It’s Getting Hot In Here

Rollin’ with contagious CCN energy-hope-momentum back to school… It gets a bit isolating out here in the wheatfields, I’m grateful for IGHIH to keep us connected to the life-source. Here’s to a first post – cheers!

21 Feb 2008 | Outdoors
“Power Shift’ event draws Whitties

By Camila Thorndike

“We are a coalition of the benevolently irrational: good people doing good things for no good reason,” said Jefferson Smith of the Oregon Bus Project.

On Friday, Feb. 8, 12 Whitman students who care about climate change arrived at the University of Oregon campus in Eugene for the Cascade Power Shift: Mobilizing Youth for Climate Justice. The summit brought together more than 200 students from Oregon and Washington from over 20 colleges, universities, and high schools for the largest-ever youth climate summit in the Northwest.

“It was inspiring and motivating to be surrounded by people trying to bring momentum outside of their own campuses and really affect structural change,” said sophomore Natalie Popovich.

Simply put, those three days were some of the most affirming and hopeful of my life. If excitement could power cities, the electricity generated by so many passionate activists in the same room would guarantee a clean-energy future. And it’s possible. The global youth climate movement is the fastest growing youth environmental movement in history, and we’ve only just begun.

The 12 of us who attended the summit are now part of the Cascade Climate Network (CCN), an entirely volunteer-driven and youth-organized new network of climate change activists in the Northwest. The original 20 of the group, formed only four months ago, have since armed hundreds with the tools and training to bring desperately needed awareness and change across the board in order to address this planetary crisis.

The non-stop summit consisted of panels, speakers, and workshops that engaged us in envisioning a better world and building coalitions to achieve our plans. Whitman was well-represented. We divided and conquered the weekend, forming coalitions with students statewide to create Green Jobs for Washington, learn about potential future fuels such as biomethane, and stop new coal plants in their dirty tracks.

These are only a few examples of the many campaigns for climate change action, to halt false solutions to global warming that only enforce the status quo, and to lay the groundwork for a new clean-energy economy that provides rewarding and sustainable work for those who need it most.

Armed. Passionate. Young. Who are we, and why do we care? We’re not militant radicals and we don’t wear garlands, but we ARE out to save the world – with poise and creativity. We have paid attention to the trials and victories of history, and we are organized, determined, and ready to rumble. In its complexity, this catchy message is more than it seems: we are not fighting for one cause, one movement, or one solution.

Climate change is the defining problem of our generation, and it is incredibly complex – it is already displacing people, eradicating species, and changing American lives and our view of the future. This wildcard will turn things upside down, and the differing degrees to which it is doing so defines this issue in terms of not only biology and politics, but also social justice and economics.

That is why the energy and vision of every single person counts, and why this summit gave me HOPE. The momentum culminated on Monday, the first-ever youth global warming Citizen Action day at the Oregon and Washington state capitols. Five of us – Natalie Popovich, Tyler Harvey, Sarah Judkins, Elena Gustafson, and myself – met with three legislators from two Washington districts. We lobbied for two important climate change bills, but accomplished much more: We turned heads and shook things up by showing that the next generation of leaders are working in unison for a better world.

As we all know, the youth political bloc is one of the most underrepresented. For us, this sad fact is a two-sided card because by the sheer novelty of students coming all the way from Walla Walla to see their representatives, we were rewarded with meaningful conversations with busy legislators in the middle of appropriations week – some up to an hour long!

By establishing these political relationships, we have taken the most important steps toward building the “sustainable, just, and prosperous future for all” that the next generation of American leaders envision.

Original post here at the Whitman Pioneer.