Jim Sandoe (he/him)

Jim is a Climate Justice Organizer for Common Defense. He started working on climate issues in 2007 for the Obama campaign and participated in many national conference calls to decide policy for the campaign. For the 2012 election, I was part of the PA leadership team and was in charge of climate statewide. After the election, Obama for America became Organizing for America, a strictly issues-based organization. OFA sent me to Chicago to take Vice President Gore’s Climate Reality Training, which included 4 days of intensive discussions and Al’s famous slide show. We were given great latitude in changing his presentation to make it more local, and I gave it about 70 times. In 2013, Climate Reality wanted us to form our climate groups to spread the Vice President’s message. I resisted that because there were already good climate groups working in PA, and I didn’t think we needed to start from scratch to get our message out there. After talking with many different climate groups, I decided that Citizens’ Climate Lobby was the best fit for us as they focused on education and action.

In the fall of 2014, I was asked to join a group of CCLers worldwide to craft an amendment to the upcoming Paris Climate Accord. Over the next 14 months, 12 of us put together an amendment to add carbon fee and dividend to Article 6 of the agreement. We were sponsored by the World Bank, which allowed us to enter the room where these discussions took place. In the end, the attendees would not accept carbon fees and dividends, although we did get them to loosen the carbon pricing rules, which would, in effect, allow our position to be considered. It is part of the final agreement.

I also do climate work for political candidates, helping them craft the climate part of their campaign and doing presentations, usually as fundraisers. As part of the Lancaster, PA CCL group, we are doing outreach to college students and the general public regarding the book Drawdown. This is an effort to educate the public and bring the CCL message to more people in the community. So far, we have Franklin & Marshall College, Millersville University, and Elizabethtown College students, as well as more than a dozen non-CCL members interested in working on this project.