Rep. Diana DeGette Joins Our Stay In and Speak Out for Climate Action!

This year, we aren’t playing around. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we aren’t holding our happy, crowded, buzzing, and bubbling annual Play-In for Climate Action in Washington, DC. Instead, we’re asking legislators across the country to join us for virtual events and conversations with their constituents to talk about air pollution, climate action and what we can do to fight the climate crisis where we live.

On Tuesday, August 11, at 10AM MT / 12PM ET, please join Congresswoman DeGette (CO-01) on our Facebook page for a conversation with our Colorado team and a few of our littlest activists from the congresswoman’s home district.

Watch the replay

Congresswoman DeGette is the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Panel, which directly oversees our nation’s energy policy. She also serves on the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees our nation’s public lands.

Before serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, DeGette served two terms in the Colorado House of Representatives (from 1992 to 1996). She was first elected to Congress in 1996, and she has been representing the people of Colorado’s 1st Congressional District ever since.

A life-long Coloradoan, Congresswoman DeGette is guided by traditional Western values. And while in Congress, she has been a leader on environmental and clean-energy policy issues.

She’s the author of the Colorado Wilderness Act, which the House recently passed to permanently protect more than 600,000 acres of wilderness across Colorado. She is also the author of groundbreaking new legislation, known as the Clean Energy Innovation and Deployment Act, to cut our global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and to net-zero by 2050, in an effort to stave off the worst effects of the climate crisis.

She has spearheaded efforts to reduce the amount of hydrogen cyanide plants around the country have been pumping into the atmosphere and is the lead sponsor of legislation that would require the EPA to identify 100 communities most affected by nearby sources of pollution—and then clean them up.

In 1979, DeGette graduated from Colorado College, where she earned her BA magna cum laude. She then attended New York University School of Law, where she earned her JD in 1982.