It\’s Getting Hot In Here

Cross-posted from the HuffingtonPost

In an election that’s been characterized by record corporate spending, capitulation to moderation, and a lack of leadership behind visionary ideas, the youth clean energy vote is showing the leadership it demands. In hundreds of locations, thousands of young voters are standing up to Big Oil, challenging special interests, and mobiliziing their peers around bold clean energy solutions.

In California, young voters are literally standing up to Big Oil. The oil industry has been bankrolling two dirty and deceptive ballot measures, Propositions 23 & 26 and young voters are fighting back with hard work, wit and people power. The California Student Sustainability Coalition’s (CSSC) Power Vote Campaign, in partnership with CalPIRG and Environment California, has organized on over 50 campuses and collected over 160,000 “No on Prop 23 pledges.” The CSSC and the statewide community organization alliance against Prop 23 launched the Clean Energy Tour, a traveling hip hop show to merge arts and activism. And Joel Francis, a student leader at Cal State, Los Angeles issues an incredible debate challenge to oilman Charles Koch, one of the lead financiers of Proposition 23, has drawn national attention to the people-powered battle against dirty corporate interests.

In response to the BP drilling disaster, young leaders are mobilizing peers around clean energy solutions that can protect their coasts from dangerous energy like offshore drilling. The Southern Energy Network and Florida YES Coalition have engaged over 5000 young voters in their Power Vote campaign to promote Solar in the Sunshine state. Their creative actions on campus, like “Human oil spills” and “Marches to the polls” have captured the attention of local media, and their energetic presence at the Florida Senatorial debate pushed energy into the dialogue.

“Windmills, Not Oilspills” is the chant you’ll hear around Virginia. They’ve mobilized thousands of voters around it, and brought it to political debates across the state, inculding to Virginia’s 5th Congressional District where their most active chapter has been an important voice in the tight race. Over 1000 young people from Charlottesville and University of Virginia have pledged to carry their demands for clean energy to the ballot box on November 2nd, and in the lead up to the election they organized Halloween events and Dorm Storms to ensure strong turnout.

Ever seen “mass transit train” Halloween costumes? You would have if you were in Ohio on Halloween. You also would have seen young clean energy advocates captivate an enormous rally with break dancing – it sounds crazy, but it’s true! The Ohio Student Environmental 
Coalition is mixing it up and breaking it down with creative tactics and brass-tacks grassroots organizing. They stormed dorms across Ohio in costume, and are organizing all day phonebanks for election day.

But election day isn’t over and the chips haven’t settled yet. Get out there and join these young people in voting, standing up to dirty money, and pushing through for a clean energy economy – if we don’t, no one else will.

We are starting to get some initial reportbacks from Crude Awakening vigils, rallies and events around the country.  They are looking great!  Spreading a powerful message, and getting some great media.  Check out the photos below, and click on the links to read about the events!

There are still great events and actions planned.

• Today, the Palmetto Environmental Coalition and young people across South Carolina will be at Senator Graham’s doorstep calling on him to renew his leadership on climate and energy.
• And tomorrow, the YALL State Network (Youth Alliance for Louisiana Leaders) will be holding a vigil in Grande Isle, LA one of the southernmost points of Louisiana.

ST. PETERSBURG, FL

Tampa Tribune , MSNBC: St. Pete spill protesters implore, ‘Don’t Oil Me Bro’
WHNZ Radio, Fox News WFLA: Protesters Get ‘Crude Awakening:’ Downtown St. Pete rally marks one month anniversary of oil spill

ASHEVILLE, NC

Asheville’s Citizen Times: “Asheville victim puts focus on all victims of oil spill”

The events in St. Petersburg and Asheville were 2 of 45 Crude Awakening vigils and rallies centered around the 1-month anniversary of the BP Drilling Disaster.

Cross-posted from EnergyActionCoalition.org

To mark the one-month anniversary of the BP drilling disaster, 45 vigils and rallies are planned around the country to call for a Crude Awakening. Oil has been gushing into the Gulf now for one month. With each day that passes, the impacts of our nation’s dirty energy policy becomes more pronounced, but politicians in Washington, DC continue to promote the Big Oil agenda.

Our community is responding – Candlelight vigils are planned across Florida and in Grande Isle, LA, public theatre is taking place in San Antonio at the site of a recent oil refinery explosion, and young people across the state of South Carolina are showing up at the door of Senator Graham’s office to demand he renew his leadership on climate and energy. Fed up with business as usual, and wanting to do something to help the Gulf, they are making their voices heard loud and clear.

Join them by calling your Senators today to demand they respond to the BP drilling disaster by standing up to Big Oil.

Last week the Senate blocked a bill to make BP pay for the cleanup, and this week the “Dirty Air Act” is re-surfacing for consideration. Our Senators need to hear from us, and your voice can help push us in the right direction.

Continue reading ’45 Vigils and Rallies Call For A Crude Awakening – Call on Congress to Stand up to Big Oil’

Cross-posted from HuffingtonPost

If you are like me, it’s easy to be cynical on Earth Day. For one day the public’s attention is turned to the environment, but largely what they see is advertisements for superficial eco-products, greenwash from some of the biggest and dirtiest corporations, and talking points from politicians – there is very little discussion of creating a bright green economy that can address our economic and environmental crises and provide opportunities to communities who are too often stricken with environmental injustice.

It’s easy to cast Earth Day off as nothing but a wasted opportunity, but only if we waste it. This should be our day! It’s up to each of us to talk to someone about why we do what we do, and recruit them into our efforts. Take a moment to talk up your great work, celebrate!

I’ll start: Today, as we celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, I’m excited because I’m actually thinking about the future. Millennials are on a generation-wide mission to transform our society and economy to one that works for us, to one that will provide millions of jobs for our generation, and put us to work staving off the climate crisis.

Continue reading ‘A Dash of Hope From An Earth Day Cynic’

The Leadership Campaign capped off the Weeks of Action w/ a sleepout and chants of "Nothing more than 350, nothing less than 100% clean electricity!"

In the past two weeks, hundreds of communities had discussions and took action to begin to define our decade with clean energy.

The votes are still being tallied, but over 6,000 people from across the country voted on the world we want to create, and not surprisingly, the results reflect our generation’s ambition! 83% of us voted to make 100% clean electricity by 2020 a priority.  I’m not just excited about this because we now have thousands of petitions to deliver to our politicians (we do, and we will!). I’m excited about it because we’ve developed not only political demands, but things we can strive to collectively achieve.  And although what we’ve settled on is very ambitious, when you look at the goals and plans that local, statewide, and regional groups drew up, you start to get a sense of “YES, we can actually make this happen!”

In the last few weeks, hundreds of groups either developed a local vision for their decade, brought more people into the discussion, or got to work creating it.

• Students in Florida, and the Southern Energy Network continued to build support around the Student Green Fund, and got over 1,500 new people on board!
• Dozens of campuses are committed to moving their campuses beyond coal – an incredibly important first step if we are to reach that goal of 100% clean electricity.
• The Southwest Workers Union continues to build support for a community-written Peoples Power Plan that will provide safety and prosperity for residents in San Antonio, TX.
  Continue reading ‘On Our Way to Defining Our Decade – Hundreds of Communities, and Thousands of Leaders On Their Way to 100% Clean Electricity by 2020′

The discussions about how to Define Our Decade are taking off in communities around the country. The Weeks of Action are coming up in 2 weeks, but already young people are having discussions about how they want to define their decade, and taking action to make it happen; this past week dozens of young people turned out at a student-called hearing at Michigan State University.  While preparing for the hearing, they had a discussion about what they want to see in the next decade, and then the next day hit the streets calling for MSU to be powered by 100% clean energy by 2020.

All of this comes at a time when the U.S. Senate continues to try to figure out how to proceed with climate and energy legislation. In a Sunday op-ed penned by Thomas Friedman titled “How the G.O.P. Goes Green,” one of the leading figures in crafting legislation, Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina acknowledged that he is inspired to take up climate and energy legislation because of young people on college campuses. Graham correctly points out that young voters are driven by deeply-held environmental values, and more lawmakers would be wise to wake up to this, but Graham’s solutions of nuclear and offshore oil-drilling are both counter to our values and economic interests. Every dollar spent on the dirty energy economy, is a dollar that could have created more jobs in the clean energy economy we must create. That’s why in the coming month it’s essential that we, as the Millennial Generation, further define what our vision for a clean energy economy really is.

Already dozens of events are being hosted around the country that will help us do just that. Check out the event registration page for the full listing and see a couple of highlights below: Continue reading ‘Graham is right, for young people “climate is no-debate.” Let’s make sure we show him our solutions’

It’s the day after MLK Day, and the eve of Obama’s inauguration.

In light of insufficient progress on national climate and energy policy, and a disappointing outcome in Copenhagen, it’s clear as a movement that we need to stop and reflect on our path forward.  It’s been great to see this discussion on IGHIH with a number of really thoughtful posts.  We got an idea of where we came from, learned about the importance of ambition and going big, and reflected on what we can learn from Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. I’d like to continue the conversation, and have us reflect on what it means to be entering a new decade.

In this decade, the Millennial generation will come to power, becoming the largest voting constituency and entering the workforce.  How do we want to define our decade?

We need a movement wide discussion, and a movement wide vision. A vision built from the ground-up with the numbers to stand behind it to make it powerful. Continue reading ‘How Will We Define This Decade?’

Photo Courtesy of 350.org. Whit Jones updates the world from inside the Bella Center

1:54 More to come – don’t think that this is the end of us.  Over 150 people watching live stream.  Thousands of people know what’s going on. Thanks everyone for joining us, please continue to leave comments below.  Gotta run before I get swept away!

1:51 Security ready to crack down. Jeh is giving an impromptu speech, paraphrasing “we have been told by the Secretariat that if we risk arrest, we could jeopardize the ability for ALL of civil society to be involved in coming days.  We have come to consensus, despite reservation, that we will take our concerns outside and take it to the streets.  We are calling for mass civil disobedience, and solidarity actions around the country.  Join us.”  Applause!!!

1:44 Spoke too soon.  Security showed up, appointed person liaising with them.

1:43 No signs of security yet.  Live Web Stream is going strong and being are contacting us from all over the world.  This is truly incredible.  Thank you for all of the support.

1:33 Members of civil society being run out of different corners of the Bella Center – security is definitely making a sweep.  Sitters are clear they aren’t trying to make trouble for security, just trying to make sure their future is secured.

1:25 Security circling corridors.  Team has sat back down and is waiting to see what happens… Reading of names picks up again, still bringing the voices of 11 million people into the Bella Center.

1:12 Team meeting to figure out plan for night.  Things are getting quiet around here, but your comments and tweets are keeping it energetic!

12:56 We have a Live Stream set-up now. Hear from the folks sitting-in themsleves: http://www.powershift09.org/live

12:30 Solidarity sit-ins called for.

12:00 We made it to midnight! As the conference center begins to empty out and janitors start tidying up the space, we’re joined by an unexpected guest – a little snowman from the storm that’s hit Copenhagen this evening. We’re also proud to announce that since we’ve officially hit Thursday morning, some of the young people here have begun their day of fasting in solidarity with the Climate Justice Fast. Interested in helping out the effort and joining the likes of Cate Blanchett, Vandana Shiva, and Mary Robinson? Fast in solidarity with those sitting in the center and calling for climate justice all around the world! Continue reading ‘LIVE BLOG: Youth activists sit-in, refuse to leave until negotiators listen to 11 million voices calling for a fair, ambitious, and binding deal.’

On the eve of the Copenhagen climate negotiations, as our movement shifts into high gear to get a global deal (and a fair, ambitious, and binding one at that!), I wanted to chronicle and reflect on some of the grassroots action that has been going on (lots of it in just the past week!).

There have been a ton of great posts reflecting on the White House Youth Clean Energy Forum.  One thing that came out of each was how our local leadership both made the meeting possible, and made the meeting successful.  Without the thousands of young people calling on Obama for his leadership, and calling very specifically for a meeting with youth leaders, the meeting never would have happened.  Once in the room, the 150 young leaders from diverse backgrounds had a ton of experience and insight to offer, and were able to demonstrate that there truly is grassroots leadership across the country.  We had campus leaders from dozens of states, community organizers on the frontlines of stopping mountaintop removal mining, field organizers setting up innovative programs to fuel green jobs training with home weatherization, and clean energy entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley.

And while we had this impressive cross-section of voices in DC, the action was still happening across the country (and abroad!):

• Young people working with the Maryland Student Climate Coalition and Chesapeake Climate Action Network led a No Coal Rally in Baltimore to oppose proposed transmission lines from West Virginia into their state.  What would be carried on those transmissions lines?  You guessed it, coal power.  Check out this great video they produced and keep a special eye out for youth voices Zainab and Zoe.
• Students from across Connecticut hit up the office of Senator Lieberman this past Friday to deliver two very important messages: as a chief architect of climate legislation, he must ensure that the authority of the EPA is not gutted and that his state maintains clean and healthy air, and that our targets and timelines must be in-line with what science demands and lead us to 350 ppm.  Check out their boldness in this video:
  Continue reading ‘Taking Our Actions From Local to Global, and Making Sure Our Voices Are Heard in Copenhagen’