1. Being a Volunteer Clinician Advocate
Elizabeth (Lisa) Del Buono MD
Citizens’ Climate Lobby
Climate and Health Action Team
Liaison to Rep. Bergman (MI-01)

2. Concerned mother and citizen.
How does a woman who has spent 3 decades of her adult life sitting in an office diagnosing disease . . .

3. Lobbying my Member Of Congress
Find herself lobbying her member of Congress. . . And giving lectures. . . And working with students?

4. Commitment to my son
Waking up to the fact that the climate crisis is not a “far off” event and will play out to a large extent during my son’s lifetime.

5. breakthroughs in the exercise of personal and political power
CCL’s Mission
Creating political will for effective climate policy by enabling individual
breakthroughs in the exercise of personal and political power
In 2012, we had a prolonged spell of 80 degree weather in Northern Michigan. We lost our entire cherry crop (for the 2nd time in a decade, I came to learn). And the snow started later and later each year with more and more freeze/thaw cycles. I was concerned and anxious about it, but I was also busy. Fortunately, in March of 2013 the 1st chapter of CCL started in my little town of TC and I joined and became a co-leader. CCL is an unusual organization in it’s commitment to educating it’s volunteers. I also trained as a Climate Reality Presenter and started doing presentations throughout N. Michigan. That June I went to my first national lobby day and volunteered to be a liaison to my MoC, who at the time was a very conservative retired surgeon.
One of the goals of CCL is to create the political will for effective climate policy and in order to do that, it requires:

6. In order to create political will:
Educate oneself
Educate other volunteers
Educate the general public
Educate our legislators***
In order to create political will, education is critical. . .And we as medical professionals are uniquely qualified to do just that. . .We are trusted messengers. We have first hand stories we have seen as clinicians that resonate across the aisle. And we are comfortable educating. . That is what we do everyday whether it be with a patient or with a student. Today, I am going focus on educating legislators and

7. What is our message? “Climate change is real, It is human caused and
It is harming people’s health today
Everyone is at risk”. . .
There are things we can do about it!
Thank you George Mason Climate Communications

8. Transitioning to Clean Forms of Energy
Burning fossil fuels is bad for our health even if we don’t take climate change into account.
Transitioning to clean forms of energy will not only minimize the worst impacts of climate change,
but also result in immediate health benefits from cleaner air.

9. Citizens’ Climate Lobby
Carbon Fee & Dividend: Catalyst to Transition to the Low Carbon Economy
Carbon Fee & Dividend: Catalyst to Transition to the Low Carbon Economy
Carbon Fee & Dividend: Catalyst to Transition to the Low Carbon Economy

10. “The single most powerful strategic instrument to
inoculate human health against the risks of climate change
would be for governments
to introduce strong and sustained carbon pricing,
in ways pledged to strengthen over time
until the problem is brought under control.” (Lancet pg. 45).

11. Carbon Fee & Dividend = Best 1st step
When one is in an overflowing bathtub, the first step is to turn off the water. . .CFD is that best first step. . .It doesn’t solve the entire climate crisis, in fact is really only the initial step in solving the crisis, but it would serve to turn off the facet and do it more quickly than any other policy option. . .and it is an option that not only appeals to both sides of the aisle, but it also protects the most vulnerable among us.

12. What additional messaging would be helpful to move our legislators?
Estimates of numbers of lives saved from air quality alone
Estimates of health care dollars saved from air quality alone
West 2013 (cost of clean energy $30/ton ; benefit $200/ton
MIT 2014 (health care savings of improved air quality alone )can offset cost of carbon pricing policies by up to 10 x’es)
Confronting the Climate Challenge: US Policy Options Hafstead & Goulder : (non-climate benefits of a carbon fee are about 3X the economic costs, and these benefits are mostly health related. )
We are grateful to you for helping us formulate our message, but it would be great to be able to strengthen and refine that message As much as we would love for the human health to speak to our legislators, from my point of view, many times it appears that it is the economics of a situation that really appears to move them.

13. Educate our volunteers: organized according to voting districts
Over 80,000 members
And 460 chapters
worldwide
Once we have that message fine tuned. ..reliable and simple we can then use it to fan out to our members throughout the country and throughout the world. . . We have a chapter in almost every voting district in the US and it is by developing on-going lasting relationships with our MoC’s over time, that we are able to make significant changes. . .Changes like

14. 72 Current Climate Solutions Caucus Members
The development of the bipartisan CSC

15. Rep. Jack Bergman (MI-01) joins the Climate Solutions Caucus
Finally, I’d like to tell you a story about reaching out to young people. Many of you are probably educators w/in universities/medical schools, but this is a story of a group of HS students, friends of my son’s who empowered our conservative legislator to join the CSC. There is no way to over-state the power young people have when they use their educated, respectful voices to make change. This completely fits with CCL’s 2nd mission statement to “enable individual breakthroughs in personal and political power”. This is the existential problem we have bequeathed to them. The very least we can do is give them the skills to deal with it.

16. https://youtu.be/Mb_GtE8aH-0
Watch Video!
Students video