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.

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.

“So tonight, I’m proposing that we take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat. I am also proposing a new small business tax credit – one that will go to over one million small businesses who hire new workers or raise wages. While we’re at it, let’s also eliminate all capital gains taxes on small business investment; and provide a tax incentive for all businesses, large and small, to invest in new plants and equipment.”

“So tonight, we set a new goal: We will double our exports over the next five years, an increase that will support two million jobs in America. To help meet this goal, we’re launching a National Export Initiative that will help farmers and small businesses increase their exports, and reform export controls consistent with national security.”

“let’s tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only ten percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after twenty years – and forgiven after ten years if they choose a career in public service.”

While still not nearly enough to catalyze the transition to a clean energy economy, to deliver on his campaign promise to create 5 million new green jobs, these are important steps in the right direction.

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)

The story begins with Campus Clean Energy Day (11/13/03), the first distributed day of action of this fledgling movement with 65 schools participating nationwide. It was a zeitgeisty kind of thing — all across the country, filling the void of leadership from politicians and corporations, student groups were beginning to run campaigns to get their schools to purchase clean energy. Student networks like SEAC, EnviroCitizen, Greenpeace and the Climate Campaign built on this interest and planned a day to demonstrate the growing interest in student activism on climate solutions. Our second day of action, Fossil Fools Day on 4/1/04, had exactly twice as many events.

The relationships between the full-time organizers and national student leaders grew stronger and a founding meeting was planned for the first week of June in Washington. Leaders from the 17 organizations present at the meeting developed a founding mission statement: “To unite a diversity of organizations that will support and strengthen the student and youth clean energy movement in Canada and the U.S. Together we will leverage our collective power and create change for a clean, efficient, just and renewable energy future. We will accomplish this by focusing on four strategic areas: campuses, communities, corporate practices, and politics.”

Faced with the upcoming ’04 Presidential Elections, the coalition’s first campaign centered around a Declaration of Independence from Dirty Energy pledge and culminated with 280 youth-organized events on 10/19/04 for Energy Independence Day. We gathered nearly 30,000 pledge signatures, organized hundreds of events to educate young people on the failures of Bush’s energy and climate policies and weakly engaged in some voter registration and get-out-the-vote operations. We had basically no money, no way to reach out to our base with a clear message and campaign, there were only a handful of full-time paid organizers working on the issue, and we were still developing the structures and processes to make collective decisions.

After the shock and trauma of that election night faded, we reconvened in Washington in January with 80 leaders representing a much broader and more diverse cross-section of our movement to strategize together about what to do next. Inspired by the Georgian “Orange Revolution” going on as we met and seeking a way to build our power from the bottom-up, the idea was first thrown out to develop a unified campaign around campus sustainability, modeled in some ways on what the Sierra Youth Coalition had created in Canada. Over the next 8 months, in addition to several days of action and a waste-vegetable powered bus-tour gathering another 30,000 signatures urging the Big 3 auto-makers to build cleaner cars, the Campus Climate Challenge campaign was developed and initial fundraising had begun.

This period was generally characterized by reactive and opportunistic strategy development, a heavy focus on one-off days of action (see Josh Lynch’s EAC Day of Action history from 11/03 to 2/07 for more), and a resulting weak movement narrative. We were just beginning to find each other, just beginning to trust each other.

PHASE 2: Building Power (September 2005 — October 2007)

The Campus Climate Challenge was conceived of as a 3-year campaign to make our schools models of the sustainable future we wanted for our country. The idea was to support local campaigns that could win important victories; recruit, train and empower large numbers of youth organizers and consolidate our base into a single broad campaign that could be mapped on a website. It was the heart of the Bush years and we were building our base. Coalition partners had the flexibility to work with local groups to then leverage their campus campaigns and victories to stop dirty energy projects from being built, influence local and state policy or run corporate campaigns. Days of Action throughout this period built on strategic themes within the campaign and demonstrated a rapidly growing number of groups across the country working on these issues.

Key to developing a campaign that could work for our then 30 odd coalition partners was creating a joint fundraising and budgeting process that all partners could participate in. We soft-launched the campaign in September ’05 and continued to raise money, recruit campuses and create the materials throughout that year. By the summer of ’06, we had raised $3 million dollars and began hiring what soon became 75 FTE staff across coalition partner organizations and the central staff to run the campaign. Two indigenous organizations created the Tribal Campus Climate Challenge, another ran the campaign on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, another developed an endowment strategy, another organized schools into state networks to impact state policy, and on and on.

Nearly 1,000 youth groups around the country ran the campaign, large state and regional trainings provided concrete organizing skills, built state networks and allowed the youth leaders to share ideas and plan larger campaigns together. The victories started to come in — a 10% clean energy purchase here, a commitment to kyoto-level carbon reductions at another college there — but they were too few and too little. At a coalition strategy meeting during the summer of ’06 we developed an idea for a college president’s version of the Challenge, which a partner organization and two allied groups turned into the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment. The combination of bottom-up student organizing and top-down president leadership was a game-changer, and as of this writing, 666 colleges have committed to becoming climate neutral. Spooky number, but amazing results.

Young people were also increasingly frustrated with the lack of leadership from just about anywhere else and began to escalate tactics — a sit-in at the Penn State President’s office that was replicated elsewhere, actions targeting existing and proposed coal plants, a fast in front of the White House, and the Climate Summer marches in Vermont and New Hampshire. The Step It Up 2007 campaign, led by an amazing group of Middlebury students and author Bill McKibben, took the basic concept of a day of action to a new level. By focusing on a single political ask and going inter-generational, they were able to mobilize 1,400 events around the country — more than double the size of any previous Energy Action Coalition supported day of action.

This period in the coalition’s growth was the beginning of a sustained, coordinated strategy that leveraged the strengths of almost all our coalition partners. But “The Challenge” was at core a campus campaign, and didn’t reach the 2/3 of youth 18-24 that weren’t in school. It was also highly decentralized, making it hard to demonstrate our collective power — to our targets, and even ourselves.

PHASE 3: Pushing The National Debate (November 2007 — Present)

The first Power Shift in early November 2007 was our entrance onto the national stage. 6,000 young people in D.C. was at that point the largest climate advocacy gathering in the country’s history. We developed a national platform: 1) Create 5 Million New Green Jobs, 2) Cut Carbon 80% by 2050, and 3) A Moratorium on New Coal Plants and an End to Fossil Fuel Subsidies, and swamped Capitol Hill. All three goals, championed by the youth movement while most others thought they were impossibly radical, have become mainstream, and are in fact endorsed by our current President.

Power Shift ’07 was the beginning of the coalition’s focus on the ’08 elections with the Power Vote campaign. The most disciplined and coordinated coalition campaign yet generated huge results: 350,000 signatures on a Power Vote pledge, hundreds of events and media articles, and a strong presence at the Conventions and Presidential Debates. The coalition began to develop strong online organizing skills and became major power player in Washington D.C..

To call on the leaders we had helped elect to make good on their promises and demonstrate our continued resolve and power, the coalition recruited nearly 13,000 people to Washington for Power Shift ’09 in early March. The huge lobby day and largest-ever climate civil disobedience action — the Capitol Climate Action, organized by allied groups in partnership with the coalition — represented a new level for the movement as a whole and sent an important early signal to the new Administration and Congress.

After Power Shift, the coalition’s focus on federal policy has continued, with mini-Power Shifts in key Senate states, calling and letter-writing campaigns and creative local actions. The It’s Game Time Obama campaign, one of the only large-scale public efforts to call out the President’s lack of leadership on the issue, has succeeded on 2 of it’s 3 asks of him: 1) attending Copenhagen and 2) organizing a meeting between top youth leaders and 5 of his cabinet secretaries, but not 3) making an address to the nation specifically on climate and energy.

And so here we are. Another critical moment stands before us where the broader movement needs the vision and leadership of young people. What does the end of Phase 3 look like? Or Phase 4 or 5? Who will step up to lead us to a set of strategies that allow us to go big, to multiply our power, and win the victories our civilization needs to survive?

It’s Getting Hot in Here: Climate Generation is a month-long series reflecting on the state of the youth climate movement. As we pivot into 2010, the series will provide a forum for discussion on the history of the youth climate movement, recent victories and setbacks, potential for growth in capacity and influence, and how to orient the movement in the post-Copenhagen landscape. Please join youth leaders for posts on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and early evenings.

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.

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.”

It is time for President Obama to join them. It may not be the politically pragmatic path, but it is the only path with the potential to lead to peace and prosperity. The climate crisis is a unique challenge in human history and Copenhagen is a unique opportunity to rise to that challenge. As Bill McKibben writes, “the adversary here is not Republicans, or socialists, or deficits, or taxes, or misogyny, or racism, or any of the problems we normally face — adversaries that can change over time, or be worn down, or disproved, or cast off. The adversary here is physics.”

The physics says the limit is 350 ppm. That is the upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere if we want Earth to continue to resemble the planet we’ve come to know and love. Despite the fact that we are 390 ppm and climbing and his inaugural promise to “restore science to its rightful place” Obama and the US delegation are negotiating in Copenhagen with a stated target of 450ppm.

Fortunately for us, there are some world leaders who do not view the climate crisis as a primarily political problem. Ninety-two nations, all poor and vulnerable to the early affects of climate change have endorsed a target of 350ppm. President Nasheed of the Maldives has stated “we will not sign a global suicide pact, in Copenhagen or anywhere.” And Ambassador Lumumba, coordinator of the G77 and China Group in Copenhagen made it clear that the $10 billion of “aid” proposed for African countries by Europe and President Obama is ‘not enough for Africa to buy the coffins to bury us in’ if the climate crisis is allowed to continue.

This weekend, people are organizing candlelight vigils around the world calling on world leaders to break through the political logjam. Many will be outside American consulates and embassies, and at Senator’s offices throughout the United States, because without U.S. leadership here, the negotiations will likely fail.

On the Young and Future Generations Day, I look at Tohanna and wonder how she’ll feel in 20 years. Will she look at me and my generation and ask why we didn’t do more? What will I tell her?

If we don’t get this right, right now, what will you, President Obama, say to Sasha and Malia in 20 years? That it wasn’t politically feasible? That we didn’t know the extent of the challenge we were facing?

We know the science. We know the consequences. The United States and you, President Obama, need to continue “to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” and commit to a fair, ambitious, and legally binding agreement based on a target of 350ppm.

This entry is cross-posted at Grist.org.

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.

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.

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.

Eight years ago today, two planes flew into the World Trade Center, another crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth landed in a Pennsylvania field. The raw power of that day came to be symbolized by a date composed of three numbers. Three numbers that evoked the shock of being attacked, the horror of the sounds and images on our television sets, and the heroism of so many men and women. Three numbers that framed the events of the last decade and seemed like they would define my generation.

But eight years ago, many in my generation couldn’t vote. We didn’t choose the President, his wars, or his policies. In fact, young Americans have largely rejected the politics of fear and division that dominated those formative years of our political consciousness—voting 2 to 1 in favor of Barack Obama. Today we remember the victims and honor our heroes, but we also have a new President, new crises, and three new numbers: 3-5-0. 350.

350 is the most important number in the world. 350 parts per million (ppm) is the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. It’s the number agreed upon by many of the world’s leading scientists and recently endorsed by 80 countries, but it’s not the number in the current version of the climate and energy bill under debate in Congress or the target that seems likely to be set at the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

350 is where we need to be “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted,” as James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist so dryly puts it.  The bad news is that we’re already at 390 ppm and climbing.  So, is it too late?

Is it too late for the obese man to quit junk food and start exercising? Is it too late for him to lower his cholesterol and prevent a heart attack? Absolutely not. But until he changes his lifestyle, he remains at a higher risk. And until we change our lifestyle, the Earth will remain in the danger zone. There is still time to bring carbon dioxide levels back down, but it’s going to take a major transformation in how we think and act. Getting back to 350 means developing a thousand different solutions. It means building wind farms not coal plants. And it requires that world leaders recognize our interdependence and work together like never before.

Eight years ago, I felt a swirl of emotions. I was scared for my family and friends in New York City, where I was born and raised. I was angry at the people who had done this to us. I was hurting for the victims and their families, especially those from Hook and Ladder Company 25, the firehouse where I used to play when I was a child. And I radiated with the patriotism that swept America, reveling in our shared sense of purpose. That night, I gathered with friends in my Yale dorm to mourn together and mark the immensity of the day. We knew our world had fundamentally changed and that that day marked a turning point for our nation.

Six weeks from today, on October 24, I hope for a similar turning point. The largest ever global grassroots action on climate change will take place, calling on world leaders to make 350 ppm the target in the global climate treaty to be negotiated in Copenhagen. I’ll be in Flagstaff, AZ, where I live, spreading the word about 350 and joining with over 1,400 groups in 110 countries (so far), from the Great Barrier Reef to the Taj Mahal, who are organizing on behalf of our planet.  Anyone can join a group or start their own by going to 350.org.

While October 24 is a day of hope, America is still being threatened by a politics of fear, hatred, and division. Witness Glenn Beck’s vicious smear campaign that led to the resignation of Van Jones, my friend and one of the most visionary leaders in the nation. We need fewer Glenn Becks and more Van Joneses. People, ideas, and events that inspire hope, justice, and collective action.

That’s why I love 350. 350 is a bright line to which we must return. It doesn’t belong to one group or one nation—it belongs to all of us alive today and those yet to be born.

350 slices through all the confusion and misinformation around the climate crisis. It’s about being prepared. Eight years ago, we were caught off guard. This time there is no secret memo. Everything we need to know is for all to see, out in the open.

I can’t wait to live in a post-350 world where the disastrous affects of climate change have been averted, and a thriving clean energy economy unites the planet. I hope some day my now one-and-a-half year old daughter looks back on my work with pride, and that she and her generation are up to the finishing the job. This is an intergenerational challenge and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

This entry is cross-posted at The Huffington Post.
Posted in global warming, Politics ]]> http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/09/11/a-new-number-for-a-new-era-from-911-to-350/feed/ 1 billyparish http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/08/03/seven-ways-to-fight-dirty-energy/ http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/08/03/seven-ways-to-fight-dirty-energy/#comments Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:13:51 +0000 billyparish http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/?p=12275 ]]> 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.

2. Mobilize Now – It’s now or never if we want to prevent the worst consequences of climate change and successfully transition to a prosperous clean energy economy. I’m reminded of the scene in Return of the King, the final Lord of The Rings, where as the climactic battle looms, the message to mobilize is spread by lighting fires from mountaintop to mountaintop. We need that now. We must mobilize all able forces or expect defeat to a better funded, entrenched opponent. Everyone with an interest in a renewed American economy and greener future needs to work together for us to win. Then we need to expand our base by reaching out to new constituencies who share in a cleaner, more just future.

3. Build Online to Offline Organizing Power – Our forces are tech-savvy and skilled at online organizing, but we are currently splintered — local leaders belong to different national organizations and may never learn about each other or figure out how to work together.  We need better tools and organizational cooperation to empower local leaders with resources, and most importantly, connections to each other to build the power they need to pressure their representatives to support real change. Thankfully, 1Sky, the Energy Action Coalition and others are building this collaborative web platform and recruiting Climate Precinct Captains in the 300,000 voting precincts across the country.  You can sign up to be a climate precinct captain here and join the largest and most systematic grassroots infrastructure initiative ever on climate change.

4. Stick With the Science - 350 parts per million is the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 450 ppm is the stated goal of ACES, the climate bill that recently passed the House. That’s a huge difference, especially when we’re already at 389 ppm and climbing.   Join with the folks at 350.org for the largest grassroots action on climate change ever this October 24. Groups around the world will gather from the Taj Mahal to the Great Barrier Reef to your town green, to spread the word about 350. So far over 1,200 groups in 83 countries have come up with an idea for how they want to spread 350. Join an existing group or start your own.

7. Go “Beyond Talk” – If you’re really ready to put yourself on the front lines to create a better future for our children and grandchildren, sign up with Beyond Talk and join thousands who have already pledged, “to perform non-violent civil disobedience and risk arrest in order to get our leaders to make the right climate-change choices.” Non-violent civil disobedience has been a core tactic of movements for justice throughout history — from Indian Independence, to Civil Rights, to the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. It has already played an important role in blocking or shutting down dirty energy facilities in the movement for climate justice, and I suspect has an even greater role to play in coming months and years.

These are my suggestions for what we can do as movement to create meaningful change in our climate and energy policy this year. I’d love to hear you’re suggestions as well. Please leave them in the comment section below.

This entry is cross-posted at The Huffington Post.