It’s Getting Hot In Here

Cross-posted from www.solutionaries.net by Ruby Levine

I spent the weekend at Midwest Powershift in Cleveland. Among the rallies, trainings, and speeches, I was able to catch some downtime with fellow Summer of Solutions program leaders and participants from around the Midwest. Especially valuable was a conversation I had with members of other Midwestern programs on Saturday night.

500 young people applaud Joshua Kahn Russell's keynote poem at Midwest Powershift in Cleveland. Photo credit Ben Hejkal.

This conversation helped me articulate two things: one, the “good environmentalists vs. the evil polluters” framing I saw a lot of other places during the conference makes me deeply uncomfortable, and two, if the green economy is going to work it needs to be the whole economy, not a side industry.

Continue reading ‘Thoughts following Midwest Powershift’

Cross-posted from www.solutionaries.net by Ruby Levine.

The Summer of Solutions is a program for young people who want to build just, sustainable economies in their communities.

We want to invite YOU to be one of those young people building those solutions. Apply here by October 22 to start a program in your community or to join an existing program leader team.

Running a program gives you the opportunity to create and support green economy projects that build power for people who currently don’t have as much access AND to empower young people from your community and beyond with the skills and strategies they need to do the same thing wherever they go next.

Past Summer of Solutions programs have:

• Built community gardens and farms on vacant lots
• Taught neighbors how to use bikes as an effective form of transit
• Run summer camps for children to help them learn about healthy eating and growing their own food
• Founded and partnered with energy businesses to create a community-based clean energy system
• Created community spaces, from mini-golf courses in the coal fields of West Virginia to a playground in Detroit, MI
• Designed and organized for green manufacturing at a closing car factory in Saint Paul, MN

Continue reading ‘Apply to Start a Summer of Solutions Program in Your Community!’

Cross-posted from www.solutionaries.net, where you can find more stories of young people building the green economy.

When I helped close the 2011 Twin Cities Summer of Solutions three weeks ago, I knew something amazing was happening, but in the flurry of it all I wasn’t really able to identify it. I started to get a sense of it when I first sat down at the Grand Aspirations August Gathering two weeks ago, when forty people from all over the country streamed in with wondrous stories of their work creating the green economy. By the end of the Gathering, last week, the full depth of the change was starting to dawn on me and was brought to the front of my attention when Ethan Buckner, a friend and Oakland Summer of Solutions Program Leader, said smiling at the end of a big group hug, ‘you know, we’ve created something really remarkable in the past few years’. Now, after a week of catching up and taking the next steps forward back in Minnesota, I’m finally seeing the view from four years out.

Four years ago was about 6 months after the events that got Cooperative Energy Futures and the Alliance to Reindustrialize for a Sustainable Economy off the ground – the seeds of my green economy work in the Twin Cities. It was about 6 months before the vision for the Summer of Solutions and Grand Aspirations emerged. Four years ago, there had been no national gatherings of thousands of youth activists, candidate Barack Obama was barely a competitor, and the economy had not yet tanked. The dream of a green economy was barely starting to be voiced, and the idea that we could sustain ourselves, our communities, and the future of our world by creating new ways to feed, house, power, and transport our society was an exciting but utopian ideal.

So what has changed?
Continue reading ‘The View from Four Years Out’

At a youth climate meeting in Minnesota in January 2008, a neat idea emerged from discussion:

‘We need to start training young people, not just FOR green jobs, but TO CREATE green jobs. We should start in the Twin Cities this summer.’

Fast-forward three years, and over 250 young people have been trained over three years in Summer of Solutions programs around the country to create innovative and self-sustaining solutions around energy efficiency, green industry, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, and smart transportation and design that advance job creation, social justice, and community empowerment. A network of over 70 youth leaders has coalesced to launch a national organization from nothing and develop 2011 Summer of Solutions programs that will support hundreds of youth in creating the clean energy economy in 15 cities nationwide. These programs have expanded rapidly in number, quality, and sustainability over the years without grant support, and with a major influx of funding and leadership in late 2010, we’re just hitting our stride.

As you read on, I’d encourage you to think of any young people (individuals or groups) who might be interested in a summer program based on community-based innovation in the clean energy economy. If so, please invite them to apply to any of our 15 programs nationwide by April 24th at www.grandaspirations.org/apply2sos

Continue reading ‘Youth Forge Solutions Nationwide – All Are Welcome’

In just three years, the Summer of Solutions program has expanded from a single site in Saint Paul, MN, and a partner program in Portland, OR, to fifteen programs across the country. As an emerging leader in youth empowerment and green economic development, we are excited to open the opportunity to work with Summer of Solutions to creative, dedicated young people who believe in improving their communities, advancing social justice, and improving the environment. We believe that together, people hold the ideas and inspiration for change. By tapping the vision and skills of individuals, Summer of Solutions programs work in collaboration with community partners to create self-sustaining green economy projects that will continue to have a direct positive impact.

We welcome all participants ages 14-30 regardless of race, culture, class, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. Positions as volunteer participants (up to 20 hours a week) and full-time participants (40+ hours a week) are open. The program is free, and full-time participants are eligible to receive need-based financial support, the application for which is here. We are currently working to generate funding to support participants with all levels of need.

To learn more about Summer of Solutions and find a program, visit Grand Aspirations, the host organization of Summer of Solutions, at http://www.grandaspirations.org/programs. The page for applications can be found at http://www.grandaspirations.org/apply2sos. The priority deadline for full-time applicants is Sunday, March 13th at midnight PST, and the final deadline for full-time applicants is Sunday April 24th at midnight PST. Volunteer applications are accepted on a rolling basis.

We look forward to receiving your application, and working together, hands-on, to create stronger, self-sustaining communities across the country.

APPLY NOW

I believe in Energy Democracy.

Energy is 10% of the entire economy, powers and makes possible everything we do in the other 90%, and is the most centralized and tightly controlled of all economic sectors – just a handful of giant oil companies and electrical and natural gas utilities control the vast majority of the wealth. Every year, the average American household puts 5% of their income into the hands of these energy companies, and reaps a return in asthma, traffic congestion, war, destruction of communities in places where energy is extracted, reduced economic security in the face of volatile energy prices, and dramatic and unpredictable changes in our climate as well as the ability to heat, light, and power their homes, schools, and workplaces, and drive between them. For families below the poverty line, this portion of their income is more like 15%, and these proportions get still higher if you count the energy costs embodied in the prices of our food and other products. Every day, our communities are pouring these dollars outside, to massive, centralized energy producers. Every day, we’re pouring these dollars towards the problems that are fracturing our communities, attacking our health, threatening or security, and devastating our climate and ultimately our economy.

What if we reversed this flow? What if we poured this vast channel of wealth – over $1 trillion across the United States alone – back into our communities and towards energy solutions that reconnect us with ecology, create bonds between neighbors, and revitalize our economy my cutting our costs and creating jobs building and servicing smart energy systems in our communities. What would this change do for our society? First, it would send a huge pulse of resources and capital back into our communities to improve the efficiency of our homes, upgrade our infrastructure to local smart grids, and help capitalize a massive wave of localized community-owned energy. Second, it would put these resources into local job creation serving local needs, and require people getting together with their friends and neighbors to learn how to make the transition and work together to do it. Finally, it would eviscerate the dirty energy industry by removing its greatest cash flow (which, let’s remember, is not investors or the government, but us, energy users). We could do all this if only we (collectively, individual consumer choice makes little difference) redirected the money we spend on dirty energy and invested in a better energy.

In 2007, I began a journey to figure out how to turn this big concept into a reality. Read on to learn the what, the how, and the why.

Continue reading ‘It’s Our Power’

This is a call.

On the basic level, it’s very simple; it’s a call for youth leaders all across the country who are ready to dig down into the grassroots and work with people in their communities to create solutions. We’re looking for leaders who want to plan a summer program next summer that will start, grow, and expand green ventures at the community level that meet the needs of our neighbors (food, housing, transit, energy, jobs), show the world what is possible, and start to out-compete the dirty energy systems that run our world.

You’re in? Just find a friend who agrees and APPLY HERE. Priority deadline midnight 10/24 – just give us a heads up if it will take a bit longer.

Need more background? Check out this video by my co-worker Matt Kazinka, read the background info in the application, or check us out at www.summerofsolutions.org

But really, this is about a lot more than running a cool program next summer. This is  a call about changing the game for our economy, our communities, and our climate.

Continue reading ‘Launch the Summer of Solutions: Change the Story’

This past weekend, the largest day of climate action in history, united tens of thousands of people all across the planet in “getting to work”.

People came together in communities across the world to make neighborhoods more efficient, grow food, install renewable energy, plant trees, create bike transit teams, and so much more. In the face of political inaction, a global economy that seems hesitant to go green or to recover, and a climate clock whose ticking is ever more audible in Pakistan’s floods and Russian fires, these people from all across the planet are getting to work and telling the world to do the same.

It’s a start.

Building a green economy is the work of a lifetime. We will not reinvent the electrical grid, rebuild our cities and their transit infrastructure, or renew our food system overnight. Rather than removing urgency, this long time horizon should heighten it while making our movement more thoughtful and strategic. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. Now is the absolute latest that we can get started, but it will be a long haul.

How will our generation survive this marathon race to a society that can sustain itself? The job market is slowly slipping, and our generation is the most unemployed, particularly for young people from low-income and minority backgrounds. The economic foundations on which young people have long relied to pay the bills, or drifted back to after the bright-eyed aspirations of youth fade from us are themselves fading. As a generation, we are increasingly finding ourselves with our backs to a wall in an uncertain world.

Its time to get to work. Continue reading ‘Getting to Work’

Cross-posted from www.solutionaries.net courtesy of Summer of Solutions Twin Cities participant Martha Pskowski.

“…it is impossible for most of the world to feed itself a diverse and healthy diet through exclusively local food production — food will always have to travel; asking people to move to more fertile regions is sensible but alienating and unrealistic; consumers living in developed nations will, for better or worse, always demand choices beyond what the season has to offer…”

James E. McWilliams “Food that Travels Well” The New York Times August 6, 2007

Say what? I thought better of you, NYT. While McWilliams does raise some valid points, this mentality falls short in two major ways. His assumptions mirror outlooks about sustainability I have often encountered which also apply to clothing, building practices, transportation and more. Good thing there are Solutionaries on the case.

One projection of peak oil from energyinsights.net

1) This view doesn’t look far enough back. Transportation of food over long distances is a relatively recent phenomenon in the grand scheme of things. There was a time when everyone ate food that was more or less local. Then refrigerated transportation happened, and the industrial revolution and agri-business squeezing out small farmers and before you know it, local is a novelty. This all happened in the course of a century or two. Is inertia so strong we can’t get back to this way of living? Judging from past moments in history, such as WWII when many Americans started Victory gardens, I beg to differ.

2) It doesn’t look far enough ahead. Oil is what fuels our transportation system and alternatives like corn ethanol aren’t looking so hot. Oil is running out, and fast. Since 1968, the world has been using more oil than it has discovered. Just this month after a cabinet meeting, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah answered a Zawya Dow Jones Newswires reporter’s question: “I told them [the cabinet] that I have ordered a halt to all oil explorations so part of this wealth is left for our sons and successors, God willing.”[1]

McWilliams doesn’t think about all the subsidies that have made oranges and coffee beans in New York City cheaper than swiss chard from a Hudson Valley farmer. The subsidies and the artificially suppressed cost of gas for transportation all create a false sense of economy in far-flung production. When the U.S. starts paying an arm and a leg for the last dregs of oil fields, local won’t look so much like a “choice”.

Continue reading ‘Reclaiming prosperity’