Last week, over 80 young environmental leaders gathered in Tucson, Arizona for this year’s Udall Scholarship Orientation and to join in the 10-year anniversary celebration of the Morris K. Udall Foundation, which serves Senator Morris K. Udall’s legacy of leadership and public service on environmental and tribal issues. (More on “Mo,” the Foundation, the Anniversary, and the scholarship– an amazing opportunity for United States citizens going into their sophomore and junior years of college– at www.udall.gov.)
I was lucky enough to watch as this year’s class of Udall Scholars, some of whom had travelled to the orientation from as far away as Afghanistan and Laos, unveiled inspiring new initiatives on issues from sustainable agriculture to community development to energy efficiency and committed to leading these projects in their communities over the next year.
Particularly near and dear to my heart were the self-dubbed “G7:” Adi, Caroline, Jamie, John, Scot, Seth, and Whitney, seven young climate leaders who have vowed to hold colleges and universities in Northeast US accountable to their climate commitments. Snazzy in shirts and ties, awing with their song and dance as well as with their substance (youth climate movement favorites “Oooh, it’s hot in here…” and “Shake your booty, shake up the system” were spread to yet another group of young leaders), the G7 outlined a particularly ambitious project: “Renew New England.”
The G7 had this to say about “Renew New England:”
“In 2001, a conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers (NEG/ECP) agreed to an ambitious set of greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. Since then over 130 colleges and universities in the Northeast have pledged their support for these targets and voluntarily agreed to take action to reduce their own emissions and engage students in climate change education. Several years later, however, many universities have yet to take concrete steps towards meeting these goals and public memory of these commitments has fallen by the wayside. Also, the successes that have occurred have not reached a broader audience beyond the higher education community.
As Udall Scholars who have been involved in climate organizing networks in the Northeast over the past few years, we are uniquely situated to remind university officials of their pledges and to move them towards strong, concerted action on climate change in line with the goals of the NEG/ECP conference, as well as educate the public about ongoing climate and energy initiatives on college campuses. We will accomplish these goals by engaging in a collaborative process with students, faculty, administrators and sustainability coordinators on dozens of New England campuses, using the media to draw attention to our cause.”
“Renew New England” will culminate in Boston, MA and New Haven, CT in Summer 2007 with the arrival of the Udall Bus (all will be explained in due time…) and publicity, publicity, publicity. You can find more information on the NEG/ECP College & University Partnership at http://www.neg-ecp-environment.org/page.asp?pg=56.
The only trouble our G7 visionaries encountered on their way to picking their project was narrowing down their focus within all the current courses of action in this mounting youth climate movement. Other enticing options included campus endowments action, demanding accountability in mainstream media coverage, working for energy justice in low-income communities, etc… Needless to say, the G7 is pretty psyched to know that everyone reading this blog is also out there doing amazing work, and that together we’ll have it (nearly?!) all covered…
Stay tuned for project updates from the G7 and ways to get involved in “Renew New England,” as well as pictures (and maybe even video??) of last week’s Udall festivities. And in the meantime, remember:
“N-E-G/E-C-P…find out what it means to Mo’. Mo’ Udall (he would want it!), Mo’ Change (make a lot of it!), Mo’ Udall (he would want it!), Mo’ Change…”
