It’s Getting Hot In Here

A good friend (and talented organizer) recently told me that direct action wasn’t going to accomplish change on the scale that we need.  The point is that if we want national (and global) change, solutions need to be applied across the country, not in a piecemeal fashion.  For example, it’s a lot more efficient to fight for national vehicle mileage or emissions standards than trying to do the same thing state by state.  A national renewable standard would build on the successes of over half of the states in the US and apply to those states that for various reasons lack a renewable standard, creating market certainty for the growing but tenuous renewable energy sector.

Much can be accomplished through policy venues.  But we should not delude ourselves that policy alone will solve the problem.  Good policy is nothing without good implementation.  But what happens when implementation fails, when the structures we have created are broken?  What recourse do we have?  As far as I can see we have two options: 1) reform/transform political structures through further policy change and 2) take direct action to stop those failures.

These options are not and should not be exclusive; they are both necessary.

Continue reading ‘Direct Action in Our Movement’

I’ve been familiar with mountaintop removal (the practice of blasting the tops off mountains and dumping them in streams to get at coal seams maybe a foot thick) for years now.  But this week it became personal.

I’m here at the 5th Annual End Mountaintop Removal Week in Washington, joining residents from the coalfields of Appalachia in meetings with our Congressmen, gathering support for the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 1310) and the Appalachia Restoration Act (S 696).  This may be the 5th year, but the momentum is tangible.  We have 166 co-sponsors for the CWPA, bi-partisan support in both Houses and committee chairmen who are receptive to moving this forward. To build even more momentum, today is a National Call-In Day to urge your Congresspeople to support these bills.  Their offices are hearing from us in person and need to hear from even more constituents.

Please, take the two minutes to call your Rep.  Below are some of the most powerful points I’ve heard from local residents to communicate with members of Congress. Continue reading ‘National Call-In Day to Stop Mountaintop Removal’

“How’s that hopey, changey stuff working out for you?”

These are the words of contempt Sarah Palin aimed at the Obama Administration two weeks ago, but she may as well have taken shot at the climate movement.

The Copenhagen negotiations were largely a flop.  Climate legislation has stalled out in Congress.  Red States and Fossil Fuel Corporations are suing the EPA to revoke their authority to regulate emissions.

In 2008, millions of Americans were inspired by the message of Hope: hope that government can change, hope that yes, we can change the direction of this country.  Many of those people have now become disappointed, jaded, disengaged.  They hoped for change and they didn’t get it.  But as Mrs. Palin so eloquently reminded us, that hopey, changey stuff isn’t working so well right now.

Why isn’t it working?

Continue reading ‘When Sarah Palin is right’

Osama bin Laden is quite probably the most hated and vilified figure in the American consciousness.  And rightly so.

The man has said that he wants to destroy the America’s global economic dominance.  As Casper wrote, today he took aim at the United States’ failure to curb carbon emissions.

To stop global warming, he called for the “wheels of the American economy” to be brought to a halt. “This is possible … if the peoples of the world stop consuming American goods.”

First off, even if the American economy came to a halt, emissions would still rise, global consumption would rise and the US would be deprived of its capacity to transition to clean energy.  If he really wanted to help the “tens of millions [driven] into poverty and unemployment” he would not seek to tear down the markets required to produce clean energy.  Continue reading ‘bin Laden Hates Global Warming, Global Warming Hates Him’

Written by Lance Brisbois, Holly Jones and Juliana Williams

While Robert Kennedy Jr. and Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, debated mountaintop removal coal mining last night, the momentum against coal is building across the country and world.  Beginning yesterday, three activists with Climate Ground Zero halted blasting on Coal River Mountain, and they are continuing their tree sit today despite Massey’s intimidation efforts which include felling trees near the activists and deafening noise machines.  Delhi, India, with a population of over 12 million residents, announced that it will shut down all five of its coal-fired power plants over the next four years.  Earlier this month, Rising Tide in Australia blocked coal trains in protest of the weak outcomes of Copenhagen.

Did you ever wonder where It’s Getting Hot In Here came from?  I mean beyond the Nelly song, which is now a distant relic of early-2000s pop culture.

Here’s that story.

It’s Getting Hot In Here, the blog, was founded at the United Nations climate negotiations in Montreal in 2005: COP11/MOP1.  Just that year Russia ratified the Kyoto Protocol, meeting the requirement that countries producing at least 55% of global emissions signed on for Kyoto to take effect.  Montreal was the first meeting of Kyoto Protocol signatories. It was also the foundation of the International Conference of Youth, the body that brings youth from around the world together to develop a common platform, strategy and story.

The atmosphere in Montreal was both hopeful and frustrated.  The Kyoto Protocol had finally come into effect, the first ever international treaty on climate.  This was a major step forward.  And yet, the United States and Australia, two of the world’s largest emitters, had refused.  While delegates met to discuss making the Kyoto Protocol stronger and how to improve implementation, parallel negotiations began to discuss a new framework to replace Kyoto after 2012.  It was in this context that I found myself thrust into the international climate movement.

Continue reading ‘Climate Generation: From Humble Beginnings To A Global Movement’

by Jesse Boudart, Cascade Climate Network

Week 1 is finished.  Negotiations moved forward, even though they still seem at a standstill.  The G77 seem adamant of the mitigation numbers, 1.5 C and 350 ppm.   I don’t blame them for their demands because of the implication of 2 C could mean certain destruction for many of their island states.  Even worse, I feel like I am just emitting hot air from our requests.

I feel powerless.  I have been meeting in our technology transfer group, to review the policy papers that are on the table, many of which we aren’t even supposed to have.  Thankfully, we have a chance to review them and read what is going through the writers’ heads.  I wish they were stronger.  I also wish that there was something concrete we could work toward.  We are surely making recommendations to improve the papers, some of which we submitted to our US writers.  But overall, who knows if they will actually take them.  Further, who knows if the negotiators will actually to agree to them.  In the end though, the text is simply not as strong as it should be, not as responsible as it should be.

Through these dire seeming outcomes, it is good to blow off some steam.  Kate, Brian, Rachel and I went to the Carlsberg brewery.  What an awesome place!  They have been making beer there on a huge scale for a long time.  Through their tour, well, it was more like a museum!  Where they displayed how people made beer even from a very old age.  It was very interesting to note the bottle designs on the Carlsberg bottles.  Some bottles included the well known swastika, although it was comforting to note that that design was on a bottle before the 1930s (In which it was backwards, and I’m sure meant its original meaning of good luck or well being).  But I digress, after this wonderful history lesson and tour of the Brewery, us four talked about what was causing a serious itch.

Our current tactics seem to be lacking.  Continue reading ‘The hope in which we hope to create, hopefully’

Fifty young Americans took over a climate denier conference hosted by a prominent conservative organization this evening in Copenhagen, rushing the stage and telling the live TV audience that a clean energy future is the real road to prosperity in America. The young people, merely a fraction of the more than 350 US youth in Denmark for the UN climate negotiations, entered a session of the Americans for Prosperity “Hot Air Tour” speakers series and were able to drop two banners and gain access to the conference’s stage. The live event was webcast to over forty climate denier rallies in cities across the United States.

The students entered the event in small groups, joining a paltry audience of five conference attendees, who had come to hear climate denier Lord Christopher Monckton speak about the Copenhagen climate negotiations. After the first five minutes of the event, student representatives from SustainUS, the Cascade Climate Network, and other American youth NGOs displayed banners reading “Climate Disaster Ahead” and “Clean Energy Now.” After security agents at the event took the banners, the young attendees began a chant of “Real Americans for Prosperity are Americans for Clean Energy.” The chant lasted five minutes, as the youth took the stage and displayed their message for the live video feed being sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, despite evasive action on the camera crew’s part. As they left the stage, Lord Monckton repeatedly called the activists “Hitler Youth” and “nazis.” Continue reading ‘US Youth Crash Climate Denier Live Webcast in Copenhagen’

On Wednesday around 150 youth leaders of this movement were invited to the White House for the first Youth Clean Energy Forum.  They voiced the concerns and ideas of young people from around the country to Cabinet members.

On Thursday, 1Sky and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network delivered banners from the 350 Day of Action to the White House, representing the thousands of people calling for bold, decisive action on climate.

Which brings us to today, when President Obama announced that he would move his visit to the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen from December 9th to December 18th, at the end of the negotiations.  The first week of negotiations involves, speeches, demonstrations and a lot of strategic posturing between the countries, but the real decisions and agreements are reached in the second week.  This places Obama at the negotiations at the most critical time for him to jump into the ring. Continue reading ‘Momentum Feels Good.’

Written by Will Fischer, student leader at Washington University in St. Louis

The students have spoken!

In response to demonstrated student outcry over the naming of the “Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization” and with momentum from last week’s flash mob protest, on Wednesday the Wash U Student Union Senate unanimously passed a resolution urging the administration to change the Consortium’s name. More details in the Wash U student newspaper Student Life article.

The vote came after a week of intense lobbying by students, during which senators received an extraordinary number of emails from constituents in support of the resolution. The resolution originated in last week’s session, but the vote was postponed until after a drafting session could be held to address senators’ concerns. Wednesday’s senate session was packed with supportive students who applauded after the resolution was passed in the first 15 minutes of the meeting. Continue reading ‘Viva La Resolution: Wash U Senate Urges University to Change Name of “Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization”’