It’s 12:18am at the Youth Energy Summit - do you know where your future is?

It is 12:18am Saturday morning, November 4th, 2006. The first annual Virginia Youth Energy Summit at William and Mary in Williamsburg has begun, and you can feel history beginning to form. Over 145 students have already checked in and more are expected in the morning. The trainers are confirmed, the keynote speakers are set, and everyone is ready to roll. You can feel it in the air.

But all of that is immaterial now. Now it is party time. I am sitting on the couch at the home of Gina Sobel, a veteran Sierra Student Coalition activist. She wants to drink, but I can’t help pulling her in for a quick comment. Gina has spent summers training dozens of environmental activists from across the country, but this is different, she says. “I am so excited to see this community gathered here. I am totally psyched for us to build this clean energy revolution.”

And it isn’t just here. Right now, fellow activists are gathering in Nairobi for the 12th UN Conference on Climate Change. They are going to make sure the world knows that young people want immediate solutions to global warming. I want to be there, but I also want to be here. It makes me nostalgic - so much of this energy got started last year when over 500 youth gathered in Montreal to put the Kyoto Protocol into place. And the world took notice.

And now we are having that same launching point right here in Virginia. That, my friends, is the feeling. Because it’s so new here. Sure, each campus has it’s activism. But the statewide community, this is different. We have almost 20 schools here… a network. You can feel it in the air. Everywhere I hear “what school are you from?” And “ooh, I didn’t know you guys were running the Campus Climate Challenge“. This is the stuff of revolution.
Zach Pilchen, a key conference organizer, has been helping to put this together for months. “This conference has just lept off the page from being paper agenda to being a reality. We have so many people from so many schools and so many places, it’s energizing. It’s renewably energizing.”

Let the Virginia clean energy revolution begin.

About Josh

A self described "professional rabble-rouser," Josh brings his ethic of stirring up the system to his work with the Energy Action Coalition. Josh is currently the Field Director for Energy Action Coalition and the Power Vote Campaign and he is working every day to get young people out to vote for Clean and Just Energy this November. Previous to EAC, Josh served as Deputy Director for Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), where he coordinated campaigns to promote solutions to global warming across the Chesapeake region. Recent victories include the Healthy Air Act, the Maryland Clean Cars Bill, and numerous clean energy policies at colleges across the region.

2 Responses to “It’s 12:18am at the Youth Energy Summit - do you know where your future is?”

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1 Arthur Coulston Nov 4th, 2006 at 10:10 am

Just arrived at YES and it is rocking. There are a lot of great folks from across Virginia and the mid-atlantic. I’ll post some pictures and more info later.
2 Den Nov 4th, 2006 at 9:50 pm

We may not have a future if ExxonMobil keeps this crap up
But I wish you all the luck and the best in the world, and i’m gonna do everything to help with the clean revolution!