It’s Getting Hot In Here

Well folks, the Trek to Re-Energize America is officially done pedaling.  We pulled into DC 40 young people strong from all across the country.  We took our stories and energy to our legislators all day on the 27th.  We let them know that all across the country, ordinary people are working in their communities to ensure a better, more sustainable future for everyone and they need the federal government to get on board.

It was an epic, beautiful, difficult and inspiring trip.  We were able to spread hope to people across the country to let them know that people outside of their communities were taking notice, that there was something larger brewing, that a movement was shaping and they were a part of it, whether they knew it or not.

We were also able to introduce a whole host of new young people to the youth climate movement, people who cared but had never heard of Powershift, who were up for an adventure but not a plane trip.  It’s through this kind of continued diversity of tactics that we will continue to draw in new activists and win in the end.

A lot of folks have asked if the Trek will happen again and my answer is always the same: If you make it happen.  If you want any tips, have any questions or just want to chat about what the Trek was all about, shoot us a message at contact@trektoreenergize.org

UPDATE: action video here.

During rush-hour commute this morning, two Indigenous Canadian women – Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, and Heather Milton-Lightening – scaled flagpoles in front of the main entrance of Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC’s) headquarters in Toronto, dropping a banner reading “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon.com” – appealing to the bank to pull its massive investments in Alberta tar sands projects. Supported by RAN, the Ruckus Society, and their Indigenous People’s Power Project, they were joined by dozens of Toronto RAN activists, swarming entrances to ensure every RBC employee heard our appeal Mrs. Janet Nixon, the wife of RBC CEO Gordon Nixon, to lend her strong and influential voice to those fighting to protect Canada’s clean water and respect Indigenous rights by pushing RBC to stop bankrolling the tar sands. They handed out flyers, held banners, and even circled the building on bikes with “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon.com” flags.

RBC is the ATM of the Tar Sands.

They are a leading investor in what has been called the dirtiest project on Earth and is one of the greatest social and ecological injustices of our time. Unless they’re stopped by grassroots pressure, oil companies will transform a boreal forest the size of Florida into an industrial sacrifice zone – complete with lakes full of toxic waste that are so big that you can see them from outer space. Tar sands projects poison First Nations Communities, pollute precious water resources, kill wildlife, and are the single biggest contributor to global warming from Canada.

At the same time as the banner was being unfurled, thousands of RAN supporters and allies began emailing a video to key RBC executives – in which RAN’s Michael Brune appeals to Mrs. Nixon to help RBC offer leadership by withdrawing its funding for the tar sands. (If you haven’t participated in this online action yet, it’s not too late! Click here to view the video and email it to RBC executives.)

You can also view the video on YouTube (be sure to go to PleaseHelpUsMrsNixon.com and take action when you’re done watching):

Check out ongoing news coverage that is just starting, from Bloomberg, CBC, Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, Canadian Press, Daily Kos, Financial Post, Canada.com, Brandon Sun, Stockhouse, KBS Radio, New Brunswick Business Journal, AM 1150, Canadian Business, Vancouver Sun, and much more.

See lots of photos of the action here.

Continue reading ‘Mrs. Nixon, please help us stop the tar sands’

“Will America lose the clean-energy race?”

That’s the question my Breakthrough Institute colleague Teryn Norris and I raise in an op ed featured in today’s San Francisco Chronicle.

You can also read an extended version at the Huffington Post.

With China, South Korea and Japan all moving aggressively to corner the burgeoning global clean energy market, Asian competitors may dominate the clean energy sector if Congress doesn’t act now to strengthen the Waxman-Markey bill with much larger investments in our own clean energy economy and fully support President Obama’s energy education initiative, Teryn and I argue.

Last week, over 100 organizations (including the Energy Action Coalition, Focus the Nation, Sierra Student Coalition and several other leading youth organizations) joined the Breakthrough Institute in urging the Senate to fund Obama’s RE-ENERGYSE initiative, which would develop thousands of highly-skilled clean energy workers and new energy education programs around the country. The Senate is poised to cut the program to $0 from Obama’s $115 million request at a time with the U.S. is severely lagging in energy science and technology education.

Read the RE-ENERGYSE letter press release and the New York Times Dot Earth coverage.

Monday’s op-ed comes one year after Breakthrough proposed a similar National Energy Education Act, calling for an effort on par with the original National Defense Education Act of 1958, which invested billions each year to train and empower the young generation that won the space race and invented the technologies that catapulted the U.S. and the world into the Information Age.

It also comes two weeks after the Washington Post reported that “Asian Nations Could Outpace U.S. in Developing Clean Energy.”

Breakthrough Institute is planning to release a full report on the USA-Asia clean energy race within the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

As President Obama put it in his Congressional address in February:

“We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient… New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea. Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don’t either. It is time for America to lead again.”

President Obama is right. However, as Teryn and I warn in today’s op ed:

“If America does not take immediate action to bridge its energy education gap – and if we fail to make substantially larger investments in our own clean-energy economy – we will effectively cede the clean-energy race to Asia. A decade from now, we may still find the burgeoning clean-energy economy promised by Obama and Democratic leaders. It will simply be headquartered in China.”

You can read the extended version of the op ed below…
Continue reading ‘Will America Lose the Clean Energy Race?’

Cross-posted from SolveClimate

While the planet’s future climate is being determined by lawmakers in Congress and the United Nations Conference of the Parties this December, some students who are too young to vote are taking their future into their own hands. Oregon’s Corvallis High School was named “America’s most eco-friendly school” in the Earth Day Every Day School Challenge, where the combined effort of teacher Colleen Works, the CHS Green Club, and the school’s Political Action Workshop and Economics of Conscious Consumption classes won $20,000 to put toward a large solar panel installation. In all, 460 groups applied for the grant, evidence of the rapid growth in youth green initiatives across the country.

Teens are aware that climate change and its associated challenges will define their generation’s work, said CHS Green Club Co-President Chris Becker. For many of them, the inspiration to take action doesn’t come from fear as much as from the opportunity to create “cool” solutions.

“I think young people definitely understand this is a huge issue, probably bigger than anything any generation has ever faced before,” Becker said. “We showed in this past election that we can step up, and I hope that this generation will only become stronger, even more organized, and even better connected so we can solve this climate crisis and save our planet.”

The CHS Green Club has an ambitious renewable energy goal for Corvallis High: It wants to install 100 kilowatts of solar panels within 10 years, providing the school with a third of its current electrical demand. As the club points out on its web site, the solar panels will serve multiple purposes by reducing the school’s carbon footprint, lowering utility bills and educating students and the community. With the Wal-Mart grant on top of their efforts so far, they’ll need about $30,000 more to complete the first 10 kW phase. The students aren’t going it alone, though. The school’s faculty and administrators, plus community leaders, are behind the project. Continue reading ‘Students Lead Charge to Power School with Renewable Energy’

Cross-posted from: here

I have a column out today criticizing the media’s coverage of global warming as being so poor that too many people don’t have accurate information, or any information at all about global warming or global warming legislation. Sources are below the column.

The media: Problems of the news re-cycle

MATT DERNOGA

On June 16 the White House released the “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” report. It was written by 13 government science agencies, compiled largely during the George W. Bush administration, and completed under President Barack Obama. The report lays out the specific devastating regional impacts a warming climate would have on all regions of the country, along with the current effects of greenhouse gas emissions already in the atmosphere. Continue reading ‘Burned by the Press’

26 is not only the atomic number of iron (Fe) and the number of letters in the English and interlingua alphabets, it’s also the number of years I will have been alive on Thursday August 6th. The past several years, I’ve had a hard time coming up with birthday wishes, and an even tougher time asking for it. Not this time!

This year, I want you to work smarter, not harder for my birthday, for the good of us all. I want you to invest in something that will benefit your pocketbook, the earth, and future generations. I want you to do any or all of these things:

Continue reading ‘Work Smarter, Not Harder’

Cross posted from ActionFactoryDC.blogspot.com

Update: Video , Press Release and Flier

Secretary Clinton’s pen could prevent a new pipeline that would suck filthy tar-sands into the US. This morning, the Avaaz Action Factory in DC showed the State Department just how terrible the oil sands are, and how much of a climate hero Clinton can be.

During the DC morning rush hour activists with the Avaaz Action Factory headed to the State Department equipped with a kiddie pool of tar sands mixture, and a big banner stating: “Clinton be a Leader. Say No to Tar Sands, Stop Global Warming.” About 1000 State Department employees walked by a battle between Super Climate Clinton and the Tar Sands Monster on their way to work.
Continue reading ‘Clinton’s Big Decision on Tar Sands’

Hi there. Recently Rainforest Action Network teamed up with two of the most prolific independent rock bands on the planet, Propagandhi & Strike Anywhere, the organization Substance, with help from Indigenous Environmental Network to do a tour of the midwest US and Canada to educate, organize, and mobilize people to take action against the Tar Sands dirty oil expansion. While on tour we made a small series of two minute webisodes called the Freedom From Oil Tour Diaries. Wanted to share them here. Below are the two most recent ones – the grand finale, and an interview with Clayton Thomas Muller. Below the cut is the whole series in order! See adventures, organizing, behind the scenes rocking, me breaking my neck, band interviews and more.

Continue reading ‘Freedom From Oil: Tar Sands Resistance Tour with Propagandhi’

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 22, 2009

PRESS CONTACT:
Jesse Jenkins (510-550-8930 x465 or 503-333-1737)
jesse@thebreakthrough.org
Teryn Norris (510-550-8930 x464 or 510-593-3716)
teryn@thebreakthrough.org

A group of over 100 universities, professional associations, and student groups joined the Breakthrough Institute yesterday in submitting a letter urging the U.S. Senate to fully support the Obama administration’s national energy education initiative. The initiative, named “RE-ENERGYSE” (REgaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge), would produce thousands of highly-skilled U.S. energy workers and develop new energy education programs at American universities and K-12 schools.

The Senate is poised to reject the proposal in its FY2010 Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill by cutting the RE-ENERGYSE program’s funding to $0 from the $115 million requested in President Obama’s FY2010 budget. Mr. Obama announced the initiative in a speech to the National Academy of Sciences in April, stating, “The nation that leads the world in 21st century clean energy will be the nation that leads in the 21st century global economy… [RE-ENERGYSE] will prepare a generation of Americans to meet this generational challenge.”

According to the Department of Energy, the program would develop between 5,000 and 8,500 highly educated scientists, engineers, and other professionals to enter the clean energy field by 2015, which would rise to 10,000 -17,000 professionals by 2020. The Technical Training and K-12 Education subprogram would create between 200 to 300 community college and other training programs to prepare thousands of technically skilled workers for clean energy jobs.

The letter, which was distributed to every Senate office on Tuesday, urged lawmakers to fund RE-ENERGYSE at the full $115 million request. “America is in danger of losing its global competitiveness and the [global] clean energy race without substantial new investments in STEM education,” wrote the signatories, which included 53 colleges and universities and dozens of student and youth groups. “RE-ENERGYSE… will train America’s future energy workforce, accelerate our transition to a prosperous clean energy economy, and ensure that we lead the world’s burgeoning clean technology industries.”

Continue reading ‘Over 100 Groups Urge Congress to Support Obama’s Energy Education Initiative’

I was one of 7 Astronauts who stood up in today’s EPW senate hearing to deliver an unmistakable message to our senators, both allies and obstructionists: be as bold as the Apollo mission. Fully clad in space suits complete with the NASA logo, the Avaaz Action Factory stood up in the middle of the hearing and unfurled our banners.

Photo credit: Christine Irvine

“What can the US do in 10 years?”  The first banner asked.  “Put a man on the moon (check); cut co2 40% (dotted-line-check).” said the 2nd.

Responses in the room ranged from excited smiles and laughs to uncomfortable grimaces.  Senators Boxer and Sanders didn’t reach for the gavel to call for order.  A confused capitol police officer kindly asked us to sit, but didn’t kick us out.  After 15 minutes, another officer asked us into the hallway but let us back in after a warning.  Walking in and out of the hearing twice only added to our visibility because of the bright and shiny NASA suits we all had on.

Continue reading ‘What Can the US do in 10 Years?’