Overview

Recruit a group of party elders from both parties who are less ensconced in the gridlock of today’s Washington, D.C., and would be more able to work together to promote constructive action on climate change among the incumbents in their party.

Participants | Objectives

Objective

  • Recapture bipartisanship. Bipartisan cooperation on environmental protection and many other issues is a fairly recent phenomenon, having peaked in the 1970s in an initial burst of legislation. One way to move toward recapturing it could be via the strategy of identifying willing and able party elders, some of whom participated in the 1970s legislation or bipartisan legislation since then, to be part of a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to work with the current officeholders in their respective parties and to mediate joint sessions to identify actionable compromises.
  • Elders can help on non-legislative action, too.Identify concrete
    and feasible opportunities to create bipartisan coordination that begins outside the legislative arena, perhaps relying largely on retired elected or other government officials (e.g., have an eminent individual reach out to Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush to consider expanding their collaboration on tsunami relief to climate change).

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