It’s Getting Hot In Here

Climategate was a well coordinated, strategic and devestating attack on the Copenhagen climate talks in December last year. With unprecedented moves from U.S. and China in the run-up, the world’s media and attention was hooked onto the alleged manipulation of data at the University of East Anglia. That stolen information framed the entire negotiations, and set it up for failure.

Today the prospect of a clean-energy economy faces a new threat.

Osama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States for climate change, according to a new audiotape released today. Right-wing media outlets including The Daily Telegraph, Drudge and Fox News, are already seizing on the al-Qaida leader’s comments. All this on the same day that the American administration formally announced it’s 2020 carbon targets, and a 39% increase in wind-power.

Those in the struggle for a clean-energy economy and safe climate future, should ask themselves why bin Laden would come out with this statement. This is the man who has shown no concern for human life, indeed revels in killing innocent people – why does he now care about rising sea-levels?

His plan is to drive the wedge between the climate cynics and climate activists even further, and it’s already working. This is the perfect story to kill any federal climate bill in the U.S. In fact it’s the perfect strategy if you desire chaos and destruction.

Any association with him immediately demonises the climate movement, and will maintain the stranglehold of oil-rich nations over the American economy. More worryingly in the long term, a world in the throws of extreme weather and an unpredictable food-supply is rich pickings for a fanatic totalitarian.

So how should the environmental movement respond?

1. Immediately and unequivocally condemn his comments. We can’t let ourselves be aligned with a terrorist. Bin Laden isn’t an environmentalist and cares nothing about climate change (because that would mean caring about people).
2. Whatever your feelings on climate change; don’t use his comments for your cause, because actually he will be using you.

The Climate Generation series has brought much-needed reflection, history, and  vision to this blog, and I’m excited to be a part of it.

The internet: our movement is like this

Some back-history on my journey: I started out organizing in the public high school system in Hudson County New Jersey in 2004 trying to connect big-picture energy and climate issues with daily life in the inner city. I met up with some cool folks who were helping launch the Energy Action Coalition during the summer of 2005 and immediately launched into campus and regional level work when I headed to college in Minnesota a few weeks later. I’ve done project work on campus around energy efficiency and green roofs, developed cool campus innovations like the Clean Energy Revolving Fund that led to a powerful campus carbon neutrality strategy while developing state and regional networks in Minnesota and the Midwest. I started reconnecting to the national climate movement in 2007, and have been closely involved ever since. Simultaneously, I’ve also been focusing intensively on community level work across the Twin Cities and Minnesota, helping launch intergenerational community energy efficiency and green manufacturing initiatives that build a green economy. Through that work, I helped found and am now helping lead The Summer of Solutions, a nation-wide program that trains youth leaders in  sustainable community development while pioneering innovative green economy solutions in communities across the country.

In the process, I’ve learned a lot, seen so many successes and victories, gotten inspired by more leaders than I can name, and been an agent for inspiration for many more. I keep meeting new people in new places, many of whom don’t identify as “the youth climate movement” but that nevertheless are part of our Great Work. I think this movement is vaster than any of us imagine, and deep beyond our wildest dreams. I think it’s just beginning. I’m glad you are part of the journey.

In this post, I’m going to highlight three priorities that I have noticed the movement struggling with over the past years and that I think we need to focus on intensively as we move forward:

1. Embrace Community Power (Energy-wise and Political)
2. Think For the Century
3. Show the Solutions

Check it out!

Continue reading ‘Climate Generation: Our Power in a Century of Solutions’

Obama graced the House chamber yesterday with a speech reminiscent of his candidacy rather than his presidency. That’s a good thing, because his so-called base needed a reminder that he’s in Washington not just to wade knee-deep into the political swamp of DC, but to affect change from inside out. He wasted no time before really digging into Congress:

To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills.  And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well.

I sincerely hope congress takes at least this piece to to heart, because for clean energy advocates, the rest of the speech was a mixed bag. He bulked up his language on nuclear, coal and offshore drilling, a questionable political move in support of questionable technologies, while at the same time rightly highlighting clean energy legislation as a jobs-creator.

As the cap and trade bill, mired in a bi-partisan swiss-cheese factory, limps towards the finish line (or not), I look at our friends and colleagues in the labor, immigration, LGBTQ and other movements and I notice their coalitions growing impatient. The campaign promises Obama made to those groups, and the subsequent moving parts (chief among them health care, financial markets reform, don’t ask don’t tell…etc.) are all stalled.

Many pundits blame this on Obama and his lack of leadership – which to some extent is true, especially on climate change – but I think we ought to look within our own movements to discover what happened during 2009.

Remember back to those heady days a year ago when Obama was inaugurated? Millions of Americans, despite a failing economy and a decade of do-nothing politics held hope in their hearts, thanks in part to candidate Obama’s inspiring campaign. Right at that moment, as a progressive constituency, we made our first tactical error: we let the Obama administration shape our own narrative.

While there will always be civil society groups who align themselves with the positions of politicians, the progressive wings of our movements drank the kool-aid, and our political power has suffered ever since. How could we expect concerned Americans to swallow emails from top progressive groups calling on them to “Pass a climate bill” with huge giveaways to polluters or “Support health care reform” without a serious public option? It’s about time we stop taking our talking points from White House press releases and start telling our own story.

Continue reading ‘Telling our own story.’

While mainstream environmental groups cheered the President’s State of the Union, many climate activists and bloggers are pissed — the speech included no specifics about what he wants in a climate bill, and the laundry list of “clean energy jobs” had nuclear, oil, coal and biofuels, but strangely didn’t mention clean energy or energy efficiency. “What we needed was a call to arms, and what we got was a kick in the face,” one blogger complained.

MoveOn.Org had an instant dial application for members to rate how they felt throughout the speech, and the nukes-oil-coal section was the least popular part of the speech, even more unpopular than sending more troops to Afghanistan! The President’s reaffirmation of his commitment to pass a climate bill this year is encouraging, but it’s going to be hard to mobilize the activist base to whip the needed votes with this kind of … stuff. Sigh.

But from the standpoint of an aspiring green entrepreneur, there was an awful lot to like in the speech. This was the jobs speech it needed to be, and it continued what may bethe overarching theme of his presidency, “to lay a new foundation for long-term economic growth.” [see a piece I wrote on this last May] But more than any speech we’ve heard from him before, he put clean energy jobs at the absolute center of his job creation strategy, mentioning clean energy 10 times, solar twice and climate change 3 times. His discussion of U.S. competitiveness in the global economy is entirely framed in the context of the race to develop clean energy technologies.

But beyond the importance of this rhetorical shift and the clear signal on passing a climate bill this year are three new proposals rolled out this week designed to help small businesses access credit, increase exports and help young people go to college.

Continue reading ‘State of the Union & Green Entrepreneurship’

High up in the trees near the summit of Coal River Mountain, two activists dangle in the air near a mountaintop removal mine site. Eric Blevins and Amber Nitchman are still preventing the expansion of mining on the summit of Coal River Mountain, a mountain that has the best wind energy (and therefore economic) potential in the area.

Eric and Amber didn’t just stroll through the woods and decide to climb some trees. Their action, like the dozens of others in the past year are a steady escalation of the Climate Ground Zero campaign.

I first visited Rock Creek, West Virginia in October. Mountain Justice, now in its 5th year, organized a fall weekend that drew 150 youth activists from all over the country to the Appalachians to see firsthand the destruction of mountaintop removal coal mining and learn what they could do about it. For me, it was partly a reunion with colleagues from various climate and activist organizations making the trek, and partly a recharge. Camping in the cold, eating group meals and hanging out with my mountain roaming friends is a great way to spend a weekend. It’s also a great way to build a movement.

Read on for new photos, a meeting with the governor and more. Continue reading ‘Tree Sits, Air Horns and Helicopters: The Fight to Save Coal River Mountain’

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.“

Earlier today, one of my heroes crossed over to the other side.  Howard Zinn –radical historian, civil rights activist, anti-war activist, direct action activist, thinker, doer, fighter for justice and educator- passed away at 87.

I first read “A People’s History of the United States” early on and it changed my life.  It was an eye opener and a page turner.  As Matt Damon said in “Good Will Hunting” “If you want to read a real history book, read Howard Zinn’s ‘People History of the United States.’ That book will knock you on your ass.“

It told the history of the downtrodden, the oppressed and regular people opposing illegitimate authority, not the government, the politicians or the wealthy.  It told me that history wasn’t about the Rockefellers or Kennedys, as the elite few would have us believe, but about those in struggle for justice, and often survival.

As an organizer within the climate justice and anti-coal movements, my worldview is shaped by Zinn’s work.  He told the stories of miners fighting to unionize and resist King Coal.  He told the stories of poor Appalachians fighting for economic justice and survival.  He told stories of bootlegged coal during the depression helping Pennsylvania coal miners make ends meet and Appalachian Aunt Molly Jackson taking 24 lbs of flour at gunpoint to feed her seven children.  He greatly influenced my politics and awareness of Appalachia.  When delving into the politics there, it’s essential you understand the history.  Without Zinn, I would have never had that. Continue reading ‘Howard Zinn, Presente!’

I’m sitting here listening to President Obama’s state of the union address.  I’m still amazed by his charm, his authentic smile and his ability to make his points clearly.  But one thing made me jump out of my seat with not only surprise, but dissapointment.  It was his bit on “clean energy.”

“But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. And yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.”

Where are the windmills, the electric cars, the solar panels?  I know there’s been a lot of discussion on this blog and elsewhere about whether a climate bill or simple energy investment is the best track to tackle climate change.  But if more nuclear, coal and oil is what we get either way, then what’s going on?

Great posts so far in the Climate Generation Series and it sounds like more to come in the next week.   I was very involved in the youth climate movement from 2001 to 2009, and now kind of like Meg, I’m trying to figure out what to do now.  I’ll talk a little about how I got involved, some of my observations about the movement and some of my thoughts on the future.

Some of my history

I worked with many others at the University of North Carolina to create a student-funded renewable energy account, which has since funded solar hot water panels and geothermal projects on campus.  It was one of the first Southern student initiatives for clean energy.  Then some of us from UNC joined with others from Duke and NC State University to put on a Southeast regional conference to help spread similar initiatives for renewable energy and energy efficiency to campuses around the region.  The South as a region uses some of the highest energy per capita and the dirtiest energy in the nation.

Continue reading ‘Climate Generation: More history, thoughts & reflections’

Cross-posted from the Consequence Campaign

The conventional wisdom around Washington is that the climate bill is dead. It’s an obituary that’s been written before, but ask anyone in the political establishment and they will tell you that this time it’s for real. Ask any member of the insider DC press corps, they’ll tell you that Scott Brown’s upset Senate victory in the Massachusetts was the final nail in a coffin they have been hammering relentlessly all year.

They are wrong.

Passing comprehensive clean energy and climate reform is not going to be easy, but who ever thought it would be? The death of climate legislation may fit into the standard media narrative and make for a nice story, but it’s not true and here’s a few reasons why: Continue reading ‘Climate Bill is Not Dead Yet’

You want an assignment for 2010? Go after the six politicians listed in the article below. Instead of acting as voices for the millions of everyday Americans who will benefit from the prosperity of a clean energy economy, these Congressman have decided to become the lap-dogs of the coal industry. Today, kids will go to school at Marsh Fork Elementary school in West Virginia, just 400 yards below a weakening, earthen dam holding back billions of gallons of toxic coal sludge. They deserve better than a politician who’s selling their future to the highest bidder.

Coal Finally Gets a Voice in Congress

By Kate Sheppard, Reposted from Mother Jones

The coal industry has never seemed to have much difficulty pushing its views on Capitol Hill. In 2008 alone, the industry spent more than $47 million on lobbying and ad campaigns aimed at winning lawmakers’ loyalty—and thanks to its efforts, received $60 billion in the House cap-and-trade bill to develop coal capture-and-storage technology. Nevertheless, some legislators apparently feel that the coal lobby has been unfairly marginalized, and so they’ve formed a bipartisan coal caucus to stand up for “America’s most abundant and affordable energy resource.”

Continue reading ‘“Coal Caucus” Joins Industry Lobbyists to Sabotage Clean Energy’