It\’s Getting Hot In Here

I first met Jared Duval in the summer of 2003 on a bus with 100 students from every state in the country who had received the Morris K. Udall Scholarship for college sophomores and juniors committed to the environment and native public health issues. I laughed when he told me he was working for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign — then an unknown Governor from Vermont few thought had a chance at winning the primary. But over the course of the ride, Jared’s well-reasoned confidence began to win me over. And by the end of the Udall gathering, we had recruited most of the scholars into an organization a core group of us invented on the spot: Students for an Environmentally Responsible President. SERP wasn’t long for this world, Jared got busy again at school, and we lost touch.

I had already dropped out of college by then to pursue student organizing full-time, and soon co-founded and began coordinating the Energy Action Coalition. Two years after we had first met, Jared was elected National Director of the Sierra Student Coalition, the student arm of the Sierra Club and one of the biggest partner organizations of Energy Action. We spent two years working together to build the Campus Climate Challenge, and organize the first national student climate summit, Power Shift, in 2007. When Jared’s two terms with the SSC were over, he told me he wanted to write a book. Doubtful again, I wished him the best of luck.

So when I got a copy of his book, Next Generation Democracy, in the mail just a week ago, I was chagrined again as I found myself tearing through it in just a few sittings. The book details how a range of new, web-enabled tools, combined with a newly global, progressive and tech-savvy generation is poised to change the world. He tells the stories behind well-known open-source projects like Linux and Wikipedia, but also unearths some of the most cutting edge approaches like the Deliberatorium, Legislation 2.0, 21st Century Town Meetings and other efforts that hold real promise for fixing our Democracy at a time when such hope can be hard to come by.

A couple of years into the Obama presidency, we are now confronted with the stark realization that truly transformational progress will not be made on any major social challenge until the underlying dysfunction of a ‘pay to play, keep people at bay” system in Congress is addressed…

Where might we look for progress instead? I believe that to get at the root blockages of transformational progress, we must address the disenfranchisement of the American and global public from the decision-making institutions of our society. As author Don Tapscott has written, ‘real change seems glacial…What the current system lacks are mechanisms enabling government to benefit on an ongoing basis from the wisdom and insight that a nation can collectively offer.’

Indeed, while the defining ideological debate of the previous generation concerned the proper size of government, for the Millennial generation the pressing question should be the nature — open versus closed, collaborative versus zero sum — of our very process of government.

Democracy is an ancient idea, and our Democracy here in America is the oldest continuous government in the world. When you consider the incredible gridlock and corruption in our current system against the massive problems on both the domestic and global level it is required to deal with, it’s hard not to feel like we need a tune-up. Jared’s book is as good a primer on these issues as I’ve read, and a good fun read as well.

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’

This Climate Generation series is well-timed. Like every other national group I know working on the transition to a clean energy economy, the Energy Action Coalition is going through a strategic planning / soul-searching process to figure out just what the &$*$ to do next. The outline of the broader movement’s situation is pretty well understood, but few really good ideas about how to solve it have surfaced. Despite some meaningful accomplishments in 2009 — mainly through the Recovery Act and executive actions — the big goals of passing strong federal legislation before Copenhagen and securing a binding international treaty have not been achieved.

The chasm between what’s needed and what is being discussed in Washington grows ever wider and the “pragmatists” inside and outside the beltway can barely hear each other anymore. Every week comes with more dire scientific predictions and, newly, worse polling numbers on public understanding of the impacts and support for action. Major Democratic losses predicted for the 2010 midterm elections confirm the widespread feeling that our golden opportunity for change is slipping away.

We’re still just not powerful enough as a movement to make the changes we so desperately need. As Jamie’s great post yesterday clearly laid out, we need to be thinking about strategies that go big. To complement Jamie’s history, I want to sketch out my understanding of how the Energy Action Coalition’s strategy has evolved over the past 6 years with the hope that a better understanding of our strategic history can inform the decisions we make moving forward.

Three quick notes before I do: 1) I believe the coalition’s collaborative planning processes — and culture of fun, diversity, aspirational thinking, solidarity and action — have been a large part of how we’ve developed smart strategy, but the focus here is on the results and what we actually did, not how we came to the decisions; 2) I’d also commend a look at Sara Robinson’s account of the progression of social change, which provides a broader context in which to situate these decisions; and 3) This is MY interpretation of events, biased as it surely is.

PHASE 1: Finding Ourselves (November 2003 — August 2005)

Continue reading ‘Climate Generation: The Evolution of The Energy Action Coalition’s Strategy’

When I was a younger man than I am today, I had a vision of the Great Plains transformed: buffalo roaming across great tracts of tallgrass prairie studded with wind farms that powered the whole Midwest. Tribal communities, farmers and ranchers and young people all working together to develop an economy that could sustain the people and restore the land. Maybe even a little folk school, something like the Highlander Center in east Tennessee, to bring everyone together to sing and dance and strategize together.

As I’ve learned, usually the hard way, big visions only become reality through perseverance, hard work and often a bit of luck or good timing. I only lasted six months in Grand Forks, North Dakota, all of which were somehow during the winter, but one of the things I remember best was that any of the plans we devised had to contend with the 800 pound gorilla in the state. Basin Electric, a rural electric cooperative with 2.8 million members across Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming was the populist face of big dirty coal. Headquartered in Bismarck, ND, they seemed to run state politics and they weren’t interested in wind.

So when I saw the headline “Rural Electric Cooperative Completes $240 Million Wind Farm in 4 Months” I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. This 115.5 MW project will be the largest wind project entirely owned by a consumer cooperative, AND IT WAS COMPLETED IN JUST 4 MONTHS!! Basin, which got 94% of its power from coal in 2005 (and only 1% from wind) now has a goal to reach 20% wind by the end of the year.

As we work towards a rapid and massive ramp-up of clean energy across the country, we should look to consumer cooperatives and municipally-owned utilities, both of which are non-profit, community-controlled structures with jobs and revenues that stay in the communities they serve. In 2008, rural cooperatives expanded wind energy capacity 65% compared to just 25% nationally, and municipal utilities, like in Long Island and Austin, are implementing some of the most innovative and aggressive renewable energy and energy efficiency programs in the country. Check out the American Public Power Association, which represents over 2,000 community-owned utilities, for more information.

Today is “Young and Future Generations Day” here at the International Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen, and I’m here with my wife Wahleah and our two-year-old daughter Tohaana. Along with thousands of other young people, we’re doing everything in our power to convince world leaders to commit to a fair, ambitious, and legally binding international agreement based on a target of 350 parts per million (ppm), which is the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Less than 400 miles away in Oslo, Norway, President Obama is accepting the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” If ever there was a time and place to live up to that honor, now, in Copenhagen is it.

Four former Nobel Peace Prize winners have endorsed a target of 350ppm. On December 12th, 2008, at the international climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Al Gore (2007 winner) said to a huge crowd: “Even a goal of 450 parts per million, which seems so difficult today, is inadequate. We need to toughen that goal to 350 parts per million.”

On December 20th, His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama (1989) wrote: “It is now urgent that we take corrective action to ensure a safe climate future for coming generations of human beings and other species. That can be established in perpetuity if we can reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350ppm. Buddhists, concerned people of the world and all people of good heart should be aware of this and act upon it.”

On August 25, 2009, Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC said, “As chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, I cannot take a position because we do not make recommendations. But as a human being I am fully supportive of [350ppm]. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target.”

And on October 23, 2009, two days before what CNN called the “most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history”, Archibishop Desmond Tutu, who has been an ambassador for the 350 campaign and won the Peace Prize in 1984, wrote in USA Today: “Many top scientists agree that there’s a number the world needs to know. It’s 350 — as in 350 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The growing consensus is that it’s the most carbon we can have in the atmosphere without causing terrible climate havoc. Since we’re already past that level, at 390 parts per million, it also implies that we need much swifter political action than governments have supported in the past to reverse this trend.” Continue reading ‘Accept it in Oslo, Earn it in Copenhagen’

We fight, even against insurmountable odds, because sometimes we win.

As I get ready to head to Copenhagen this Saturday for the international climate negotiations, I’m thrilled to see the success of The Leadership Campaign and their efforts to have Massachusetts use 100% clean electricity by 2020.

On Monday, Representative William Brownsberger will file their bill, An Act to Re-power Massachusetts, in the Massachusetts House, calling on Gov. Deval Patrick to create a task force to formulate a plan to get Massachusetts to100% clean electricity by 2020.

To draw attention to their campaign, they have refused to sleep in homes, dorms, apartments powered by dirty electricity until Massachusetts commits to 100% clean electricity in 10 years. Since October 25, hundreds of students, activists and engaged citizens have spent at least one night camping out. Some haven’t slept in a bed in over a month — [check out a personal account here].

Each Sunday, members of the campaign come together to camp out on the Boston Common. They face citations for violating the 11pm curfew, but each week they gladly except the consequences of their protests.

Last May, I wrote about how climate activists need to rethink the rules of engagement and not accept the “rules” of a rigged game. I’m thrilled to see the students and leaders of the Leadership Campaign doing just that. It’s a great sign for our cause and an example we can all follow.

If you’re in Boston this weekend, join the Leadership Campaign for their final sleepout on the Boston Common. They’ll be joined by one of my favorite people, Rev. Lennox Yearwood of The Hip Hop Caucus. The rally begins at 3pm at the Boston Common across from the Statehouse.

This entry is cross-posted at Green Owl Records.

by Rinku Sen and Billy Parish

Last week, the Labor Department reported that youth unemployment stands at 18.2%, nearly twice the national average of 9.8%. The percentage of young people without a job is a staggering 53.4 percent, the highest figure since World War II. Looking deeper, the statistics for youth of color are terrible and telling.

According to the most recent data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 40.7% of black youth between 16-19 are unemployed, almost double the amount of whites teenagers (23%). For Latinos the same age, the rate is nearly 30%. Get a little older and the gap grows wider. Unemployment for black Americans aged 20-24 is 27.1%, over twice that faced by white youth (13.1%) in the same age range.

The glaring differences indicate that unemployment is not only decidedly raced, but also that the current economic condition is wholly unforgiving for young people of color. Only a massive, well-funded set of green jobs programs explicitly designed to close those racial gaps can create a truly vital, full-employment economy.

Without more opportunities for young people, those un- and under-employed will suffer in the short and long-term, especially in their ability to attend college, afford health insurance, buy homes, and save for retirement. In short, they won’t be able to make a living. The great promise of the green economy to end poverty as well as environmental suffering can only be fulfilled if we’re prepared to fight, not just for green, but also for racial and economic equity.

There’s a long history of clashes between environmentalists, workers’ organizations and racial justice movements, as each operated on the assumption that they had conflicting goals. Yet, the objectives of all three are interdependent for two big reasons. First, poor economies and environmental degradation have a disproportionate impact on communities of color. People of color occupy jobs in the most hazardous industries and homes in the most environmentally degraded neighborhoods. That’s not accidental. It is a predictable result of persistent segregation, which strips communities of color of their power, facilitating the discriminatory placement of toxic incinerators, power plants, factories, and other big polluters in their communities.

While economics has contributed to the dual degradation of the environment and communities of color, racism has accelerated environmental and economic problems. “White flight” from inner cities fueled suburban sprawl, leading to more driving, more highways, and more carbon in the atmosphere. And in industries like agriculture and food production, with prominent racial hierarchies, employers find it easy to generate competition and scapegoating between various groups of workers, killing unionization drives that could produce better wages and conditions for all of us.

Luckily, a growing number of people know better than to separate environmental and economic recovery from race. Local groups have started green jobs programs for young people that are inclusive and future-oriented. In Oakland, California, for example, the brand new Green Media Youth Center boasts a green job training program that can help create pathways out of poverty for young people in the city. Last Friday at the Center, Milani Pelley recorded her latest song in a brand new studio. Jhamel Robinson showed off the permaculture garden behind the building. And the list goes on.

But great programs here and there aren’t enough. We need to bring those programs to scale, and create both training and the actual jobs through federal, state and local policy. We need to spend real money funding job creation, and then closely monitor implementation to make sure new programs generate local hiring, affirmative action, great wages and benefits and long term career paths, among other elements that will make them work.

This year, a national alliance of organized labor and civil rights, social justice and environmental groups has worked to create a vibrant clean energy economy that can not only improve the environment and economy, but also close the racial gap. In the House version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), this alliance secured the eleventh-hour addition of a billion dollars for green jobs training, as well as equity provisions for access to the jobs created. The Senate version released last week maintains those provisions.

These policies are a good start, but if they’re to survive and lead us to the additional billions and effective implementation that we need to get control of unemployment, we have to be prepared to fight on the race front, as well as the green. All signs indicate that opponents will bait American racism with brutal inventiveness. If the right’s attack on Van Jones isn’t enough of a warning, then we should take our lessons from the health care debate. We can expect conservative pundits to call equity guidelines reverse racism, or to put up immigrants rather than corporate pollution as the true cause of environmental collapse.

To counter that rhetoric, we need to be able to articulate more than a “lift all boats” approach – which improves things but leaves the racial and poverty gaps in place. We need to move support for a “fix all boats” approach that ensures full recovery for all. It’s our responsibility to change the rules and structures that threaten to exclude people of color from taking part in the new, green economy.

Young people are going to have to take the lead in this because they’ve got the most at stake. The decisions we make as a country now will affect them far longer than anyone else. The powers that be like to call these Millennials the first “post racial generation.” They claim that young people take racial equality so much for granted that fighting racism is low on their list of priorities. The polluters of the gray economy will take that idea straight to the bank, unless young people themselves make it clear that they understand racism shows up in all our issues, including the environment.

We should amplify and grow efforts to build an inclusive green economy. In doing so, we must always ask two key questions about new policies and programs: is it green, and is it fair?

Rinku Sen is the Executive Director of the Applied Research Center, which promotes racial justice through media, research, and activism.  Billy Parish is the founder of the Energy Action Coalition, a national youth clean energy coalition.

This entry is cross-posted at The Huffington Post.

The New York State Senate and Assembly, too often a model of corruption and dysfunctionality, rose above petty politics last week to pass forward-thinking legislation on climate and energy, setting a precedent for bipartisanship and a sensible cap and trade system.  The State Senate passed the groundbreaking Green Job/Green New York Act, with strong support from Republicans, Democrats, and the Working Families Party, which spearheaded the legislation. The bill — expected to be signed into law this week by Gov. David Patterson leverages $112m in revenue from the Northeasts’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) into $5 billion of private investment to finance home weatherization, energy efficiency projects, and green jobs creation.

We should all be paying closer attention for three reasons:

1) It is one of the first large-scale pieces of legislation that concreteley demonstrates why green jobs are a win-win-win. Homeowners win by reducing their energy costs. The private sector wins by gaining a safer investment with strong expected returns. strong return on investment. And New Yorkers benefit through the creation of 16,000 new jobs and the increased economic activity and tax receipts the program will generate.  It’s a blueprint that can work other states and regions as well.

2) It’s also a model for sensible national climate and energy policy. While the version of the American Clean Energy & Securities Act that passed in the House gives away a substantial portion of the pollution allowances to utilities, the RGGI program in the Northeast auctions off the credits creating the $112 million in revenue, which the state is leveraging 50x to create new jobs and save homeowners on their heating and electricity bills.

3) Finally, the Green Job/Green New York Act highlights the power of bipartisan efforts to achieve common sense solutions. Republican support is what made the bill possible. Rather than fight any effort for sensible policy like the national Republican leadership, local leaders have proven to be in touch with the concerns of their constituents, helping to pass the bill 52-8 in the Senate and 147-0 in the Assembly. But putting politics aside and the needs of New Yorkers first, they showed the way for national cooperation on this issue.

To learn more about the bill and its passage, check out David Sasson’s piece on SolveClimate.org.

This entry is cross-posted on Grist.org.

In case you missed it, dirty energy is back to dirty tricks. This time with the help of DC lobbyists, Bonner & Associates, who forged letters to Congressman Tom Perriello of Virgina’s 5th District. The letters, written on “official” letterhead from the local NAACP chapter and a Hispanic group, Creciendo Juntos, asked Perriello to vote against the American Clean Energy & Security Act.  Now we know that the fossil fuel industry will stop at nothing to prevent the creation of a just, clean energy economy, but this is a new low!

If we are going to pass effective legislation this year, it’s time we step up the effort and fight the dirty industries that pollute our communities and jeopardize our children and grandchildren’s future. Here are seven ways to do it:

1. Help Pass Real Healthcare Reform First – Real progress in our climate and energy policy will require strong leadership from President Obama and a unified progressive block that will stand up to dirty energy interest groups. The same dynamics are playing out right now in the debate over healthcare, and the President and Congress have made clear that the health care bill comes before the climate/energy bill.  You can help the climate and energy agenda by calling your Senator or Representative today and telling them that you want quality, affordable healthcare now.

Continue reading ‘Seven Ways To Fight Dirty (Energy)’