It\’s Getting Hot In Here

In the spring of 2009, students members of ReEnergize Texas wanted to convince the Texas Legislature to pass a bill letting them create campus green funds amidst talk of “the worst recession since WWII.” It was no small feat, but through smart lobbying, a statewide summit and lobby day, and a strategic Earth Day phone bank among other tactics, together they prevailed.

So what did this victory earn them? The opportunity to convince students at public universities across Texas to increase their own fees despite tough economic times and rapidly rising tuition. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, some might say. But that’s not how these tenacious organizers saw things.

ThinkGreenFund.org from Public Citizen on Vimeo.

Then in early March, student bodies at the state’s two most prominent public universities voted in favor of creating green funds – UT Austin with 71% support, and Texas A&M with 57% support. Just a week earlier the state’s most prominent private school, Rice University, had created its own green fund in a campaign not related to ReEnergize Texas.
Continue reading ‘Texas Green Funds Passing Despite Economy’

The great state of Texas is embarking on a political maelstrom like few things the state has ever seen.  In 2010, long time US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison will be leaving her post in Congress and running for Governor.  

That leaves a great big US Senate seat open in one of the largest, richest, and most dirty-energy dominated states in the country, and ReEnergize Texas has decided to start putting climate and energy at the center of the race from the very beginning. We’ve interviewed the two top contenders to emerge for the Senate spot so far – Democrat Bill White (Houston’s Mayor), and Republican Michael Williams (Chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission which primarily regulates oil, gas, coal, and uranium).

Here’s the first part of our interview with Bill White:

Continue reading ‘The Road to the Senate Goes Through Us!’

We are not joining the throng of cable news reporters more concerned with the 2010 election than with fixing the country in the meantime. But we did score big with two interviews that could help shape the midterm US Senate race here in Texas.

The US Senate race in Texas has a slightly funny story. Longtime US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is expected to step down and throw her hat in the ring to become the next Texas Governor. The spot she may vacate (but has not yet vacated) is already being contested by a number of potential candidates, the most notable being John Sharp and Bill White on the Democratic side, and Michael Williams and Florence Shapiro on the Republican side.

ReEnergize Texas has conducted interviews with both Democratic Mayor of Houston Bill White and Republican Chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission Michael Williams. See them here:

Continue reading ‘Making Climate an Issue in 2010′

originally posted at ReEnergizeTexas.org

“This feels like one of the good old campaigns,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, Executive Director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, Saturday afternoon.  Activists had swarmed Congressman Charlie Gonzalez’s carriage in the King William Parade earlier that morning in San Antonio.

Smitty may have been showing his age a bit (he’s directed Public Citizen’s Texas office for the last 25 years, and become a local legend in the process), but the sentiments were positive among organizers young and old alike.

Congressman Charlie Gonzalez is the key swing vote on a subcommittee considering the Waxman-Markey bill. A conservative Democrat, Gonzalez has joined a misguided throng calling for CO2 credits to be given away, a solution deemed unacceptable by environmentalists and economists who point out that such a system would create unfair profits for polluters and cripple any attempt at real CO2 reductions.

Learning late Thursday that Congressman Gonzalez would be in the King William Parade, a Fiesta celebration for the well-to-do and well-connected King William neighborhood of San Antonio, activists at Public Citizen, SEED Coalition, and my group, the ReEnergize Texas student coalition, got together and planned a full scale outreach and publicity action to let the Congressman know that giveaways are unacceptable.
Continue reading ‘Sorry Charlie, Giveaways Aren’t Green’

The University of Texas at Austin was visited by the well-known personage that is T. Boone Pickens. He was there to promote the Pickens Plan which would replace 22% of our electrical generation with wind power, and replace 38% of our oil consumption with natural gas. His down-home approach had the audience endeared and occasionally chuckling, but Power Vote and others were there to take him to task.

This is the first in a three part series of videos and commentary from the event.

Pickens’ Advisors Said He Would Decide Whether To Pledge for Power Vote Next Week

After students at the University of Michigan asked Mr. Pickens to sign the pledge in Ann Arbor, he and his advisors took the pledge and said they would look at it. So Anna Pierce from ReEnergize Texas and the Sierra Student Coalition showed up with the pledge and asked again. Once they realized they’d failed to do due diligence for their boss, Pickens’ advisors swooped in and said we should ask them again at Mr. Pickens’ event in Stillwater, OK.

And so the countdown begins. Will Mr. Pickens sign our pledge? Will he support Clean Energy 2030? Ultimately it’s his decision. But what I can say personally is that I’ve watched Mr. Pickens’ plan evolve over time, and it is getting better. He is responding to people.

Speaking to one of Mr. Pickens’ advisors after the event, I learned two important things. First, that Mr. Pickens didn’t sign the Power Vote pledge, not because he didn’t want to, but because he receives 100s of requests of this or a similar nature at every event. But now he knows Power Vote is different and it isn’t going away. Second, his team read our Op-Ed in the student paper and briefed Mr. Pickens on it. This Op-Ed encouraged Mr. Pickens to look at the Google plan and consider working with them. In other words, he knows a better plan exists, and its up to us to get him to back it.

“Now bringing you The New Coal Rush, made possible in part by Bank of America.”

There are two things we can do to make coal a bad investment. Diminish the brand value of investors, and divest. I’m working with ReEnergize Texas to do a little bit of both. This is the first in a series of videos that will be hitting YouTube before the summer.

Right now I don’t have the resources to make this a national action. But the divestment strategy will only be effective if Bank of America knows we’re doing it and knows why. They are in a fight with their competitors for our attention because we’re young, and a life-long bank account is worth a lot of money.

Continue reading ‘I Cut Bank of America’