80-year-old Cranberry Township resident lobbies for climate legislation
A little under 1,000 people attended a biannual Climate Lobbying Reboot conference in Washington, D.C., last week, including 80-year-old Cranberry Township resident Bruce Cooper, who has been pushing for climate-conscious legislation since 2017.
Bruce Cooper has been heading up the Slippery Rock Chapter of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby since 2017, and said he took part in a few meetings with representatives during the conference, which took place from June 10 to 13.
“I think it was a productive time. … I heard that there were over 400 meetings,” Cooper said. “We had lobby meetings until about 5 p.m. I was in a meeting with Susan Wild (D-Pa), from Lehigh Valley and a meeting with the environment energy aid in Rep. Mike Kelly's (R-16th) office.”
Cooper said he has attended the climate conference a few times over the past six years, so he could push for legislation that would give his grandchildren good futures.
“I’d like them to all live to the end of the century, and for the planet to be habitable at that point. But it’s not looking good,” Cooper said before leaving for the trip.
Some topics tackled by Citizens’ Climate Lobby members included urging for a simplified permitting process for clean energy equipment, introducing a carbon tax and reintroducing an act for the energy innovation and carbon dividend.
Cooper would like to make it easier for residents to place apparatus like solar panels in their homes, which he said is currently a largely drawn-out process.
“The permitting process is so cumbersome that we want to get it smoothed out,” Cooper said.
Cooper said that although he didn’t meat with Kelly in person, his aid was welcoming to having a meeting later in his own district in Butler County.
“I agreed with the aid in Kelly’s office that we needed to get together when they are in district, probably in the Butler office,” Cooper said.
For more information on the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, visit its website at cclusa.org. Cooper said that Butler County residents can find his chapter by searching for their ZIP code on the website.
