It’s Getting Hot In Here

The era of protest-only politics is over. It’s time to get propositional.

Your city is about to get a few million dollars for green investment and job training from the Recovery Package. That money can go to big developers to create low-wage jobs in dirty industries that disappear in a few months, or it can go to family-supporting career-track green collar jobs for people who most need the work. It’s up to you!

Let’s help President Obama build a green recovery for all. Organize an action locally.

People across America are standing up for their own vulnerable communities by asking local officials to ensure equity and ecology are central to their Recovery investment plan. Green For All, Policy Link, and our allies have produced a number of useful resources to help people unpack the Recovery Package and insert their voice into this process now, before most decisions are made. These resources include a User’s Guide to Recovery Act Funds and a Green Recovery For All Action Toolkit.
Continue reading ‘A Green Recovery For All’

Originally posted at WattHead – Energy News and Commentary

Here’s some news to brighten your Friday! Proposed new coal plants have been dropping like flies over the past month, and yet another one bites the dust today, this time in Nevada. Citing strong local opposition and increased certainty that global warming pollution from coal plants will be regulated, energy developer, LS Power announced they will be “indefinitely postponing” plans to build the controversial 1,600 MW coal-fired White Pine Energy Center near Ely, NV.

The news is even better than that though: after dumping their coal plant plans, LS Power has made the wise decision to instead turn to clean renewable energy to meet it’s energy needs. The energy developer plans to focus its attention and investments on a new transmission project that will strengthen the intermountain region’s ability to harness the area’s abundant wind, solar and geothermal energy potential.  The Power Shift has begun, for this utility at least!

Here’s the full story…
Continue reading ‘Nevada Utility Dumps Coal Plant, Turns to Clean, Renewable Energy’

West Virgina State Senator Randy White (D-Webster) stood up on the state floor (video in link) yesterday and asked his fellow Senators to join him in drinking the discolored water that average citizens have to drink every day.  Not a one joined him.

Although the water he drank was not exactly coal slurry, it wasn’t pristine bottled water either.

White says if people have to drink water with coal slurry in it, lawmakers should have to drink it as well. White says lawmakers are no different.

The public may feel removed from the impacts of global warming, but there is no doubt that clean water hits home.  So while the coal industry is touting clean coal to the public, we need to be counter loud and often with clean water.  Stop poisoning our water and killing the people of this land.

Hi all!  I want to share an article I recently wrote for SolveClimate.com, reporting on students’ experiences lobbying at Powershift.  The thing I was most surprised (and disappointed) about during my research was the high prevalence of students reporting that their representatives (or staffers) didn’t even know the basics about global warming.  Huuuuhhhh?

Looks like Lobby Day was also “Education Day” for many congresspeople, who apparently have had their heads in the sand in regards to climate change over the last decade.  While my interviews were in no way comprehensive, it’s certainly an interesting look into one aspect of the tremendous impact we had at Powershift 2009.

Here’s the article: Continue reading ‘Powershift Lobbying: A Lesson on Global Warming 101 for Congress?’

Last spring, I spent an entire semester working for Congressman Ed Markey, chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. I can say unequivocally, that out of 435 members, Markey is our biggest champion in the United States House of Representatives. Many other members of Congress are still supporters of the coal industry, and I encourage you all to read this article in The Hill, about the recent Subcommittee hearing on “clean coal.”

Markey is different. He understands that coal is not clean, and during a recent hearing for the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, Markey gave the coal industry an ultimatum. Essentially, Chairman Markey challenged the coal industry to prove that coal-fired power plants will not harm our environment.

We all know that coal can never be clean. Extraction of fossil fuels harms communities across our country, threatens ecosystems, and destroys mountains and watersheds. Congressman Markey held a hearing with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., highlighting the destructive nature of the coal industry (See RFK Jr.’s Testimony and Video). He also held two hearings with youth testifying about coal and our future (in 2007 and 2009). To top it all off, Congressman Ed Markey introduced legislation last year to place a moratorium on all new coal-fired power plants without emissions controls. This is a great step, with Congressmen Markey and Waxman leading the way to a clean and just climate future.

We need to put pressure on the fence-sitters and our opponents, who think that continuing to use coal-fired power, with or without CCS, is an option for our future. Congressmen Markey is in our camp – we need to convince his other 434 colleagues to take as bold of a stand against the powerful coal industry as we have seen him take over the past few years.

I plan to spend the rest of my life fighting for a clean and just climate – whether its through CALPIRG’s campaign to clean up the Port of Oakland or standing in solidarity with my friends to close down Capitol Hill’s coal fired power plant. Attacking our biggest champion in Congress will not help us achieve our goals, but putting pressure on the other members of Congress is the way to make the future, we envision, a reality.

This post is a contribution to the Special Breakthrough Issue, “After Power Shift: What’s Next?”

By Helen Aki

For the activists and advocates of my generation, the 2008 election was possibly our first taste of political success.  And despite the daunting task of starting our careers in a plummeting economy, there is a sense of hope for those of us who eventually plan to make a living off clean energy, sustainable development, environmental design, and other green jobs.

But between today and the clean energy economy of tomorrow, we still have a lot to do.  After witnessing Obama’s election and inauguration, and after Power Shift 2009 (the party of the year for the youth climate movement), what can the youth movement do to sustain momentum and advance energy and environmental solutions? It has become clear that the traditional model of youth activism must be improved upon.  Although canvassing, rallying, and subscribing to a larger movement can be important political tools, the problems we face today demand more from this generation of activists. On Tuesday, Teryn Norris and Jesse Jenkins called for an “innovation-centric approach” to climate and energy, urging the youth of today to use their strengths and passions to solve the challenge of making clean energy cheap.  The new model for youth activism should empower individuals to rise to this challenge.

An ideal example of what the youth movement could look like can be found at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2005, a group of MBA students at the Haas School of Business recognized the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration on the subject of contemporary energy problems. They also acknowledged that the large Berkeley population (around 35,000 graduate and undergraduate students) makes it difficult for people with similar interests and agendas to find one another. So they created the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative (BERC), to bring together people with varied backgrounds but a common interest. Today, the 27-person leadership team includes liaisons to the schools of business, law, public policy, environmental design, engineering, physical sciences, social sciences, and natural resources. This community of entrepreneurs, engineers, economists, and future lawyers and policymakers is exactly what the clean energy movement needs to drive innovation and change.

Continue reading ‘What’s Next? A New Model for Student Innovation’

The sizzle from the Power Shift ’09 conference is still popping. So many people are asking what’s next. Well I’m not sure I have the go ahead to let y’all in, but I’m crazy and I’m gonna do it anyway.

The success of the Power Shift ’09 conference was unprecedented and in our tried, tested, and approved EAC fashion we are getting ready to roll out a NEW fresh and amazing campaign. The new campaign is gonna plug hundreds of groups together into a unified national effort to pass bold climate and energy policy in 2009. And its gonna be called….Power Shift ’09! If it ain’t broke…

CONTEXT: The House Energy and Commerce Committee (chaired by Henry Waxman) is drafting their climate bill as we speak (they are pulling Power Shift-esque all nighters).  This bill will come out in May, and we need to make sure all house and senate members know where we stand, and that our network it prepared to stand up for our principles.

The bill will likely pass through the House and move up to the Senate (where we have an even tougher fight to win).  Long story short, its time to step up the pressure!

SPRING/APRIL ACTIONS: The first major element of the new campaign is a push to “Get Some Face Time” with our elected officials over the April Congressional Recess (April 6-19th). This will be our first major action to continue the pressure we built at the conference and lobby day.  This is our chance to keep the heat on AND set the tone of how we are merging local campaigns with national targets.  This will also set the tone, helping our local groups create a strong relationship with their Members of Congress and set them up to own this campaign moving forward.

We have been working closely with our friends over at 1 Sky and have identified a great list of Congressional and Senate targets. But this is just a starting point. The following comes directly from an internal memo sent to the organizers nation-wide:

The Tools

1. Targeting Guide: 1Sky has provided us with a great guide to select our Congressional and Senate targets.  This list is just a starting point. We need to consider local knowledge, our capacity, and we need to focus.

2. Campus to Congress Guide: This will help you see how campuses line up with Congressional Districts.  We have two different resources to help find out the overlap between your campuses and congressman.  One is organized by each EAC partner organization, the other by congressional district. Special thanks to SSC to pulling this massive project together

3. April Action Pack. This is our guide for engaging with your elected officials this April. Please share and get the word out to your leaders. (Download the April Action Pack)

4. I can tell you also, that there is gonna be a very robust web component to the campaign. Hundreds of groups from around the country are going to have the ability to register their actions in a centralized location (energyactioncoalition.org). People viewing this site are going to get a barrage of updates on actions occurring all across the country. Saying you were interested in getting involved but didn’t know anything was going on is no longer an option.

Different groups and actions will be highlighted often, and all the amazing media hits, photos, and reactions from the elected officials will also be centrally available. I am getting giddy typing about it.

Just thought y’all’d (I’ve been hanging around Jake too much) be curious about what’s coming up.

Plenty more to come.

Danny
EAC Online Organizer

Students at Middlebury College in Middlebury, VT wasted no time using their new found energy post-Powershift 2009 and hosted a “Freeze on Coal” action earlier this afternoon. The students at Middlebury, a school that earned an “A” on the 2009 “College Sustainability Report Card” in every category but “endowment transparency,” planned the action to launch a campaign compelling the administration to green the endowment. At 12:30pm, close to fifty students froze in place while getting lunch in the campus’s busiest dining hall. Each held a piece of charcoal in his or her hand and, when two minutes had passed, they continued on with their meal, explaining to their befuddled peers what had just happened.

Continue reading ‘Students Call for a “Freeze on Coal”’

This week in the Little Village of Chicago, fifty high school students will hurdle over coal piles and race past power plants for the 2009 Coal-Olympics competition. These respirator-clad youth aren’t just running for fun – they know that two coal plants in their backyards are making their families sick and causing global warming, and they want their President to do something about it.

The Coal-Olympics are part of the nationwide, fledgling project Power Past Coal, uniting hundreds of communities calling on their leaders to transition away from coal to clean and just sources of energy, like wind and solar. Everyday since the President’s inauguration, participants have taken action by lobbying their congressmen to halt mountaintop removal, marching to stop new coal plants, and risking arrest in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience.

Today, Power Past Coal celebrates its 50th day of action, having united over 100 actions from every corner of the country – a number the project’s founders hadn’t imagined possible on inauguration day.

The nationwide effort began in November 2008 with a meeting of thirty-six grassroots activists from twenty-four different organizations and nineteen states. “Before, I hadn’t realized how many people were fighting my same fight, hundreds of miles away,” said Elouise Brown, a Navajo army veteran who has camped for three years on the site of a proposed coal plant near Farmington, New Mexico.

The Power Past Coal project reached a crescendo on March 2nd when 12,000 students convened in Washington DC for Powershift 2009 and several thousand more shut down the capitol coal plant for four hours in the largest civil disobedience for climate in history. “You know it’s a movement when you see thousands out in the streets, waving Power Past Coal signs and putting their bodies on the line,” said Enei Begaye, an indigenous rights organizer in the Arizona coalfields and director of Black Mesa Water Coalition. “Now we just need Obama to notice.”

With Obama’s recent efforts to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants and coal ash from slurry ponds, it seems like the President is beginning to listen.

But in the communities directly impacted by coal, these statements have yet to make a difference. On Monday, citizens from Wise County, Virginia packed the Andover Methodist Church to protest a 1,300 acre mountaintop removal permit that would allow strip mining on Ison Rock Ridge, threatening six adjacent communities and hundreds of people who live there. On Friday, New Hampshirites will convene at the Concord Statehouse to demand a cleaner alternative to an out-of-date coal plant. Meanwhile, all across the country, organizations are gearing up for the 100th Day Action, which will unite all communities impacted by coal at every stage of its cycle.

“How much yelling is it going to take us before Obama admits coal is just plain dirty?” said Judy Bonds, the director of Coal River Mountain Watch in Whitesville, West Virginia. “We’re still fighting the same fight as we were ten years ago. But now we have a chance to win.”

Too often, I ignore the little things – walking the walk – as I dedicate most of my waking energy to the meta-challenges of our time – climate justice and sustainability. Now and then, you can spot me holding a disposable coffee cup in my left hand as I passionately gesticulate with my right, attempting to convey the urgency of these problems and the promise of their solutions. It may seem petty, but this image is a vulnerability for our movement.

Just as those who seek to derail our movement exploit the ironic image of climate activists mobilizing during a March snowstorm, you can be sure that they will hit us with similar inanities. If they are resorting to these tactics, it means: A – We are strong enough to be perceived as a threat to their interests. B – Our message and vision of sustainability and prosperity is so compelling, that it cannot be substantially attacked. Our image, however, can be exploited.

Continue reading ‘Strategy Note on Image’