Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

With growing success in national and international climate action, Climate Mobilization Project (CMP) launched Climate Emergency 2030 to win comprehensive net-zero policies in three influential U.S. communities. This community- and science-based project promotes rapid decarbonization, reinvigorated democracy, and racial and economic justice. Climate Emergency 2030 will produce significant local greenhouse gas reductions and can scale to regional, state, and federal action. These key building blocks lay the social and political groundwork for nation-wide Climate Mobilization while building local grassroots movements. As we achieve critical local climate goals, we are emboldening communities to demand comprehensive federal climate action.

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Guided by CMP‚ organizational values, Climate Emergency 2030 prioritizes partnerships with organizations rooted in people of color, low-income, and frontline communities ‚Äî those most directly impacted by the climate emergency. We also focus on youth, whose futures are most at risk. Our collective process, developing and conducting Climate Emergency Implementation Plan campaigns, empowers communities through deep civic engagement and produces leaders who pass on skills to other climate activists. 

Through community engagement meetings, residents and local organizations identify how to pursue policy goals, such as banning fossil gas, decarbonizing buildings, accelerating soil carbon sequestration, and scaling financing mechanisms for decarbonization. To maximize participation, these gatherings and our trainings offer childcare and translation services. 

Our community organizing trainings use a participatory popular education model, where attendees learn new skills and then role play to practice implementation. Training topics include: conducting outreach (via door knocking, phone banking, and social media), building coalitions, power mapping, developing strategy and tactics, planning actions, providing public comments, and negotiating with elected officials. With training, community members are prepared and supported to design and implement campaign actions in their communities. Eventually, trainees train others in their communities, addressing the needs of local residents in ways that are culturally appropriate. Through this process, a set of leaders emerges, and we provide ongoing 1:1 campaign strategy consultations, as needed, to deepen their abilities and effectiveness. 

Project staff provides messaging and communications support, but local residents are spokespeople. For example, meet Supriya Patel. A 13-year-old eighth grader when she began working with CMP‚ organizing and communications staff, Supriya organized Sacramento, California‚ Climate Strike in September 2019. Supriya suffers from asthma and was directly affected by the devastating wildfires in Northern California. She received assistance with talking points and our staff connected her to the opinion editor at The Sacramento Bee, which published her op-ed, in which she wrote: I love fighting for change, but I shouldn‚ t have to do this. I don‚ t want my children to have to be climate activists. I want them to be children, to be carefree. Supriya was profiled on the local NBC news affiliate, which included the strike demands in its coverage. She was featured on Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg‚ Office of Civic Engagement web page after Sacramento declared a climate emergency a few months after the strike. Additionally, Supriya received coaching on speaking with her city council member who was crucial to the effort to get the Mayor‚ commitment to the 2030 goal in the final climate emergency declaration language. 

Through trainings, the participatory process of our campaigns, continued 1:1 support and other practices, CMP‚ Climate Emergency 2030 project develops leaders from those who have traditionally been underrepresented in the climate movement.

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