It’s Getting Hot In Here

(Written by the Sierra Student Coalition Publishing Group)

For those of us in school, the semester is coming to a close and our student organizations are wrapping up projects for the year. We face the next academic season with the full knowledge that we are entering an era of new politics and new opportunities, and that many decisions await our communities, our campuses and our nation. As we expand the scope of our movement and the impact of our work, we are beginning to recognize the diversity of our own stories: the victories that we have won and the setbacks we have encountered, the hopes and fears for our future, and the strain and joy of pushing a country forward.

The Sierra Student Coalition Publishing Group invites the youth movement to share your personal stories throughout the coming year – starting now. Fill out our brief questionnaire with your group or as an individual as you reflect on your semester along with the challenges and the victories that it presented. We want to publish and distribute your stories to inform and expand nationwide dialogues among youth on what we have done and how we have done it. This is your opportunity to help other groups learn from your successes and challenges without having to re-invent the wheel, so to speak.

Continue reading ‘Share Your Story with the Movement!’

No, it’s not the latest installment of trashy teen horror flicks. It’s a call to keep organizing for climate solutions this summer.

Consider the incredible progress youth have made so far this school year: fighting scores of coal, oil, liquefied natural gas and other fossil fuel facilities; achieving amazing campus, city and statewide victories for advancing just climate policies and practices; making climate a major issue in the presidential campaigns; engaging with Congress hundred of times throughout the year to hold them accountable for dealing with global warming; the list goes on. You need only to read over the other posts here to find stories of young people building momentum and creating solutions for a just and sustainable future.

We all know that there will be a frenzy of activity in the fall around the elections, which present an incredible opportunity to elect climate champions and shift the federal and local approaches to tackling global warming. As youth we have become a coveted demographic for the campaigns and have the opportunity to determine the outcome of elections across the country. It will be exciting and exhilarating.

But what about this summer? I already told you that I know what you’re doing this summer. You and young people like you all across the country will be devoting their summer to organizing for climate solutions. This will keep the momentum from this school year going and will help us engage even more people in the fall. There are opportunities to attend:

• trainings and build your skills and ability to make greater change;
• actions across the country which will mobilize against the expansion of fossil fuels;
• organizing programs where you can devote your whole summer to working in a community building local climate solutions
• cultural events where you can connect with other young people and incorporate music, art, performance into the work this movement is doing (because after all a revolution without dancing isn’t worth fighting for).

Check out the Summer Opportunities page and make your summer part of building a just and sustainable future.

Like the morning after a one-night stand, the morning after the Iowa caucus left many with remnants of exhilaration and disappointment. Last night was historic for any number of statistics you could dig up from the reports. My precinct more than doubled its turnout from the 2004 caucus, and the turnout overall was almost twice as much as it was four years ago. According to Time:

“The size of the turnout was driven by young people, who supposedly never turn out — and by independents, and Republicans who crossed over, and by people who never had attended caucuses before but figured that this year political participation was, for once, mandatory. And a very clear message was sent: Iowa, at least, was ready for a new generation of leadership.”

Last night Iowans who had never before taken an active role in politics braved the cold to caucus. Last night elementary, middle schools and high school rooms were crowded with Iowans who wanted to make a difference. The post-caucus rallies and celebrations dominated the news and filled the largest venues in Des Moines. By this morning the campaigns had cleared out to New Hampshire, returning morning traffic to normal; the television commercials ceased to be the constant stream of political messages; even some of the billboards were being replaced.

To all outward appearances, Des Moines has gone back to normal, but this is not the case. Continue reading ‘The Morning After: Post-Caucus Iowa and Implications for the Climate Movement’

In response to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s rejection of California’s application for a waiver to regulate the tailpipe emissions on vehicles, California, five environmental non-profit organizations and fifteen other states are suing the EPA.

Joining California are the states of Massachusetts, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington in one lawsuit and Conservation Law Foundation, Environmental Defense, the International Center for Technology Assessment, the Natural Resources Defense Counsel and the Sierra Club in a separate suit. Both suits are filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, CA.

So while the Supreme Court has ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, the EPA now claims that the only way we should regulate emissions is through a national plan. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson stated that the increase in fuel economy that President Bush signed into law will be better than “patchwork” state regulations, even though the combination of both would would be far stronger than anything the Bush administration has proposed.

It seems like the only way to get anywhere with the Bush administration EPA is to sue them to force them to do the right thing. Well, it’s a new year and a new lawsuit. Let’s keep it going and we may even have the emissions standards in place for 2009, the first model year that the standards affect.

EPA Adminstrator Stephen Johnson just announced today that he plans to deny the waiver California applied for to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions from cars, SUVs and Trucks. Citing the new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards that President Bush signed into law today (the only major redeeming factor to the Energy Bill) Johnson stated that “The Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution — not a confusing patchwork of state rules…I believe this is a better approach than if individual states were to act alone.”

The newly adopted CAFE standards raise the average miles per gallon the vehicles sold in the U.S. must achieve to 35 mpg. While this creates a substantial jump in efficiency (meaning that in several years, the US will achieve the same efficiency as Chinese vehicles do now), the move to increase fuel economy is distinct from regulating tailpipe emissions. While less gas will be consumed to drive a vehicle under the new standards, regulating emissions as California proposes to do will result in more efficient combustion of gasoline and reductions in emissions above and beyond those the mileage standard will generate.

Although the greenhouse gas emissions released from the tailpipes of cars contribute to global warming, the EPA did not find that the California standard did not “meet compelling and extraordinary conditions” required to merit the waiver.

Continue reading ‘This Just In: EPA denies CA clean car standards’

For many of us organizing to combat global warming and create a just, sustainable and prosperous future, the last six weeks probably felt like an emotional and political roller coaster. The events of the last six week are not all good, but also not all bad. I have felt the exhilaration of victory and a swelling movement taking action, the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach because the world nations are not moving as quickly as they need to, and the crucial but not always comfortable feelings involved in examining our growing movement. It has been difficult to pause and reflect when so much is happening at such a quick pace, so here is my take on the last six weeks and some thoughts about what lies ahead of us.

Six weeks ago, around 6,000 young people gathered in Washington, D.C for the largest single gathering on climate change in the United States to date. Power Shift 2007 was a chance to see what the climate movement looks like. Interacting face-to-face with thousands of other young people working on climate issues was an invigorating and remarkably personal experience. When the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing with on climate, the youth who testified brought much of the room to tears and to cheers at various parts of the hearing. Continue reading ‘Our Six-Week Rollercoaster’

On Tuesday, the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat announced (also here) that although emissions from 40 industrialized countries almost reached an all time high in 2005,

Taken together, the countries that signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol are projected to achieve reductions on the order of 11 per cent for the first Kyoto commitment period, from 2008 to 2012, provided policies and measures adopted by these countries deliver the reductions as projected. The Kyoto Protocol commits industrialized countries to a 5 per cent reduction target in 2008-2012 compared to 1990 levels.

This statement refers to the 36 States, which are the highly industrialized countries and countries undergoing transition to a market economy, which are the only ones legally bound to meet the emissions reductions. Although their emissions are still rising, mechanisms for reducing emissions are still being put in place, so their impacts have not taken effect yet.

For the totality of Kyoto signatory countries, reductions of 15 per cent are feasible, should additional policies be planned and implemented.

However, the developing countries have non-binding obligations to limit emissions, and combined with two major industrialized emitters who refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (The United States of America and Australia) global emissions are likely to continue to rise. Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, has called on the countries who are major emitters (including the U.S.A., Australia, the developing former Soviet-bloc) to take a greater role in reducing global emissions. Continue reading ‘Industrialized Kyoto Countries Can Meet Reductions, If…’

February 16th, 2005 saw the Kyoto Protocol go into effect, with its ratification by Russia. When the United States rejected the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, some feared that international climate actions would fail, but 36 countries are now working to reduce emissions under Kyoto (the most well known requirement of which is 5% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2012).

December, 2005 (almost two years ago) saw the launch of It’s Getting Hot In Here at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations in Montreal, Canada. Although this was the 11th Conference of Parties meeting to discuss international action to address climate change, it was the first Meeting of Parties, where the countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol gathered to discuss how to meet its requirements and to begin looking at what happens after 2012.

December 3, 2005 saw the world’s first International Day of Climate Action. Scheduled to coincide with the Montreal negotiations, tens of thousands of people around the world took action to call for strong implementation of reduction mechanisms. As a part of the 30,000 person march to the Palais de Congres where the negotiations were taking place, I was stunned by the number of people involved. That conference was my first major experience with the climate movement, and then and there I became devoted to climate activism. Continue reading ‘Two Year Anniversary: From Montreal to Bali’

Today the Governors of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Kansas, Ohio, South Dakota and the Premier of Manitoba signed the Midwestern Regional Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord at the Midwestern Governors Association (MGA) Energy Security and Climate Change Summit (See here, here and here).

The Accord will

• Establish greenhouse gas reduction targets and timeframes consistent with MGA member states’ targets;
• Develop a market-based and multi-sector cap-and-trade mechanism to help achieve those reduction targets;
• Establish a system to enable tracking, management, and crediting for entities that reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and
• Develop and implement additional steps as needed to achieve the reduction targets, such as a low-carbon fuel standards and regional incentives and funding mechanisms.

Continue reading ‘Ten Midwest Leaders Sign A Regional Climate Agreement’

The following is a post from www.ThinkProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress:

Coal Industry Sponsoring Tonight’s CNN Democratic Presidential Debate

Tonight at 8 pm EST, CNN will air a Democratic presidential debate, live from Las Vegas, Nevada. A full-page advertisement in today’s New York Times states that the debate is being sponsored by the “clean coal” industry:

See the full page ad here.

Here’s a closer look at the coal industry’s “clean” agenda:

Continue reading ‘Coal Industry Sponsoring Tonight’s CNN Democratic Presidential Debate’