It’s Getting Hot In Here

Cross-posted from WattHead – Energy News and Commentary

The simultaneous collapse of our economic and ecological systems has created a great opportunity to support industries that at once rebuild the market and the planet, according to an article by economist Robert Pollin, “Doing Recovery Right,” appearing in the latest issue of The Nation. The transition of the economy from a fossil-fuel to a renewable resource base will provide new jobs and revitalize the American working class, argues to Pollin, who is also the author of the in depth report “Green Recovery,” examining the job creation benefits of a $100 billion, two year investment to building a clean energy economy.

“The transition to a clean energy economy has the capacity to merge the aims of environmental protection and social justice to a degree that is unprecedented,” Pollin writes. “It is an opportunity that must not be lost.”

In the video below, Pollin and The Nation contributor Liza Featherstone discuss the potential for public investments to spark the transition to a new energy economy and create jobs in industries both new and familiar – from construction and manufacturing to new energy and high tech industries.

Continue reading ‘VIDEO: Creating Jobs in a New Energy Economy’

Organizers asking action participants to dress in their “Sunday Best” at the civil disobedience at the Capitol on March 2nd.

We’ve all heard that movements for ecological sanity and social justice are in a crucial political moment. We’re moving from margin to center, and ideas that were once considered on the radical fringe are seen as common sense and self-evident. We’re embracing strategies that employ a diversity of complimentary tactics. Our president proudly writes a narrative of American progress driven by civic engagement and social movement. Our battle is no longer of whether climate change is real, but whether or not we will meet this challenge with the speed and urgency our times require with solutions that are deep enough to solve the economic and climate crisis for everyone, not just for a few.

The nature of protest must evolve to seize this opportunity.

On March 2nd 2009, thousands of people from all walks of life and organizations from across the political spectrum will gather at the coal-fired power plant that powers congress for the Capitol Climate Action in DC. The Capitol Power Plant is a flashpoint and national symbol for a clear message of real solutions, healthy jobs and communities, and climate justice.

In this action, the medium is our message – we’re engaging in an act of civil disobedience. We’re highlighting the moral imperative to take action; our future can’t wait, and we’re willing to put ourselves on the line to ensure we have one. Nothing less than the survival of our species hangs in the balance, and we’re taking ourselves seriously enough to convey that with clarity.

That’s why in their initial public letter, Wendell Berry and Bill Mckibben said, “this will be, to the extent it depends on us, an entirely peaceful demonstration, carried out in a spirit of hope and not rancor. We will be there in our dress clothes, and ask the same of you.”

Dress how you like – it doesn’t need to be a business suit. Folks from different cultures have different ways of “dressing up” – feel free to do what feels right.

People often draw parallels between the emerging climate movement and the civil rights movement in the United States. While the climate movement still has a long way to go to earn that comparison, we are right to be inspired by it. Throughout history people have taken bold and confrontational action, often breaking laws to bear witness to an evil and reshape society. We understand that we are the inheritors of this spirit and its tone of seriousness and respectability. Throughout the labor movement and various currents for racial justice people have chosen to wear suits as part of their message they send through these bold actions.

We are asking participants to honor this legacy and use this as an opportunity for change-agents of all kinds to look at ourselves perhaps a bit differently than before. We realize it will be cold and we may all be bundled up anyway, but request that all participants respect the “tone of the zone” and come ready to engage in a positive solution-oriented bold national call to climate action. Dressing up is just one part of an overall message that will only enhance the powerful nature of this action.

Continue reading ‘Strategy Note – Dress to Impress at the Capitol Climate Action’

Last weekend, I asked you to help me tell your Power Shift Story.  I’ve recieved some amazing responses from inspired, engaged, and active young people across the country who are ready to rock Washington D.C., February 27th-March 2nd for Power Shift 2009. What follows is one such story, written by Nick Engelfried, a student at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon (my hometown!) and a kick-ass organizer with the Cascade Climate Network who is leading the charge to transform Intel, Oregon’s largest employer, from a climate action delayer into a clean energy champion (check out Uncover Intel’s Secrets to join in).  Please head here to help me tell YOUR Power Shift story.  Here’s Nick’s:

For a college campus in the greater Portland area, Pacific University is not always the most happenin’ place.  The campus is located in a small town about a half-hour drive from Portland (forty-five minutes by public transportation).  I like Pacific partly because of its small student body—1,500 undergrads, the quiet atmosphere on-campus, and the fact that you can go to sleep at night without being woken up by some partying fraternity or sorority.  My only problem with Pacific culture is that it’s also a little hard to stir up enthusiasm for student activism.

By the time I heard about Power Vote, I had already helped run a few significant environmental projects on my campus the previous year—the year I first transferred to Pacific.  The student environmental group there had showed a green-themed film or two, had some speakers come to campus, and gathered student support for the university’s demonstration organic farm.  Still, I was unsure how much enthusiasm we could drum up over Power Vote.  Could a sleepy little university like Pacific actually make a significant contribution to this national campaign?  I wasn’t completely convinced.

Still, I signed up with the Sierra Student Coalition to be Pacific’s Power Vote Coordinator—and with the Coalition’s help, we set a goal of collecting 300-400 pledges from Pacific.  I brought up Power Vote with the campus environmental group, and they seemed enthusiastic enough.  Maybe it wouldn’t be too hard to meet our goal after all, I thought.  But convincing students interested in environmental issues that the campaign was a cool idea was one thing; getting over 300 pledges was going to be quite another.
Continue reading ‘“My Power Shift Story,” by Nick Engelfried’

As part of the National Teach-In on Global Warming, the four primary organizers have made this sample video-letter to Congress:

We are helping schools, congregations, and communities across the country make video-letters of their own. These videos might describe what happened at their Teach-In event (kicking off Feb. 5), talk about why they are involved, or ask for real leadership from our US representatives during the 111th Congress.

To see confirmed US Senate and House participants, please check out the Climate Dialogue page.

Please make a Video-Letter to Congress of your own, and we’ll help get it to your representative. Let’s all provide a powerful counterpoint to the lobbyists across the street.

Thanks,

The National Teach-In team: Lara, Sara, Madeline and Maryl

You know the answer to this question. You can’t get any clean coal for $6.8 billion, because, of course, there is no such thing.

Tell that to Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who bragged yesterday about the $4.4 billion the senate’s version of the stimulus bill, up from $2.4 billion in the House version, gives to clean coal technology. That $4.4 billion won’t buy any clean coal, just like the $2.2 billion in the bank bailout couldn’t buy any clean coal.

You can send Byrd an email here or give his office a call at 202-224-3954. Better yet, come to Power Shift at the end of this month and pay him and your own legislators a visit on the March 2^nd Power Shift lobby day. If you aren’t the lobbying type, be a part of the Capitol Climate Action at the coal plant that (yes, literally) powers Congress. After your visit to DC, get moving on a Focus the Nation Town Hall on Energy in your home town or on campus in April to bring the whole community and your local leaders into the discussion with federal reps. Continue reading ‘How much clean coal can I get for $6.8 billion?’

Here’s an update from the Coal River Mountain Wind Team:

We wanted to write and give you an update on what’s happening with the mountain. There has been a lot going on, not much of it in our favor, so we could still use your help in spreading awareness of the campaign and the urgency of the situation. Please continue to share our website and the story of Coal River Mountain with your friends and colleagues, and even write letters to your local newspapers and legislators urging their support for the residents of the Coal River Valley.

First of all, Massey has begun pre-mining activities below the ridge where the first phase of mining is set to begin. It is hard to determine exactly when they will be set to blast, and for now they have yet to construct a road up to the ridge, but they have shown their intent by clearing the forest and constructing a road and sediment ditches approximately 150 [ft?] below the ridge, so we expect that they will be ready to clear the ridge in the coming weeks, but we’ll keep you updated on that.

We’d like to once again bring attention to the economic report conducted by Downstream Strategies out of Morgantown, WV that we released last December. The report analyzed the economic costs and benefits of going with wind versus mountaintop removal for Coal River Mountain, and concluded that the development of a 328 Megawatt wind farm (enough to power about 70,000 homes) stands as the best economic land use option for the mountain, the communities and the county government. This was the evidence we’d been waiting for, and we truly though for a while that the report couldn’t be ignored by state and local leaders.
Continue reading ‘Update from Coal River Mountain’

Okay, I’ll admit that this post has (almost) nothing to do with the fact that President Obama was a community organizer, but it has everything to do with how inseparable community and organizing are.  Check out this video from my friends at Iowa Global Warming about the National Day of Service in Des Moines, IA on January 19th.  I’ll explain the connection to Obama later in this post.

(I’m not actually in this video, but these were some of the people I worked with that day)

In parallel to Matt’s recent post about the balance between traditional organizing tactics and civil disobedience, I want to discuss the balance (and sometimes tension) between volunteer service and organizing.   Back in April I wrote about my personal struggle in valuing volunteerism on a level plane with activism.  The major tension I experienced reflected my desire to have the biggest impact possible – I wanted to maximize the scale of my influence with the limited amount of time and energy one person can contribute.

What I failed to acknowledge was that by maximizing my scale of influence I was minimizing the level of personal interaction I experienced through this work.  I spent hours on conference calls, days on campus visits across the Midwest and weeks without face-to-face interaction with most of the people I work closely  with.  Even though I have lived in Iowa for almost two years, I realized that I barely knew my own city because I was focused on happenings elsewhere.

Perhaps it was the focus on campus activism, perhaps it was my own limited experience, perhaps I was a little shy, but it became painfully obvious that although I organize a community of youth, I was completely removed from my own community.  As long ago as April I noted that this vision of a better future

will be brought into being through the everyday acts of kindness, courageousness and compassion in complement with the direct intent and strategies of activism.

Continue reading ‘VIDEO: Obama, community and organizing’

Across the climate movement, we are constantly bumping into the false dichotomy of JOBS vs. Everything Else. Every piece of common sense can apparently be  defeated with 4 dang letters — Human health? Jobs! Long term economy? Jobs! Destroying water resources for the eastern seaboard? Jobs! Air pollution causing tens of thousands of pre-mature deaths a year? Jobs!

Now, granted, I like jobs, but, remember this is a false dichotomy — as Judy Bonds says, “There are no jobs on a dead planet.” In December, the Coal River Wind Project produced an extensive study that showed that a wind farm would create more than a million (yes, million!) dollars more tax revenue each year in the county than a mountaintop removal site, and that it would take only 27 years for a wind farm to produce more job hours than a strip mine. 

However, these are hypotheticals, the Coal River Wind Project remains in jeopardy.  Now, we have proof that wind can beat coal in the jobs and economy argument. According to CNN Money.com: The wind industry now employs more people than coal mining in the United States. 

Wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday from the American Wind Energy Association. In contrast, the coal industry employs about 81,000 workers. (Those figures are from a 2007 U.S. Department of Energy report but coal employment has remained steady in recent years though it’s down by nearly 50% since 1986.) Wind industry employment includes 13,000 manufacturing jobs concentrated in regions of the country hard hit by the deindustrialization of the past two decades.

The big spike in wind jobs was a result of a record-setting 50% increase in installed wind capacity, with 8,358 megawatts coming online in 2008 (enough to power some 2 million homes). That’s a third of the nation’s total 25,170 megawatts of wind power generation. Wind farms generating more than 4,000 megawatts of electricity were completed in the last three months of 2008 alone.

Another sign that wind power is no longer a niche green energy play: Wind accounted for 42% of all new electricity generation installed last year in the U.S.

This article doesn’t mention that coal mining jobs have been decreasing dramatically because of the mechanization of coal mining, which has resulted not only in fewer jobs, but also in the terrible stip mines in the Powder River Basin and Black Mesa, as well as mountaintop removal coal mining.

The Trek to Re-Energize America, a bike ride from all across the U.S. this upcoming summer to D.C., is a natural and needed outgrowth of the youth climate movement.   It began as a loose brainstorm session in the Northwest a year ago and has since spread to encompass 15 regional organizer in 14 states, acting locally to hold interest sessions, raise funds and grow the movement with an innovative approach, building a movement from the seat of a bike.

Let’s all remember how the Energy Action Coalition, Step it Up, Focus the Nation and so many other great projects started up.  With a small core of committed individuals who, with few funds or leverage, reached out to established partners and the public to be hugely effective in moving the U.S. closer to acting on climate change.  They came at it with fresh approaches and fresh faces, shaking up the established environmental world.  They gave youth and the public at large a place and a movement to plug into and get involved beyond signing an online petition.

The Trek is attempting to do just that, again.   Riders will be departing from states across the U.S., having conversations all across the country about clean energy, transportation, green jobs and sustainable farming, and helping to move our country beyond fossil fuels and into the new century.  By giving new leaders a chance to plug in, the Trek is fostering the movement in an innovative way aimed at talking with all Americans, in their communities about their issues.  And when we get to D.C., we’ll let our legislators know how hungry this country is for a clean future.

Join us.  See the country we’re trying to save and the people who can make it happen.

Cross-posted from WattHead – Energy News and Commentary

Why is this five year old smarter than the rest of us?

Let’s build a smarter grid:

Continue reading ‘VIDEO: “We should totally build a smarter system.” The Smarter Grid’