It’s Getting Hot In Here

Students from Linfield College turn out for a clean energy future

When more or less a hundred people turn out on a weekday evening for a public hearing by a relatively obscure energy planning commission, to speak up for a future free of coal power, you know something serious is brewing.

Last night in Portland, Oregon, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council held a final hearing on its 6th Northwest Power Plan – a document that will help determine the future of energy policy in the Northwest United States for the next 20 years.  Since the first public hearing on September 9th of this year, the Sierra Club and others have rallied hundreds of people of all ages and backgrounds to turn out for hearings from Seattle to Eugene and speak up for a clean energy future for our region.  This future is attainable for the Northwest, and the NWPCC has a key role to play in getting us there.

While the current draft of the 6th Power Plan makes some very encouraging steps forward – for instance, the current plan recommends meeting most of future new energy demand through energy efficiency and says that we won’t need any new coal plants in the region – it can and must go much farther.  The single most effective step the NWPCC can take to rejuvenate the Northwest’s economy and protect us from catastrophic global warming is to lay out a plan to phase the Northwest completely off coal dependence.

The NWPCC’s own analysis has shown that the transition away from coal is possible, and last night dozens of concerned citizens gave testimony in support of adopting a coal-free future as the recommended scenario in the final 6th Power Plan.  Though the public hearings on the Plan are now over, the push to take the Northwest “beyond coal” once and for all is just beginning (check out this extremely cool event coming up in less than a week!)

Despite the fossil fuel industries’ attempts to convince us that there is a “grassroots movement” afoot to preserve our national addiction to coal and oil, the impression you got at last night’s hearing was that, astonishingly enough, not that many local people are attracted to the idea of keeping 19th-century technology and the attendant social and environmental costs as a permanent fixture in our economy.  Strangely enough, people actually seem to prefer a future powered by renewable energy projects like wind, solar, and geothermal power in which new technologies will create hundreds of jobs and make the Northwest a leader in the clean energy economy, all the while contributing to a safer and healthier future for people everywhere.  Approximately 100 people showed up for last night’s hearing, and almost all of those who spoke were there in support of phasing out coal use, bolstering investments in renewable energy, and protecting salmon and other local wildlife.  Not a single person testified in favor of Portland General Electric’s preferred energy scenario for Oregon, which would commit the state to at least 30 more years of coal power.

Following a pattern established at the Eugene NWPCC hearing last month, young people turned out in force for last night’s event.  Students came from at least six different Portland-area campuses, and several young people spoke out eloquently for phasing out coal use in the Northwest as soon as possible.  After years of being marginalized in our region’s energy debates, the young people of the Northwest are now making our voices heard loudly enough that we cannot be ignored.

It’s difficult to describe the power I could feel come alive in that room as one person after another came to the podium to denounce King Coal in the Northwest and call for a stronger Northwest Power Plan.  From a Umatilla tribesmember speaking about Native treaty rights to healthy land and streams, to a union member calling for investments in energy efficiency that will create hundreds of new jobs, to a father speaking on behalf of the world his children will inherit, to students from Reed College, Lewis and Clark College, Mount Hood Community College, and other local campuses, the voices came through clear and resounding.  The naysayers will call us idealists, and continue to insist that a region home to key technological centers in a nation that put a man on the moon cannot figure out how to live without fossil fuels.  But this is not just a starry-eyed environmentalists’ movement.  This is a movement of teachers and parents, workers and ranchers and students: ordinary people showing up to voice their opinions on one of the most important decisions our region will every make.

In the words of the Cascade Climate Network, the student group that helped recruit many of the young people who showed up for last night’s hearing, “We make this pledge to future generations: We we will end this climate crisis within our lifetimes, because failing to do so is unconscionable; and we will work to make our vision of a sustainable, just, and prosperous tomorrow a reality.”

The future is within our grasp.