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Amid increased Congressional and public interest in the issue of climate change, a new coalition of major leading businesses and non-governmental organizations has called on Congress to recommend the prompt enactment of national legislation to slow, stop, and reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions over the shortest period of time reasonably achievable.
Meridian Institute helped to convene the group and facilitated discussions between ten utility, energy, manufacturing, consumer products, and financial services companies, and four leading non-governmental organizations. These discussions, held between March and December of 2006, led to the creation and launch of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) on January 22, 2007.
USCAP is calling on the Congress and the Administration to enact legislation requiring significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. The group developed A Call for Action, which includes a consensus set of principles and policy recommendations that establish limits on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and permits businesses to buy and sell GHG credits as part of a cap and trade system.
The release of the USCAP report serves as the beginning of a significant effort by the USCAP members to build a broader consensus among other companies and non-governmental organizations to support enactment of legislation. Meridian Institute will continue to support USCAP efforts to grow its coalition, further refine its policy
recommendations, and encourage action by policy makers.
The full membership of USCAP includes Alcoa, BP America, Caterpillar Inc., Duke Energy, DuPont, Environmental Defense, FPL Group, General Electric, Lehman Brothers, Natural Resources Defense Council, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, PNM Resources, World Resources Institute.
For more information on the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, visit the USCAP website at www.us-cap.org. Contact Tim Mealey (tmealey@merid.org) to learn more about Meridian’s role in this effort.
The Meridian Institute, in partnership with Search for Common Ground, has assisted a diverse coalition of sixteen leading, national health care organizations – the Health Coverage Coalition for the Uninsured (HCCU) – to come together to forge a historic agreement that would significantly expand health coverage for America's nearly forty-seven million uninsured.
The members of the Coalition represent consumers, the business community, insurers, hospitals, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies. These influential organizations have played leading roles in every federal health policy debate of the last thirty years, often on opposing sides, are now committed to pressing lawmakers to act on their historic, two-phased proposal that could cut the number of America's uninsured in half.
With so many different views expressed with equal passion, finding solutions for the uninsured has become a political hot potato, and even finding a common starting point for discussions became elusive. The HCCU's signatory organizations, most of which developed their own proposals for how health coverage could and should be expanded, recognized the importance of finding common solutions that are both effective and politically feasible. Meridian facilitators assisted these diverse groups to forge a consensus on an agreement that sets aside political and ideological differences to expand coverage for America's uninsured. At a time when the American public wants bipartisan, responsive government, the agreement represents a fully balanced public and private approach to help cover the country's uninsured.
HCCU members will now encourage legislative action by Congress to implement key elements of the proposal. The HCCU website can be viewed at: www.coalitionfortheuninsured.org. Contact Tim Mealey (tmealey@merid.org) to learn more about Meridian’s role in the HCCU.
Since late 2004, Meridian Institute has worked with former Commissioners from the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and the Pew Oceans Commission to form the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, a collaborative effort established to catalyze ocean policy reform in the United States. Over the past two years, the Joint Initiative has become a respected national voice for promoting change that results in accelerated, meaningful ocean policy reform.
The Joint Initiative released its second annual U.S. Ocean Policy Report Card on January 30. The report card provides a retrospective assessment of the nation’s collective progress toward implementing the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and the Pew Oceans Commission. For 2006, the nation’s overall grade on ocean policy reform rose to a “C-,” up slightly from the “D+” average received in 2005. The report card recognizes some improvements and achievements made during 2006, while also highlighting continuing failures to act on critical ocean policy reforms and the lack of funding that prevent the nation from making significant progress to address the well-documented crises facing the oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes. The 2006 report card can be viewed at www.jointoceancommission.org.
To promote the 2006 U.S. Ocean Policy Report Card, Joint Initiative Co-Chairs Admiral James D. Watkins (U.S. Navy, Ret.) and the Honorable Leon E. Panetta conducted radio interviews in eighteen markets around the nation, including Seattle, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Boston, New York, and others. In addition, they conducted a press conference call with twenty-five news outlets covering markets from Miami to Alaska. The day concluded with a Congressional briefing at which Senator Barbara Mikulski, House Natural Resources Committee Chair Nick Rahall, and House Oceans Caucus Co-Chairs Jim Saxton, Sam Farr, and Wayne Gilchrest made remarks.
Meridian will continue to coordinate the Joint Initiative’s efforts in the coming months, including a national workshop on regional ocean governance co-convened with the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Center for the Future of the Oceans. For more information on Meridian’s work with the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, please contact Laura Cantral at lcantral@merid.org.
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