Faced with a presidential debate season that lacked any real discussion of an issue that the current occupant of the White House, Barack Obama, has identified as a “terrifying” threat, a small but well-connected group of California activists have decided to take matters into their own hands.
They’re building a tool to raise voter awareness about where candidates stand on climate change and they’re focusing their attention not on the White House, but on the institution at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue that’s been most resistant to respond to the problem.
Earlier this month, the group launched Climate Congress, a website that aims to provide basic information on where every incumbent member of the US House and Senate and their challengers stand on key environmental questions. The mostly volunteer team behind the project began with an aim of capturing information on the candidates in the 33 Senate seats that are up for grabs in November’s election as well as candidates for 51 competitive House races where there’s a significant difference between the candidates on climate issues. The site has its own Wiki, allowing for group collaboration on the project, and founders are encouraging the public to fill in missing information.
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“Every day we are adding,” says Felix Kramer, a self-described “frustrated climate hawk” who helped get the site off the ground. “We’ve started to get crowdsourced information.” He says he and several allies, including Mike Mielke, who handles environmental issues for the influential Silicon Valley Leadership Group, decided to launch the site after discovering there is no one-stop shop for voters to learn where politicians stand on climate issues.
“The information is scattered around,” says Kramer, who sees that as a “sign that people don’t recognize the urgency and don’t think there is anything they can do.”
The site addresses the latter problem by calling for volunteers to help…