The First 100 Days of the new administration are here. The short time frame that we have to achieve significant action on cutting warming pollution coincides with a unique political opportunity to change our nation.
The first of these opportunities is February 5th. The National Teach-In on Global Warming is connecting campuses, congregations, and communities directly with their US representatives via video-dialogue. In addition, the NTI will produce a webcast, available for free download anytime after January 30, featuring EAC and climate movement leaders, including Billy Parish and Wahleah Johns (below).
Jessy Tolkan of the Energy Action Coalition will be headlining the January 21 National Teach-In nationwide organizing call. Jessy will motivate us all to prepare for Power Shift, and give us her most recent thoughts on the movement. The call is at 12 Eastern or 9 Pacific, Call-in number is 218-486-8700, passcode 020509.
There are now 155 schools around the country who have asked their congressperson to engage in direct video-dialogue on February 4th or 6th, and we are shooting for HALF of Congress. Over the course of these three days, Congress will hear from their constituents in-district about climate change, providing a powerful counter-point to the lobbyists housed across Pennsylvania Ave.
The National Teach-In as an initiative deals regularly with a tough question – are we engaged in education or advocacy? Project Director Professor Eban Goodstein writes in his most recent article on Inside Higher Ed, “As educators,…Over the coming years, we must prepare young people for the heroic task ahead. This means, across the curriculum, giving them the tools to think creatively and practically, to solve the complex engineering, ecological and social design problems that they must solve in the coming decades…Over the coming months, we owe our students readings, seminars, paper assignments, lectures, quizzes and exams, colloquia, internship experiences, and co-curricular opportunities that expose them to the vast historical stakes of this political moment. We must equip them to engage in informed and skilled ways, now, with the inhabitants of statehouses and the White House, and empower the voices of young people to help shape solutions for their future. This is not crossing a line into advocacy. Advocates have the narrow — and important— social task of lobbying for a specific piece of legislation or agenda. Advocacy runs counter to education when understanding is sacrificed to political expediency. And yet, from fear of being falsely characterized as advocates, educators cannot now shy away from the implications of global warming science.”
And there is still a lot of room for education about global warming in the United States. “Increasingly the public accepts that global warming is real, and scary, but very few people understand how critical are the policy decisions that will be made in 2009 and 2010. Will Congress pass laws that stabilize and begin aggressive cuts in global warming pollution in the United States, and fund large scale investment in clean energy technologies? If so, we keep that window — for achieving a stable climate in a recognizable world — cracked open.”
Let’s forge the inter-generational partnership that will give us all the energy and the tools that we will need to accomplish the hard task ahead.The movement converges on Washington in 2009. Together, we will construct the solutions that we need.
Represent your state: Sign Up to Host a Teach-In.
