Retired engineer and manager Bill Bray volunteers with Citizens Climate Lobby, which aims to meet with all legislators twice a year

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Bill Bray makes sure to wear his ExxonMobil baseball cap to the farmers’ markets and Rotary clubs he visits in Texas to talk about climate change.

Shell boss says mass reforestation needed to limit temperature rises to 1.5C Read more

A retired oil industry engineer and manager, Bray is now a volunteer with the Citizens Climate Lobby. The grassroots group wants Congress to pass legislation to limit the greenhouse gas pollution that’s heating up the planet. And when Bray introduces himself to a staffer or lawmaker in Washington DC, his career is the first thing he brings up.

In the 1990s, while still in the industry, he sent a letter to then president George HW Bush calling for higher energy prices, which would slow consumption, he told them.

“People thought I was totally off the reservation,” Bray joked during a team lunch with other former oil workers during a trip to the US capital this week.

Sign up for the new US morning briefing

Now ExxonMobil is one of a number of major oil companies backing a tax on carbon pollution, he notes.

Citizens Climate Lobby aims to meet with every legislator twice a year and check back with them in between.

Many of its members are progressive and are now hoping to see more buy-in from newly elected Democrats as the party took the majority in the House in the midterm elections earlier this month. But Bray displays a Conservative Caucus ribbon on his nametag at meetings.

At training sessions for hundreds this week, volunteers from around the country learned how to talk to policymakers and people in their communities even if they don’t have similar political beliefs or backgrounds.

In one hotel conference hall, newcomers were taught to discuss specific impacts, including changing landscapes, extreme weather and lost crops.

Larry Peranich, a volunteer from San Diego and another member of the Conservative Caucus, told the room how his house was damaged in a wildfire in 2003.

“The problem is lately bigger and bigger. I have a knot in my stomach, I know what people are going through,” Peranich said, referring to the killer fires that are decimating California communities.

After those stories, Citizens Climate Lobby members are supposed to pivot to optimism and proposed solutions.

“We don’t want to dangle people off that cliff without giving them hope,” said Brett Cease, volunteer education and engagement coordinator.

In another meeting room, volunteers discussed “what works with Republicans”. Peter Thomas, from San Diego, practiced his pitch for taxing carbon and returning it to people “on an equitable basis”, language that might resonate with Democrats or Republicans.

Session leaders explained how to use storytelling to connect on a personal level. They played a humorous video of author Kurt Vonnegut describing narrative arcs that appeal to people.

The next day, volunteers put their training into practice at offices on Capitol Hill.

Bray, who was matched with Republican offices, had mixed results. One staffer had a firm grasp of the climate change problem but said the office couldn’t support any pricing mechanism because it would interfere with free markets. A second lawmaker who was retiring and denies the science that shows climate change is manmade agreed to the meeting and engaged in a long discussion but declined to give the volunteers advice about how to move forward.

But, “fundamental to Citizens Climate Lobby is we want to talk with everyone”, Bray said.

His “Team Oil” sometimes shares information with lawmakers about how the fossil fuel industry thinks about climate change. They have a number of liaisons to specific companies. On meetings via phone they also collaborate on white papers that delve into the technical and engineering questions involved in limiting greenhouse gas pollution.

Citizens Climate Lobby has outlined a specific proposal that members pitch. The group wants the government to institute a carbon fee and dividend program, to tax pollution and return the money collected from industry to consumers to offset costs. Other advocates – from liberal, conservative and non-partisan organizations – are offering similar plans, but most Republicans oppose climate legislation and Democratic leaders also don’t have a strategy in place for a comprehensive solution.

Crab fishermen sue 30 oil firms, saying climate change has battered industry Read more

Regardless of their views, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are more likely to meet with their own constituents on climate change than with Washington-based advocates.

Will Koren, who founded the New Orleans chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby, had meetings with staffers for five of the six members of the Louisiana delegation.

Climate change is particularly thorny in Louisiana, which is sinking and also facing sea-level rise, tougher hurricanes and worse flooding because of rising temperatures, but is also reliant on the oil industry.

“It’s tough for anybody to come forward,” Koren said. Some of the lawmakers reject manmade climate change but others agree it’s a concern and “get stuck in the politics”, he said.

Koren, who works as a sales consultant in the restaurant industry in New Orleans, started the chapter there after his sister’s home flooded in a freak rain event in Baton Rouge in 2016.

“There is no stopping what’s happening. If I didn’t have this outlet, I don’t know if I’d be functional,” Koren said. “I know I’ll be gutting more houses. I know all my friends might have to move. But what else do you do?”