It’s Getting Hot In Here

What would you say if I told you that BP, the oil behemoth responsible for the tragic oil spill in the Gulf Coast, could legally get away with paying for less than 3.75% of the total cleanup damages? Who is on the hook to pay the rest, you ask? Taxpayers like you and me.

Fortunately we aren’t alone in our outrage. Senate opponents of offshore drilling are expected to introduce legislation this week to combat these abuses by raising the cap on liabilities from $75 million to $10 billion.

Can you write a letter to your Senators supporting this vital measure?

If we don’t take action now, oil companies are going to continue to get away with this kind of abuse — in 1989, Exxon-Mobil dodged cleanup costs for the Exxon Valdez spill. And right now, Valero is sponsoring an anti-climate proposition in California while hiding its own toxic legacy.

Oil drilling has proven to be the perpetrator of widespread environmental and human health devastation. Irresponsible corporations must be held accountable for the damage and destruction they cause.

P.S. If you want to do something in your community to help with the oil clean up, ask your hair salon to donate cut hair to matteroftrust.org, a group that creates oil-removing materials from human and pet hair. (Yup, human hair sucks up oil, who knew!)

On April 14th, 2009 at 9:30 AM, coal barons are finally testifying in front of Congress about the “The Role of Coal in a New Energy Age.”

Coal is the single most dangerous form of energy and, despite many claims by industry spokespeople, is not clean and cannot be cleaned. While industry front groups are spending millions of dollars convincing Americans that CO2 emissions from coal can be tucked away safely, all evidence shows the contrary, that doing so is technically dubious, extremely expensive, and environmentally disastrous.

Young people will welcome these criminals that deal in coal, the most deadly weapon of mass destruction! We will let them and anyone watching know that young people don’t want coal to have a role in the New Energy Age, that we demand fair worker transition programs for coal miners, clean energy for the nation, and stable climate for future generations!

If you live in the D.C. area, sign up here to help organize the welcoming reception. If you’d like to walk around and sign people up with some old school tabling or canvassing, you can find a handy sign-up form here.

“…what wouldn’t do a thing to lower gas prices is … to open up Florida’s coastline to Offshore drilling. it would have long-term consequences to our coastlines but no short term benefits since it would take at least 10 years to get any oil… it will take a generation to reach full production and even then the effect on gas prices will be minimal at best” Candidate Obama – June 20, 2008 – Jacksonville, FL.

Young people from Florida changed the course of history when they delivered their state to President Obama in the 2008 elections. They worked hard, knocked on doors, called reluctant family members, all in an effort to elect the candidate that spoke those words. Well, after a year and a half spent doing some really great (but woefully insufficient) things to move us towards a clean energy economy, seems like the President is turning his back on the wise words he spoke on his campaign.

“Today we are announcing the the expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration, but in ways that balance the need to harness domestic energy resources and the need to protect America’s Natural resources… the only way this transition [to domestic fuels] will succeed is if it strengthens our economy in the short run and in the long run”

Many progressive bloggers already challenged the President’s assumption that opening up the Outer Continental Shelf to oil drilling would be politically (or economically) smart, but few provided alternative strategies to drastically, quickly, and efficiently achieving the stated goals of the President’s new initiative.

Making efficient cars more accessible to the general public is something the administration is already doing great work on. In addition to today’s announcement about doubling the efficiency of the Federal Government’s auto fleet (spoken as a sidenote to the oil drilling expansion),  the Obama administration also enacted stricter greenhouse gas limits to newly built car emissions.

Continue reading ‘“The Politics [on oil drilling] May Have Changed, But the Facts Haven’t”’

Defining Our Future

Last week, President Obama met with a bipartisan group of 14 Senators and four cabinet officials to talk about climate legislation. To those of us involved in multi-issue progressive organizing, this meeting brought back daunting memories of the fabled  ’bipartisan interest’ that stalled healthcare reform for many months.

At the same time as this high-level meeting was going on, young people across the nation were logging on to ourdecade.org/define to share their vision for how our country’s energy use needs to change in the upcoming decade.

Both President Obama and the youth climate movement are on the same path: both are interested in moving our country away from our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels, in cleaning up our air, in strengthening our national security, creating jobs, and, reducing the terrifying effects of the climate crisis. Both can’t do it alone: the youth clean energy movement needs the insight, creativity and energy of its growing base, and President Obama needs 60 Senators to endorse his plan.

The similarities between the two groups  end there.  Continue reading ‘President & Young People Define Our Decade In Different Ways’

That’s right, on Friday 22 Senators wrote to Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) asking for the climate crisis to be the next big issue to be addressed by the Senate.

Unfortunately, so far it looks like the Senate climate bill won’t look anything like it needs to if we hope to have a prosperous and healthy future. As usual conservative democrats (including some in this list) seem to believe that the only good subsidies are subsidies to dirty energy.

So click on your Senators’ name and give them a call to thank them  for prioritizing our future and let them know about how you Define our Decade!

Continue reading ‘It’s Almost Our Time!’

{Written by Dan Cannon, Florida Organizer at the Southern Energy Network}

{Written by Jenna Garland, South Carolina Organizer at the Southern Energy Network. Cross-posted from Southern Energy Network’s Blog}

Jake Sully and Neytiri from 'Avatar'

While visiting my parents recently, my mother treated me to a 3-D showing of Avatar at a theater close to where I grew up. I went in with a fair amount of trepidation. I’ve been following the media coverage of the film, as well as conversations between friends and colleagues who had seen it in the weeks follow its premiere. I was feeling very nervous about the racial dynamics of the film, and though I’d heard many people describe the film as very pro-environment, I wondered how pro-environment a blockbuster movie could be; how much can its themes and messages really challenge the status quo of our fossil fuel-powered society?

Continue reading ‘Avatar: the Problematic Environmental Blockbuster’

Crossposted from Funding Our Future, the Campus Progress blog promoting policy that provides economic opportunities for our generation.

Right after the State of the Union, young climate activists submitted a question about the President’s remarks on clean energy and crossed their fingers hoping that it would get asked. The smiling faces of Energy Action Coalition activists made it in the the intro screen as the YouTube announcer explained the format.

During the CitizenTube State of the Union Q & A discussion, President Obama severely dodged a question submitted by young activists about his support of dirty energy.

His answer is unwise, and deceitful. I hate to say this about the President that has done more to invest in a clean energy economy than anyone before him (not a hard accomplishment since W, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Carter were the only presidents in office since  clean energy became an issue), but young people are tired of being lied to by the White House and congress.

Continue reading ‘Deflecting Questions Is Not A Form Of Clean Energy’

{UPDATE: We are only 100 away!! We can do this folks! Keep on spreading the word!}
We are 120 votes away from being the most voted ‘Energy and Environment’ question about the State of the Union address on CitizenTube.

On Monday President Obama will be answering questions about his State of the Union address, how would you like for that question to be one submitted by young climate activists?

Right now, the most voted question is from someone promoting alternative fuels. Not clean energy. Not just energy. Not renewable energy. But alternative energy, and you know what that means right? If this question is still #1 by tomorrow, President Obama will have an open window to reiterate his support for dirty coal, nuclear, and offshore oil drilling and ignore the true solutions to our energy, national security, and climate crises.

Go to CitizenTube and upvote this question from Energy Action. We are only 120 votes away from the top, so every vote counts. Please spread the word and RT this:

RT @energyaction: Vote up youth leader question to #Obama! Why dirty energy when clean is smarter & creates more jobs? http://bit.ly/bGNR8R

Crossposted from Funding Our Future, the Campus Progress blog promoting policy that provides economic opportunities for our generation.

Is there any doubt left? The website where I found this cool image has more of these great visuals demonstrating the vast scientific consensus around climate action. As Van Jones said at the 2009 Campus Progress National Conference, if you went to 10 doctors because of a pierced lung and one of them (a Psychologist) told you you were fine while the other 9 said you desperately needed surgery, what would you do?