IT PASSED. Washington state voters passed a ballot initiative in November (remember those elections? ahhh, glorious!) guaranteeing that by 2020, 15% of the electricity from Washington’s largest utilities comes from home-grown renewable energy sources such as wind and solar! The initiative (known as I-937) actually has teeth and timelines to make sure that state utilities actually do move forward with clean energy, conservation, and efficiency. Here’s the text of the actual initiative. Although endorsed by everyone (who’s cool) ranging from the Washington Association of Churches to the Washington Sustainable Food and Farm Network and the Sierra Club to the Washington Alliance for Retired Americans, passing this legislation was a tough job.
Many constituents had not been familiar with the initiative and initial polling surveys made its supporters worry about its chances. Luckily, (and it feels so good to write this in retrospect) our final pushes to voters and effective targeting of constituents made the difference; the initiative passed with a close 51% of the vote.
What does this mean for youth working on state initiatives and campaigns? I’d say many things, but the most pressing lesson learned in my group, the Sierra Student Coalition @ the University of Washington (SSC @ UW) was the importance of friends. (awwww!)
Having allies outside of the campus environment helped our group get started working quickly and efficiently on this issue and we in turn helped re-energize our allies’ own campaign work. By the time class started for students at UW (quarter system, yeesh!) our allies had been in the midst of I-937 work for months. Most of the grassroots (Cesar Chavez-style-talking-to-people-about-the-initiative) work began in the summer, so that by fall our allies were excellent resources. They knew what groups hadn’t been approached, what messages worked best for various constituencies, and they also had resources and materials ready for us to tap in to when we came back for the semester. In return, we as students offered a lot to help build upon the existing campaign and our allies’ efforts. Students (in any movement, really) possess unique creativity in tactics, strategy, and framing the debate, as well as the “hip, cool, new image” in a cause that allows us to build better relationships with young or new voters. We as students also, even more importantly, provide new energy, drive, skills, and connections for a campaign or a movement- and these make up a mighty fine recipe for success.
Back to UW: In our campus political environment, students are generally in support of renewable energy and against global warming. (It’s pretty cool that you don’t really have to convince them about it here in Seattle. Thank you Mayor Greg Nickels!) But it was our job to tell them about SOLUTIONS.
SSC @ UW students tabled on campus for weeks using carefully constructed visuals and information to get the word out about this ballot initiative (as well as one other scary ballot initiative regarding property rights, I-933, but that’s another story with a happy ending). To raise consciousness about global warming, we held a movie screening of the themed comedy show called Earth to America- you can check out a clip of Will Ferrell as President Bush and his take (or lack thereof) on global warming on youtube. We had a great turnout for this event and it helped establish our group’s role on campus in offering GLOBAL WARMING SOLUTIONS- as exemplified by the lovely I-937.
In November, Washington state gave voters a chance to critically assess their take on energy production and consumption in the state. I-937 offered a “yes” or “no” answer to global warming solutions and tested Americans’ response to global warming threats. The response was clear: voters are ready to move away from global warming debates and toward adopting solutions. I-937′s success in Washington has sent a clear message of support for statewide clean energy alternatives, renewables, efficiency, and conservation legistlation. Perhaps (hopefully) this statewide call for a new energy future will be heard in Capitol Hill as the new Congress discusses global warming solutions. What’s even more exciting to know is that 22 other states passed similar clean energy legislation even before Washington did just one month ago.
So now, I’m curious… which one of you is next?
This is some good stuff. For those of you who don’t want to or can’t read all the jargony legislative bill stuff, here are some highlights:
CONTINUED FROM ABOVE
Not quite sure why my reply got cut off, here’s the rest:
-”Renewable resource” means: (a) Water; (b) wind; (c) solar
energy; (d) geothermal energy; (e) landfill gas; (f) wave, ocean, or
tidal power; (g) gas from sewage treatment facilities; (h) biodiesel
fuel as defined in RCW 82.29A.135 that is not derived from crops raised
on land cleared from old growth or first-growth forests where the
clearing occurred after the effective date of this section; and (i)
biomass energy based on animal waste or solid organic fuels from wood,
forest, or field residues, or dedicated energy crops that do not
include (i) wood pieces that have been treated with chemical
preservatives such as creosote, pentachlorophenol, or copper-chrome-
arsenic; (ii) black liquor byproduct from paper production; (iii) wood
from old growth forests; or (iv) municipal solid waste.
This is a good bill overall and one of the better I’ve seen, but still has a couple gaps. Specifically, landfill gas is worse for global warming, biodiesel is not sustainable or scaleable (waste veggie oil is cool but it’s a tiny slice of the market), and there is still some wiggle room for biomass in there, which can take all sorts of nasty forms. However, it is GREAT to see this explicitly exclude treated wood, black liquor, old growth, and municipal waste (trash incineration). This is way way better than the one we got in (waste) coal, landfill, and biomass land, er, Pennsylvania,
-a qualifying utility that fails to comply with the energy conservation
or renewable energy targets established in section 4 of this act shall
pay an administrative penalty to the state of Washington in the
amount of fifty dollars for each megawatt-hour of shortfall.
Fifty dollars! That sounds like a legitimate penalty for non-compliance. Good good good.