Comments on: Climate Generation: A History of Energy Action (2005) http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2010/02/07/climate-generation-a-history-of-energy-action-2005/ Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:16:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Jim http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2010/02/07/climate-generation-a-history-of-energy-action-2005/#comment-86693 Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:44:51 +0000 http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/?p=17183#comment-86693 One thing that really stands out for me about the “New Student Environmental Movement”– the one described here– post 2003– is the incredible ethic of cooperation and collaboration. While details blur together, I think of Focus the Nation, Powershift, 350, Step It Up, AASHE, Van Jones and Green for All cross-mentioning each other (not always, I imagine, and there are some tiffs that I & many are mercifully not privy to. That too, says something, when it’s technologically easier to wash laundry in public–thanks to all who refrained).

This is new. The Eighties weren’t like this, nor the Nineties. It’s wonderful. (I’m older) It lifts my spirit & the spirit of collaboration is infectious.

In addition, there is a real recognition by a growing number of groups that global poverty and the environmental crisis need to be solved together– Greenpeace speaks out loudly on behalf of poor countries; Oxfam talks about cars & climate.
This is new, too; and wonderful.

Important in this is the development of technologies that weren’t there before: email, listservs, web pages, easy conference calls, skype, blogs, youtube, flickr, livestreaming (I couldn’t make the Powershift CD, but watched it live from hundreds of miles away), twitter. None of these were easily accessible when James Hansen testified in 1988 about global warming; even the first three only went so far.

Thanks for going to all these meetings; thanks for writing this up. We live in interesting times; the many climate activists of whom you’ve written make them hopeful ones as well.

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