So you’ve started a conversation with your MP about climate change, pollution and the solution – carbon fee and dividend – what next?

Write to your local news media.

This could be the editor of your local or regional print paper or newsite.

Find out the editors’ email address by looking at the Letters to the Editor page or through the ‘contact us’ webpage.

If you are taking part in a CCL campaign you can contact the newsdesk and they may publish your activity as news.

If you have organised a special CCL event, you can post it to online listings pages, or send it to the what’s on section of your local newspaper, or again, get in contact with the newsdesk who may publish a report about the event before and after it has happened.

Suggested content for a Letter to the Editor

• Keep it brief. If you don’t keep it to 150 words or so, they will edit it down to size anyway. Count the number of words in the longest letter on the page, and keep your letter word count under that.
• Keep it polite. Don’t make it about an individual or organisation – we’re all in this together.
• This always works best if you are responding to an item in their paper/site – which could be about local pollution or a piece about the countryside, flooding, effects of weather, etc – or is about something you have done in the catchment area of the paper, e.g. wrote to your MP, attended a local event. Sum this up in a sentence or two.
• Say that the best response to climate change and pollution is the introduction of carbon fee and dividend.
• You could use this definition of carbon fee and dividend:

Fossil fuels are taxed at source, then this money is divided equally between UK citizens.

It works by raising the cost of fossil fuels but gives citizens the money to cope with the price rise until cleaner, more efficient and cheaper technologies are available.

It also gives business the motivation and time to change from fossil fuels to cleaner energy.

• Finish with an action – invite the readers to write to their MP and visit www.citizensclimatelobby.uk for more information, or tell them when the next local meet up takes place.
• Include your first and last name (and title if preferred), and address. Most papers will not publish without an address supplied, though you can ask them to withhold your address from publication.

Good luck! And do email us a copy of your letter and any publication success.