Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement
Try something with me.
Stop and take a breath.
Imagine for a moment what a clean energy future in the United States really looks like. Imagine what it feels like to know that our climate is secure and we are damaging it no further.
Now envision the road that will lead us into that future. Think about your campus …your city …your tribe …your community …your home.
The Energy Action Coalition recently partnered with Change.org (not to be confused with Change.gov), MySpace and many other of our great friends and partners like Focus the Nation, NWF, and Campus Progress in the “Ideas for Change in America” contest. Our idea for change: Rebuild and Repower America with a Green Stimulus Package.
Vote and pass it on!
Rebuild America with a Green Stimulus Package.
President-Elect Obama has said he wants to hear ideas from all Americans, so the folks at Change.org decided to take him up on the offer, and we certainly want to as well. The contest is open to all and so far over 3800 ideas have been submitted.
The “Top 10 Ideas for America” will be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day. Change.org will then build a national campaign to advance each idea in Congress, marshaling the resources of Change.org, MySpace, and our dozens of partner organizations (like Energy Action) and millions of combined members.
Continue reading ‘Vote: Rebuild America with a Green Stimulus Package’
On the morning of the Presidential election I was waiting in line for coffee in a rural west North Carolina cafe when a “clean” coal ad blared from a wall-mounted flat screen tuned to CNN.
A local woman, Connie, I had been chatting with about the clean energy campaign I represented commented at the conclusion of the ad, “You know they play these ads all the time (around here), and McCain and Obama talk about it all the time, but I just don’t understand it. How is it possible to make that stuff clean?”
“It’s not.” I told her.
Despite the millions spent to convince Connie and other Americans that clean coal is an answer to our energy dependence, in reality, there’s no such thing as clean coal.
Thankfully, the folks who know the truth about clean coal are finally fighting back with a full frontal: http://www.thisisreality.org
Continue reading ‘“This is Reality” Takes On the Clean Coal Lie’
I first posted this in the Huffington Post Green section last week. Since then, it’s gotten a lot more attention than I anticipated - including the BBC, executives at General Motors, and most poignantly GM auto dealers, mechanics, and family members all feeling the heavy weight of the US auto industry’s crisis.
I first posted on HuffPo because I thought it important to connect so many of the things we talk about here with those who would not otherwise get a chance to see it, but I wanted to share it with this community of wonderful friends and colleagues as well. Thanks everyone for your support, friendship, and most importantly for fighting for the future we HAVE to have.
…
On November 12, Tom Brewer received an “URGENT call to action…” along with all other General Motors employees in the United States from GM North American President Troy Clarke. The return email address was “grassroots@gm.com.” The urgent task at hand: Call your members of Congress to request that the American auto industry receive a government “loan” of at least $25 billion.
Employees were then directed to a website through which to take action:
As a grassroots clean energy advocate and strategic communications professional, it’s a type of request I know intimately. I’ve written and received countless emails just like it. Two this week. Tom, however, has not.
Not that readers of this blog need reminding, but just in case:
Break’s over, folks.
The 2008 election has come and gone, but our work has only just begun.
Young people turned out in record numbers on November 4 (as the media have made very clear) and in the process we left an indelible mark on this country.
The world is taking notice. They’re listening. Now is the time to make sure our elected officials hear us very clearly. We want green jobs, a clean energy economy, and a secure climate absent of coal and smog.
And we want them now.
So to kick off the next several months of accountability, and lay the ground work for Power Shift 2009 when we go all in on Capitol Hill, we’re going to throw a couple hundred parties around the country to remind our incumbent and newly elected leaders Who’s the Boss.
Young people and Power Voters are rocking the vote this year like no generation in history.
Check out this video shot by Power Vote supporter Bill Sheibler at Penn State University - University Park, PA 16802. Almost 1000 students in line to vote by 7am! Unbelievable.
Between 1977 and 2007, California’s clean energy policies led to the creation of 1.5 million jobs while only 25,000 were lost in the traditional electric power industry.
Another way of saying that is $44.6 billion was added to the state economy while only $1.6 billion was lost.
This is a landmark study in the clean energy field as it is the first to objectively demonstrate over multiple decades that good clean energy state policy has a highly positive impact on job creation - a fundamental tenant of the clean energy movement.
You’ve been poked, bitten, pet, and maybe even hit by an errant thrown sheep.
It’s not unlikely you’ve been hugged, handed beers, or recruited by werewolves, pirates, and Corey Haim. We also suspect a few of you ambidextrous MyBookers and FaceSpacists may have been given gifts and played some poker.
We’re not exactly sure how, but Facebook applications have become a ubiquitous part of most of our lives. Sometimes fun. Sometimes annoying. But if two guys from India can give Scrabble a 21st century hipster edge and simultaneously reunite me with my grandmother and my 7th grade girlfriend, we think the oft-bizarre Facebook application might also be a tool to help us create a clean energy future.
So we’re getting a little Scrabulicious with Power Vote, and asking folks to do their online part in saving the world: install the new Power Vote “I took the Pledge” application. If you don’t, we will surely concede the future to vampires and ninjas. And they don’t much care about green jobs.
It’s easy. With these three steps you will instantly become more popular than sheep throwers.
1. Sign into Facebook (You do this 37 times a day. No explanation required)
2. Install the application and display the badge on your profile:
http://apps.new.facebook.com/powervote
3. Everyday invite the maximum number of friends to join the fun:
http://apps.new.facebook.com/powervote/invite.php
There are about 3 weeks left before the election. Can the Power Vote “I took the Pledge” application tag more Facebooks than thrown sheep?
Current Power Vote vs. Superpoke Sheep Thrower-ists scoreboard:
Us - 1,250
Them - 5,535,352
A little/ever-so-slightly/bit of a long shot, but help us give it one anyway!
From Wall St. to the Clinton Global Initiative to the UN Summit, we have watched this week as unprecedented economic and political events unfold in the United States and around the world. Thankfully, in the midst of these very uncertain times, something beautiful is happening tomorrow. Action. And we don’t mean another bailout proposal.
Beacause we know the economic, energy, and climate crises we face are all connected, tens of thousands of people will be organizing events in all 50 states to tell our leaders that we’re ready to take on these crises by building a green economy strong enough to put people back to work, lift people out of poverty, and begin to secure our climate.
At today’s Clinton Global Initiative, Al Gore said for the first time in public that we are at a point in our world’s history, and in need of such immediate action, that if you are a young person it’s time for civil disobedience.
In particular to bring coal plants to a halt.
On a panel with Queen Rania of Jordan, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Neville Isdell (the CEO of Coca Cola), and Bono - moderated by President Clinton himself - Gore was fiery in his calls for action and investment in new clean energy technologies. He was even more fiery in his strong denouncements of nonexistent clean coal (”There is no such thing!”), and a congress that is today voting on an energy bill that lifts the moratorium on mining coal shale, calling it - with dramatic pause - “IN-SANITY.”
In fact, Gore used the word “insane” or “insanity” at least 3 times (we’ll check the records to see if there more) in his descriptions of various political and business decisions made (or not made) with regard to climate.
Here are my minute by minute notes from the Opening Plenary. The times reflected are from my laptop clock - initially synced with event organizers - but are not official record:
Continue reading ‘Gore Calls for Civil Disobedience at Clinton Global Initiative.’
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