It’s Getting Hot In Here

More Climate Action from your Friends Out West: Cascade Climate Network Spring Fling Planning Retreat Held April 4-6, 2008

By Camila Thorndike and Sarah Judkins

Over a weekend in early April, 25 youth gathered at Camp Collins in the Oregon woods to further plot the course of the Cascade Climate Network (CCN). Born in October 2007, the CCN is a youth network for climate change action that spans the Pacific Northwest. We are guided by the Cascade Climate Declaration, also framed last fall and now endorsed by 10 student governments representing 125,600 students in Washington and Oregon (most recently Reed College on 4/17) (sign the Declaration here!)

Twelve colleges and universities from both Oregon and Washington were represented at the Spring Fling by activists with a broad range of experience. Even with an entire weekend dedicated to each other, free time and open-space discussions went by the wayside as we bunkered down to hammer out the dirty details of making our vision a sustainable reality. As Nathan Jones of Oregon State University declared at the retreat’s opening, “the schedule is going to work for us” – and it had to work it’s tail off!

Created by youth for youth, the Cascade Climate Network is a web of communication and leadership that facilitates the effective collaboration of young activists, students, educational institutions, and organizations of all shapes and sizes across the Pacific Northwest. Six short months after its inception, the Cascade Climate Network proven its worth as an indispensable tool in the fight for climate change action. Working within its inclusive and equitable structure, we speak with a unified voice of greater breadth - and together we are being heard.

Continue reading ‘Spring Fling with the Cascade Climate Network’

By Camila Thorndike and Sarah Judkins

Climate change is the unthinkable. It is unimaginably vast and catastrophic, and its causes are frustratingly avoidable. As youth activists, we are used to this - but the very real idea of new coal plants in Washington still took us aback. After all, we are one of the lowest carbon-emitting states in the nation, and we have repeatedly proven ourselves as dedicated international leaders on the climate action front. The geology of our region, including the mighty hydropower production of the Colombia river, has made this possible.

For better or for worse, another local feature has been recruited as a key player in the power game: our cavernous Colombia River Basin basalt beds, just the right sort to house to potentially calcify liquid carbon from a coal gasification power plant. The complications of hydropower in Washington pale in comparison to those of a proposed “clean” (aka slightly-less-deadly) coal plant, which a consortium aims to construct in the coming years at Wallula, a town near Walla Walla on the Colombia river.

Once again, rural southeastern Washington has made headlines in the energy world with promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while providing an abundance of energy for the Northwest.

Wait a minute… clean coal? It’s an idea - and nothing more - that has somehow become a “reality” for people through the constant repetition of half-truths. Perhaps you’ve seen the sexy ads for “America’s Power” on the Democratic primary debates, which follow Hillary and Barack’s promises for a clean, independent energy future . Politicians love to portray America as the “Saudi Arabia of coal.” We don’t think this is something to boast about.

This dirty fossil fuel sickens communities, pollutes our air and water, and is responsible for one-third of our greenhouse gas emissions. However, it provides approximately half of our nation’s electric energy needs, which presents a daunting economic and political conundrum.
Continue reading ‘Proposed Plant Stalled in Eastern Washington’

Rollin’ with contagious CCN energy-hope-momentum back to school… It gets a bit isolating out here in the wheatfields, I’m grateful for IGHIH to keep us connected to the life-source. Here’s to a first post - cheers!

21 Feb 2008 | Outdoors
“Power Shift’ event draws Whitties

By Camila Thorndike

“We are a coalition of the benevolently irrational: good people doing good things for no good reason,” said Jefferson Smith of the Oregon Bus Project.

On Friday, Feb. 8, 12 Whitman students who care about climate change arrived at the University of Oregon campus in Eugene for the Cascade Power Shift: Mobilizing Youth for Climate Justice. The summit brought together more than 200 students from Oregon and Washington from over 20 colleges, universities, and high schools for the largest-ever youth climate summit in the Northwest.

“It was inspiring and motivating to be surrounded by people trying to bring momentum outside of their own campuses and really affect structural change,” said sophomore Natalie Popovich.

Simply put, those three days were some of the most affirming and hopeful of my life. If excitement could power cities, the electricity generated by so many passionate activists in the same room would guarantee a clean-energy future. And it’s possible. The global youth climate movement is the fastest growing youth environmental movement in history, and we’ve only just begun.

The 12 of us who attended the summit are now part of the Cascade Climate Network (CCN), an entirely volunteer-driven and youth-organized new network of climate change activists in the Northwest. The original 20 of the group, formed only four months ago, have since armed hundreds with the tools and training to bring desperately needed awareness and change across the board in order to address this planetary crisis.

Continue reading ‘Reflections on Cascade Powershift From Far-Flung Walla Walla’