By Sebastian Bulldog

Over the last two weeks I have been contacting my representative and my senator with a clear goal in mind—procuring appointments with both so I can present clear objectives for addressing our climate crises. I have made some good progress and have learned so much through this challenge. I see that it takes a clear intention of what I want to accomplish paired with keeping my nose to the grindstone.

I feel a little like a bulldog as I’ve been calling and emailing the offices of my congress member Carolyn McCarthy and Senator Schumer roughly a half dozen times each. I also sent both offices a letter of request by snail mail for a meeting to speak with them about climate change, renewable energy and creating green jobs.

But following up has paid off—I have a confirmed appointment to speak with Congress member McCarthy next week. Yeah! I’m excited about this and will be reading up on the 1sky platform for solutions to climate change, specifically: reducing pollution, stopping new coal fired power plants from being built, and promoting green jobs and green energy initiatives.

In the works also is an appointment with a staffer of Senator Schumer. I have been playing phone tag with the scheduler in his office and just heard yesterday that I’ll have an appointment very soon, she’s just ironing out scheduling with the environmental staffer first.

I really want to get a few interested friends to come with me for my appointment with my congress member, so I just sent an email to large selection of friends in the hopes that a few of them will be able to come with me next week.

Why, you may ask am I so set on going with a group? Well, first of all, when elected officials see more than 1 person, it means that there are many individuals who represent a particular point of view, in this case want to change the way we generate energy. According to an organizer I spoke with at 1sky, over 1,700 people signed up to get engaged through their featured campaign for August, with roughly 400-600 actual actions taking place. That’s a lot of people who actually took the initiative to sign up. If each of them brings several people, and each of those folks represents several others, then our congressional representatives can see that many people want these changes.

Also by taking the time out of our lives, we show with our physical presence and voices what matters most to us. We show that creating a climate movement is important enough that we take a time out from our usual jobs and routines to say as much.

In addition, in going with friends, I am providing hands-on training for them to do it themselves in the future. The climate crisis is an issue for everyone. Mainstream Americans are wondering how they will pay for home heating oil this coming winter. It’s definitely not just hippie, back-to-the-land-ers who are in favor of changing energy dependency from fossil fuels to renewables, although many of them blazed a trail as examples that it is possible to live off the grid. Also, since it took some persistence for me to get an appointment, I want to make the most of it and get others to come with me.

In addition to getting the meeting set up with my congressperson, I was also successful in signing up for wind power through newwindenergy. There was a minor problem—the representative I was in contact with did not have my account number correct—but we solved it easily enough. She told me that signing me up with LIPA (Long Island Power Authority) was a bit tricky compared with Con Edison, who she has regular experience with.

Now, I am checking the mail for my LIPA bill to ensure that the extra charge is printed on there. The dollars I pay for electricity still come from my utility company, LIPA, but the percentage of power that LIPA receives shifts from coal, nuclear, oil, and gas to wind generated power for the total amount of kilowatt hours that I consume.

There are some action items that I listed on the first democracy challenge post that I haven’t done yet. So I’m going to get to those within the next week. I might be a little too optimistic about getting my friends and family to participate in taking action with phone calls and switching to wind power. However, I am committed to contacting them because even if they don’t respond to my request, I’m stating where I stand and showing what’s possible. And I am certain that each one will encounter someone else at a future time who will encourage them to take political action, too, and they may remember my email as a seed that was planted before and that is aching to grow.

My next steps for this week are to:

• Contact my friends and family who live in New York to call up the governor’s office to vocalize their opinion on the pending plastic bags recycling bill.
• Contact friends and family to make the switch to renewable wind energy through their utility provider.
• Study up on the 1sky platform
• Recruit friends to come with me for my appointments with elected officials I’ve been in contact with.