Target letter-send date: Friday 6 October 2017
Over the next few weeks, we’re mobilising supporters and CCL UK campaigners across the country to send messages advocating Carbon Fee & Dividend to the new Climate Minister, Claire Perry (in the Dept. of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy – BEIS), via their MPs.
6 October is exactly one month before the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn.
Sending it via your MP is important because:
- It shows the number of constituencies involved
- Spreads the message among MPs themselves
- Supports your relationship with your MP
- Only your MP is required to correspond with you.
If you ask your MP to discuss carbon fee and dividend with the Climate Minister and reply to you with the outcome, they are required to do this.
If you need to find out more about Carbon Fee & Dividend, read this.
You can message them via www.writetothem.com which will also find your MP for you, if you don’t know who they are. Or you can write to them the old fashioned way (which may be more of a guarantee of delivery).
A group of us in Claire Perry’s constituency (Devizes) have recently met her to discuss the policy. Our aim is for her to receive letters from MPs in 100 constituencies around the country urging her support for the policy.
Wouldn’t that be amazing?
Now is the time to convince friends and family around the country that CF&D is the climate solution and to write to their MP about it.
Local and social media
And to maximise the effect of your letter, consider writing to your local media (e.g. paper or news site) about the part you are playing in this campaign (more help about that here) and, of course, spread it about on social media.
Letter-writing brief
Introduce yourself if you haven’t met or written before, & congratulate your new MP on their election/re-election.
Ask your MP to congratulate the new Climate Minister, Claire Perry, on her appointment and to tell her about your personal concern about the climate, and your belief that the revenue-neutral carbon pricing policy, Carbon Fee & Dividend, is the quickest, most effective, fair and simple way to solve it.
Ask your MP to ask the Minister:
- what would it take for her to feel able to introduce this policy as a bill in Parliament?
- What could you, and CCL UK, do to support this?
The Minister herself is acquainted with CF&D, but if this is your first contact with your MP, you might wish to recap the policy, as follows:
“Carbon fee and dividend imposes a steadily rising fee on fossil fuels at the source (coal pit, oil well, port of entry) with the proceeds returned in equal shares to every citizen”.
Finish by asking your MP to please forward the Minister’s response to you, and sign as Citizens’ Climate Lobby UK; e.g.:
(Your name)
Citizens’ Climate Lobby UK
www.citizensclimatelobby.uk
Sample ‘sign-and-send’ letter
Here’s a proforma for you to use, if necessary – but you’ll have to read through and delete or change as necessary. Your own words are always more effective if you have the time and confidence.
Dear (your MP))
Subject: Climate Change
Congratulations on your recent election (re-election).
I am writing with particular urgency, one month before the UN Climate Change Conference, to ask you to convey to the new Climate Minister, Claire Perry, my concerns and requests about the climate and pollution crisis.
First, please congratulate her on her new role. I know she is concerned about climate change, and that she is acquainted with Climate Fee and Dividend – the policy that puts a steadily rising fee on fossil fuels, at source (coal pit, oil well, port of entry) and returns the proceeds to all citizens in equal measures.
Please urge her to promote this policy, as it is the quickest, most effective, fair and simple way to reduce emissions in line with the UK’s own targets based on the Climate Change Act.
It sends a clear market signal to industry, investors and consumers that the UK is committed to low carbon technologies and lifestyles, supporting and accelerating the adoption and further development of zero carbon products.
The experience of this policy in British Colombia confirms predictions that low-income households will actually receive more in the dividend than they pay in the higher prices for carbon-intensive goods.
Moreover, it’s the most effective way to reduce air pollution, an increasingly costly problem in the UK.
Please ask the Minister, on my behalf, what it would take for her to be able to introduce this policy as a bill in Parliament – and what can be done by us citizens to support this.
Please forward to me her reply.
Regards,
(Your name)
Citizens’ Climate Lobby UK
www.citizensclimatelobby.uk
Any questions, get in contact.
Do forward us a copy of the letter and reply, and anything the local press publishes about your efforts.
