the recent ACORE Summit.
Teaser: to kick off the conversation, Heather asks Mr. Curtis what it means to be a climate conservative and why it’s important to him.
“There are so many principles that conservatives should be really excited about that are very very good for the climate and for this earth we love so much,” he says. We encourage you to listen to their whole conversation to hear about how the two sides wrongly talk to each other about the issue of climate change and how to inspire more bipartisan cooperation.
This week’s must read: Here’s what young conservatives think about climate change (The Hill) Kyle Meyaard-Schaap and Kiera O’Brien write, “The climate movement has made important progress over the last several years, and much more must be accomplished in order to avert climate change’s worst impacts and to fully unlock the economic promise of a clean energy future. To do that, the climate movement must erect a wholly bigger tent…As we raise this big tent, each segment of the movement will raise their own tent pole, reaching their respective communities as only they can. Rather than watering down our ambition in the name of consensus, a commitment to a rapid, economy-wide transition away from fossil fuels and climate justice for all must be the price of entry. Disagreements on how to get there will be aired in good faith and ideas will be honed and refined. Tactics and strategies will diverge, but our common aim will rhyme.”
Click, clack, moo: H/T to our friends at the Citizens Climate Lobby for reporting on the meeting between key members of the Senate Climate Solutions Caucus and the agriculture community. In particular, we’re encouraged by Senator Mike Braun’s take.
“I have long said that America’s farmers and ranchers are already some of our best environmental stewards,” he said. “This is demonstrated in the statistics which show that American agriculture is exponentially more productive and cleaner than the rest of the world. I look forward to continuing to find bipartisan solutions, like the Growing Climate Solutions Act, that helps farmers make that case, and I appreciate the efforts of agriculture leaders to do the same.”
Tweet of the week (it’s a good one):
NEW: @MittRomney leans in on carbon tax to spur clean energy technology breakthroughs. I interviewed Romney about his interest in a carbon tax, which is very real, and why he thinks it can be a second “pillar” of the Republican innovation agenda https://t.co/44sdn55LOA
— Joshua Siegel (@SiegelScribe) March 19, 2021
Thanks, Readers. See you next week.