Over 50 Chicagoans gathered outside the Obama Campaign’s Chicago Headquarters last Friday demanding that the President prevent the construction of the Tar Sands Keystone XL Pipeline.  The demonstrators, a colorful mix of students, families, and individuals from Occupy Chicago, came bearing a petition against the Tar Sands signed by over 700 Illinois residents.

Ana Ahmeti, a sophomore at DePaul University, spoke before the crowd, explaining the purpose of the visit, “In 2008, Obama told Americans that under his leadership, our generation would be the one to free America from the tyranny of oil. We are here today to remind the President of his promise.”

The demonstration, like many of the countless Tar Sands actions that have happened throughout the country since August, emphasized the role that youth played in Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. One banner, held by students from Loyola University, read “Can you give our generation the audacity to hope? Stop the Keystone XL.”

The action also drew links between opposing the pipeline and standing up to corporate power.  “Big banks have taken our homes,” stated Ahmeti. “Big oil wants to take the only home we know.”
Although representatives from the Obama campaign refused to meet with the entire group, they did speak with three representatives who presented the petitions on behalf of the demonstrators.

Marissa Lieberman Klein, a student at the University of Chicago, and one of the individuals who delivered the petition, said that in speaking with the campaign representatives, the group emphasized the work that citizens are doing in Chicago to move the city beyond fossil fuels. She explained, “We told them that here in Chicago, a lot of us have been working to clean up or retire the two coal plants in the city. We’re taking efforts to make our city—also Obama’s city—cleaner and healthier. We want Obama to do the same thing for our nation.”

I’m constantly striving to find an outlet to exercise my passion to learn things that really matter and to make a difference in the world. So, every year around this time I ask myself, what are you doing this summer? Forgetting this I’ve found can lead to a summer of minimum wage doldrums.  Luckily, last year I didn’t have to look too far. My friend Jeff recommended that I check out New England Climate Summer, the program he had participated in 2009. This became a solution to the long search I had imagined I had before me.

Climate Summer is an internship in which college students bike across New England growing the climate justice movement and bringing communities together to make local change. Biking everywhere we went, my team and I lived the values that we proclaim and invited others to join us. From elementary school children to grandparents, pastors and business people, the people we met were excited to share their activism and learn more about ours. When I think back about this past summer, of course I remember the towns we visited and the organizations that we worked, but what strikes me the most are the people that I got to know. My teammates with whom I grew so much. Pastors who provided a place to sleep. Mothers who gave us showers and a warm meal. Climate activists who offered counsel. Farmers who donated food. Everyone we met that took a minute or two to talk and listen and share. We often talk about the climate crisis in terms of parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere, but what this summer did was connect me to the people and the communities that suffer from the realities of climate change.

If Climate Summer sounds like the type of change that you would like to be a part of, check out our website <www.newenglandclimatesummer.org> . The priority deadline for applications is January 15^th!

Apply Today!

Massachusetts wants solar panels on the White House and a clean energy future. This was the message sent by the more than 200 individuals who crowded into Boston’s historic Old South Church on Tuesday night to show their support for 350.org’s Solar Road Trip.

The back story: In 1979, Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. In 1986, Ronald Regan removed them. Years later, the White House panels were rescued from a government warehouse and installed on the roof of the dining hall at Unity College in Maine.  Now, 350.org founder Bill McKibben, a group of students from Unity College, and one of President Carter’s panels are traveling in a biodiesel van from Unity, Maine to Washington D.C, where the group will pressure President Barak Obama to reinstall solar panels on the White House. For the past few months, 350.org has been circulating an online petition asking political leaders from around the world to install solar panels on their homes as part of the organization’s Global Work Party on 10/10/10. The petition to the politicians states, “Install solar panels on your roof, and then enact legislation to make it possible for everyone in your country to join you in the clean energy future. We need you to act symbolically—and then we need you to act for real.”

During the Road Trip’s stay in Boston, the reality of the growing climate movement was palpable.  The event at the Old South Church was high in energy. Before the event, attendees enjoyed live music played by the environmentally themed rock band Meolodeego, and joined together to sing “Three Five Oh” with the Rev. Fred Small. Later, they cheered on speakers from local, national, and international organizations, including Interfaith Power and Light, the JP Green House, Students for a Just and Stable Future, Second Nature, Unity College, and 350.org. Attendees signed their names and wrote messages to the president on the sheet of plastic protecting the solar panel. The evening ended with the American premier of the film A Road Not Taken, which documents the strange tale of Carter’s solar panels.

The next morning the road trip crew convened at the Park Street School (more specifically, on the school’s roof), for a photo-op with the school’s solar panels, faculty from the school, and Massachusetts leaders, including Congressional Candidate  Mac D’Alessandro (MA-9), Chief of Environment and Energy for the City of Boston Jim Hunt, and City Year founder Alan Khazei.

The message is clear from Boston: students, parents, churches, schools, and politicians are getting to work in Massachusetts, and they want President Obama to do the same in Washington.

When President Carter first installed the panels, he declared, “A generation from now this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.” Until recently, these panels seemed to have fallen into the most dismal of these categories, “a road not taken.” However, as the climate movement grows, new meaning evolves. A generation later, President Carter’s panels are now a call to action. We’ve heard it. We hope President Obama does too. He’s certainly going to hear us.

How can you help to get solar on the White House? Here’s what McKibben has to say:  “In the next 24 hours, we’re going to get back on the phone with the White House and work to convince them to commit to taking action on 10-10-10. It would greatly strengthen our hand to say that hundreds of people have registered new work parties since we last called.” Register an event and tell your friends to do the same (http://www.350.org/oct10). Make your voice heard.

Every second of every day, we emit climate-changing gases into the atmosphere, threatening the stability of our planet’s climate and the vitality of civilization as we know it.  Mountain glaciers are melting away, threatening the water supply of billions.  Rainfall patterns are changing in unpredictable ways, increasing floods in some places and droughts in others, making it harder for farmers to predict which crops to plant.  Islands are falling beneath the waves, while low-lying lands are threatened.  The world’s poor, who have had a virtually immeasurable contribution to the problem, are being forced to bear the brunt of the effects, as they suffer higher rates and ranges of tropical diseases, more powerful storms that threaten to destroy their structurally unsound homes, higher food prices, decreasing access to fresh water, and forced migrations.

The same activity that is the primary cause of all of these horrible things – burning fossil fuels – is also responsible for countless other calamities.  From funding petro-regimes, like Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, etc, to increasing the rates of asthma, cancer, and airborne illnesses in our communities, to lung cancer and mine collapses for coal miners, to massive spills in oil tankers and on deep-ocean rigs that cause untold destruction to our natural world, fossil fuels are just bad.

They kill people.  They destroy nature.  They make us less safe, less healthy, and deny our children the future they deserve.

And what, after knowing all of this, is our response?

“We should reduce our emissions.”

Excuse me?  Reduce our emissions?

Did abolitionists call for us to reduce the number of slaves?  Did the Civil Rights Movement call for reduced segregation?  Did Gandhi rally the people of India around a goal of reducing Britain’s domination of their homeland?  Did suffragettes demand reduced barriers to the ballot?  Did our forbears call for reduced taxation without representation?

NO!

What successful social movement has ever been formed around the notion that something is so bad that we must have less of it?

When something is wrong, people in the past had the COURAGE to call a duck a duck, and say that it was wrong, and that it needed to STOP.  They did not call for there to be less of it, they called for its end, for its abolition.  That’s what you do when something is wrong.  You are rightfully pissed off, and you say ENOUGH!  NO MORE!

But not us.  We are afraid people will not take us seriously if we call for the only solution that makes sense:  an end to the combustion of fossil fuels.

People know when you’re being insincere.  And by suggesting that we can make do with fewer emissions, instead of calling for their elimination, we are not being sincere.  We know from the science of 350 that there’s already too much carbon in the atmosphere.  And we know from the gut-wrenching scenes of oil-coated animals on the gulf, and the wailing screams of mothers whose sons never return from the collapsed coal mine, and from the troubling sound of coughing and wheezing young asthmatic children who live in the shadow of coal plants that even if fossil fuels were not causing climate change, we would still have a moral imperative to do away with them.

So why do we wait?  What do we cling to this falsity that everything will be okay, just as long as we ‘reduce’ our emissions.  I think it is because at the end of the day, your average environmentalist is more interested in being liked than being right, in seeming reasonable, than in being reasonable.  It’s easier to tell people they have to just make little changes, to adjust the margins a little, and everything will be okay.  But that’s a flat-out lie, and it sends a very mixed message.  If something is wrong, we must campaign against it, not for less of it.

Yes, some might ignore us initially, others might laugh at us.  But the fact of the matter is, that abolishing fossil fuels is the only logical response to the situation that lies before us.  There are some economic and technical (not to mention political) challenges to be sure, but our consciences know the truth:

We must stop burning fossil fuels.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

~Mahatma Gandhi

Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar approved Cape Wind in an announcement with MA Governor Deval Patrick, a strong supporter of the project. The nation’s first offshore wind farm, Cape Wind is a victory for renewable energy production in Massachusetts and in the United States.  It shows the true potential the Commonwealth possesses, and gives us a glimpse of our clean energy future. Yet while Cape Wind is a step forward towards a just and stable future, it is only a baby step. If we truly intend to prevent rapid climate change, we need to do much more.

Speaking against Cape Wind, the Barnstable Land Trust says that “there is no other part of our community that offers more sweeping vistas, wildlife diversity, and a place of refuge from the steady march of development.” Yet, at the same time, it is our energy consumption here in Massachusetts that has driven coal, natural gas, and other energy development in other regions of the United States.  And it is our consumption – the burning of fossil fuels to drive our single-passenger cars and heat our homes – that is setting the world up for rapid climate change. It seems that we, as Americans, are willing to reap the benefits of development as long as the side effects are ‘elsewhere.’ It is easier to ignore the consequences of our consumption than it is to acknowledge that these fossil fuel power plants are usually located in low-income, minority areas and that these people that are the least empowered to stop pollution in their community suffer the most. It is easier to conveniently forget that it is our energy consumption that is causing climate change that will lead to more droughts and extreme weather events, not only in poor countries where people depend on agriculture to sustain themselves, but here in the United States as well, than it is to take responsibility and act.

When natural disasters struck Louisiana, Indonesia, and Haiti, the world poured their hearts out to help these people in need. But what if the disaster didn’t happen all at once? What if it happened over several decades? What if the changes were slow and insidious? What if by the time it became obvious that something was very wrong it was too late to stop it? That’s climate change: a silent, creeping cancer. What if we knew that with early detection (which we have) and prevention (which we could have) we could avoid the worst? Wouldn’t everyone do all they could to lead the effort? After all, a little prevention goes a long way.

Having grown up at an Audubon center and having read the likes of Aldo Leopold, David Brower, John Muir and others, I am extremely sympathetic to the call for historical and environmental preservation. I am also deeply concerned about the consequences of my actions. And right now, I don’t like what I see. I know that the cost to the environment – the humanitarian, ecological and economic costs of climate change – are not factored into the price of the electricity I use in my house or the price of the gasoline I use to drive to work. I also know that while I have enjoyed the benefits of cheap energy, somewhere, someone else suffered. And to me, that is unacceptable.

Massachusetts already has some of the most aggressive climate policies in the United States. But these policies are not consistent with the most up to date science. These policies would only achieve too little, too late.

We not only can do better, but we must do better if we are to prevent rapid climate change. Yes, community participation in the planning, siting, and development process is important. Yes, the ecological integrity of the area for the proposed development is important. Yes, sensitivity to the historic and cultural roots of the area is important. But our responsibility for causing climate change, as citizens of the most consumptive country on earth, is important too. And it’s time we stepped up and took that responsibility by decreasing our consumption of fossil fuels.

And that is why I am standing with the Leadership Campaign.  I want to see electricity used more efficiently. I want to see it produced locally and, more importantly, produced from clean, renewable resources. I want to see Massachusetts show the United States what responsibility looks like. I want to see us adopt policies like the “Act to Create a Repower Massachusetts Emergency Task Force” that aggressively pursue the prevention of rapid climate change.  I want to see 100% Clean Electricity for Massachusetts within the next ten years!

The latest draft of Kerry-Graham-Lieberman has crossed the line.

It’s morally reprehensible to have caps that are below what scientists say are needed to prevent major death and destruction (which all of the bills discussed have had).  Let’s be clear – weaker caps mean more human hearts will stop beating.  People will die.  But the argument was, if we can pass this now, we can guarantee that some human (and non-human animals and plants) will be saved, and we can hopefully amend it later on with tighter caps, and save even more of them; we don’t have enough power to pass science-based caps.  This argument is perfectly sound.

It’s financially unsound to be handing out subsidies to false solutions like ‘less-dirty’ coal, natural gas for transportation, and nuclear.  We are in a deficit and we have limited resources.  We should not be handing out subsidies left and right to industries that are going to make air dirtier and our communities sicker, while further destabilizing our climate and our world.  But, the experts say that if giving out these subsidies is the only way we can pass this, it needs to be done.  We get the framework in place, we build more power, we can roll back the subsidies.

And at the end of the day, from a cost-benefit-analysis, one can argue that these things are ‘allow-able’ in the grand trade-off.  If the only way we can ‘get the right framework’ is by having caps that are too low and subsidizing false solutions, then people can argue in good faith that these are trade-offs we have to give, and that for the sake of progress, we need to swallow our pride, shut off our hearts, and do what needs to get done for the sake of the planet and the people on it.

But pre-empting BOTH the EPA and the STATES is just wrong.  That would make this bill not just the floor of what we will achieve, but the ceiling of what we can achieve.  And that is just plain unacceptable.

If our movement (and I say that word fully recognizing that we fall far short of what we need to have earned that term) accepts these compromises, we will not be pre-empting the authority of the EPA, or pre-empting the ‘laboratory of the states,’ we will be pre-empting our future.

The EPA is our grand bargaining chip.  If nothing passes, the EPA starts regulating CO2 beginning next year, and they’ll reach the goals Obama committed to at Copenhagen (the same goals that are in this bill).  And they’ll do it without subsidizing the heck out of the coal, nuclear, and gas industries.  So why should we trade away our single bargaining chip for something inferior to it?

But even more important, if such a thing is possible, than the EPA’s authority to regulate CO2 is the ability of states to lead by example.  The ONLY possible way we will pass a bill strong enough is if we first build power and momentum by passing stronger state bills.  As we win state-by-state, we show how clean energy really works, how it creates real jobs and cleans up our communities, and we weaken the power of the fossil fuel industry in the process.

Movement leaders:

The line must be drawn here, no further.  If we give this up, we will be pre-empting our future.

Our future is too important.

As a student, and as a young person, I demand that those who claim to speak for me and fight for me to work to defeat this bill, or to remove the pre-emption clauses.  You do not speak for me or my generation if you support a bill that gives away our ability to build a movement capable of passing the type of legislation we need.  Fight for it if you must, but not in my name.

On this historic 40^th anniversary of Earth Day, participants in The Leadership Campaign have once again reminded us all of the courage necessary to create the just and stable future called for in 1970. The Leadership Campaign is a Massachusetts coalition of students, community members, and members of the faith community. Together they have introduced legislation demanding that Massachusetts create a plan to reach 100% clean electricity by 2020. Since the introduction of “An Act to Create A Repower Massachusetts Emergency Task Force” on December 7, 2010 the campaign has worked diligently towards gaining support throughout the state for this bold and important bill.

Currently the bill is held up in the House Committee on Rules, headed by Representative John Binienda. Representative Binienda has the power to release the bill. He has claimed that he supports the goal of 100% clean electricity by 2020, but has nonetheless been blocking the bill and thus has prevented it from receiving a fair hearing. Today, the campaign conducted a stand-in direct action.

At eleven o’clock this morning, a group of students walked into Binienda’s office and told his staff that they were not leaving until the Representative explained why he has failed to release the bill, despite claiming to support the bill’s goal. Every fifteen minutes, more students joining those already in his office, escalating the pressure and attracting statehouse media to the scene.

After one round of students was peacefully escorted out the office by security, a second round of students immediately re-entered his office. Eventually, Craig Altemose, Coordinator of The Leadership Campaign, was able to speak with Binienda on the phone. Below is the video of their conversation. Binenda said he would release the bill but did not give a time frame.

At the same time, Jamaica Kelley, the organization’s State Legislative Coordinator, met with Speaker Robert Deleo and his constituents from the First Church of Winthrop. Speaker Deleo is also an important target related to the success of the bill on the House side. In the meeting, the Speaker stated that he wants Massachusetts to be a leader on climate issues. We will find out this afternoon if he’s actually willing to push the bill.

Members of The Leadership Campaign are now meeting to discuss what to do next. Check out our blog for an update on the current status of our bill and the live blog taken during the morning lobby efforts of earth day.

Video: Conversation with Binienda

Positive feedback loops have begun kicking in; the tundra is melting, releasing methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.  White Arctic sea ice is disappearing, being replaced by dark ocean seas that absorb instead of reflect sunlight.  Neither our nation nor our world has managed to agree that we must stop burning fossil fuels.  Here in Massachusetts, many of our state’s leaders seem wedded to the idea that doing more than everyone else is good enough, even if we fall short of what scientists say we must do to avoid catastrophe.

President Obama’s announcement about off-shore drilling, coupled with his earlier support for nuclear energy, carbon capture and sequestration, emissions caps that are too low, offsets that are too uncertain, and free permits to polluters does not help one look to the future with optimism and hope.  And this is from a guy who really seemed to ‘get it’, who appointed a Nobel-winning Physicist as his Secretary of Energy.

Some look ahead to the fall elections with dread.  Quickly, they say:  we must cash in our chips, and take what little progress we can get before we get kicked out of the game.

But the truth is, we are the only ones who can kick ourselves out of the game.  And right now, we’ve set ourselves up for failure.

We have not been losing because we have been asking for too much.  We are losing because we have been asking for too little.

We need to stop talking about reducing emissions, and start talking about eliminating emissions.  What successful social movement ever won on a campaign of reductions?  Did Gandhi try to ‘reduce British imperialism?’  Did Mandela and Tutu fight to ‘reduce apartheid?’  Would abolitionists and suffragists be content with ‘reducing slavery’, or ‘reducing the political exclusion of women?’  Did King look into the Promised Land and see ‘reduced discrimination?’

HELL NO.

They saw something that was bad, and state unequivocally that it had to be replaced by something that is good.  And that, my friends, is why they won.  They won because they had the courage to call not for what was achievable, but for what was necessary. We need to STOP looking at what we can get today, or what we can get tomorrow, and start working on what we NEED to get as soon as we can.

Necessity dictates action.

If abolitionists had been true to themselves and evaluated what they could reasonably achieve, they would have pooled their money together, bought some slaves, and freed them, and reduce the overall number.  Or maybe they would have campaigned for laws that would ensure better treatment of slaves.  Make the slaves happier, have them suffer less.  Guarantee them better shelter, more food, fewer working hours.  Maybe establish minimum and maximum working ages for slaves, or prevent slave families from being divided.  Those things would have been mighty battles, but they were much more winnable than a full-out assault on the institution of slavery.

Yet by virtue of trying to shave off the rough edges of slavery, they would have been implying that slavery has an appropriate role to play in society, it just needed to be ‘fixed.’  That, in essence, is what we are doing today, when we allow for these false solutions to stand up alongside the real ones.  We are implicitly saying that it is okay for us to generate electricity through processes that emit climate-destabilizing gases into the atmosphere, and spread toxics into our communities.  That it is okay to blow the tops off of mountains, or to send men deep into the ground and have them breathe in cancer-causing toxics.  That it is okay for us to have a burning planet on the one hand and a 10% unemployment rate on the other, and not dedicate every willing worker to the greatest challenge of our time.

We must be bold in our call to action.  We must be principled.  We must be resolved.  And we must not move an inch.  Because, in the words of Rep. Ed Markey: we are right, and they are wrong.

That is not to say that we cannot accept partial victories.  The slave trade was ended before slavery; some institutions were desegregated before others.  Some states gave women the right to vote before others.  These victories were rightly celebrated as such, but whenever we achieve such victories, we must be clear that they are and will remain incomplete so long as we continue to sacrifice our future stability for our present convenience.  Survival is not negotiable.

The youth of America have spoken.  We have voted for 100% Clean, Renewable Electricity. We have voted for healthy communities.  We have voted for good, green jobs.  We have voted for a safe future and a stable climate.  Now, we must set about making it happen.

This is our future. No one’s going to hand it to us.  It is up to us, each and every one of us, to define what comes.

We must be as confident as Gandhi staring down the British Empire.  We must be as unyielding as Rosa Parks when she refused to move – even when the law told her she had to.  We must be as principled who called for an end to slavery, no matter the economic costs.  And we must be as hopeful as Martin Luther King, and look to the Promised Land, even if we ourselves may not get to see it.

And truth be told, we may not.  But there’s only way to guarantee that we won’t get to see a future with 100% clean electricity, that we won’t get to live with a safe and livable climate, that we won’t get to live in healthy communities and work in good, green jobs that lift people out of poverty and jumpstart our economy.  The only way we can guarantee we won’t see that world is if we don’t fight for it.  And the only way we will see that world is if we fight for it.

It won’t be easy, it won’t come quickly, but it’s our only, best hope.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi.

Who’s ready to be ignored?  Who’s ready to be laughed at?  Who’s ready to be fought?  Who’s ready to really win?

Let’s Define Our Decade.

Today, An Act to Create a Repower Massachusetts Emergency Task Force — written by Students for a Just and Stable Future (SJSF) and others in The Leadership Campaign — was released from the Senate Ethics and Rules Committee during the 6th Day of Climate Court Hearings for the Boston Common Sleep-out.

Each day last week, citizen-activists marched from the Court House after paying their court fees to the State House to show legislators the depth and breadth of support for the bill.  Well over 100 people faced the courts last week for sleeping out on the Boston Common after the park had formally closed (a misdemeanor trespassing offense).

After scores of people visited his and other key legislator’s offices indicating their support, Senator Frederick Berry, Chair of the Senate Ethics & Rules Committee (and Senate Majority Leader) released the bill from his committee and moved it along to the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy.

“We are extremely thankful to Senator Berry for releasing our bill from committee, opening debate to legislators across the state and allowing us to focus our energy on gathering the votes needed to pass it this spring,” said Martha Pskowski, Hampshire student and Western Massachusetts Legislative Coordinator for SJSF.

The bill, introduced on December 7th in both houses of the State Legislature after 7 straight weeks of sleep-outs and lobbying, would create a Repower Massachusetts Emergency Task Force that would have a six-month mandate to evaluate the steps required to obtain 100% clean electricity by 2020, and issue a report with regulatory and legislative recommendations.

The Leadership Campaign, a coalition of groups in support of the bill – and the broader goal of 100% clean electricity – will now be turning its attention to show support to Senator Michael Morrissey and Representative Barry Finegold, Senate and House Chairs, respectively, of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy.

Further MA citizens will face the courts tomorrow and on Thursday as the court dates had to be spread out over the course of 10 days (the last two court appearances will be in May and September for students who had traveled abroad).

The next statewide sleep-out will occur on the Amherst Common on February 20th, followed by the Cambridge Common on March 28th, with a return to the Boston Common scheduled for April 21st (the night before the 40th anniversary of Earth Day).

“We’re very excited to be able to move forward with our bill, and are looking forward to working with community members, students, organizations, and businesses as we enter the next stage of the bill process.” said Jamaica Kelley, a graduate student of social work at Simmons and the State Legislative Coordinator for SJSF.

Participants in sleep-outs have included Bill McKibben, Dr. James Hansen, Green-Rainbow Party Gubernatorial Candidate Jill Stein, Rev. Fred Small, Rev. Jim Antal, and hundreds of inspiring students, faculty, and community members.  The leading organizations of The Leadership Campaign include the Mass Council of Churches, Unitarian Universalist Mass Action, Somerville Climate Action Network, and Students for a Just and Stable Future.