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Abigail Borah calls out Congress and the Obama Administration's inaction at the UN climate talks in South Africa before being removed by security. credit: Katherine Rainone, SustainUS

Durban, South Africa – After nearly two weeks of stalled progress by the United States at the international climate talks, U.S. youth spoke out for a real, science-based climate treaty.  Abigail Borah, a New Jersey resident, interrupted the start of lead U.S. negotiator Todd Stern’s speech to call out members of Congress for impeding global climate progress, delivering a passionate call for an urgent path towards a fair and binding climate treaty. Stern was about to speak to international ministers and high-level negotiators at the closing plenary of the Durban climate change negotiations. Borah was ejected from the talks shortly following her speech.

Borah, a student at Middlebury College, spoke for U.S. negotiators because “they cannot speak on behalf of the United States of America”, highlighting that “the obstructionist Congress has shackled a just agreement and delayed ambition for far too long.” Her delivery was followed by applause from the entire plenary of leaders from around the world.

Since before the climate talks, the United States, blocked by a Congress hostile to climate action, has held the position of holding off on urgent pollution reductions targets until the year 2020. Studies from the International Energy Agency, numerous American scientists, and countless other peer-reviewed scientific papers show that waiting until 2020 to begin aggressive emissions reduction would cause irreversible climate change, including more severe tropical storms, worsening droughts, and devastation affecting communities and businesses across America.  Nevertheless, the United States has held strong to its woefully inadequate and voluntary commitments made in the Copenhagen Accord in 2009 and the Cancun Agreement in 2010.

“2020 is too late to wait,” urged Borah. “We need an urgent path towards a fair, ambitious, and legally binding treaty.”

The U.S. continues to negotiate on time borrowed from future generations, and with every step of inaction forces young people to suffer the quickly worsening climate challenges that previous generations have been unable and unwilling to address.

Photos are available here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sustainus

Video here:

http://youtu.be/XDQxg7F2j1s

And check out – U.S. Youth Say “2020: It’s too late to wait”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQVpZQ1UlKw

Full text of Abigail’s speech:

I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot.  The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long.  I am scared for my future.  2020 is too late to wait.  We need an urgent path to a fair ambitious and legally binding treaty.

you must take responsibility to act now, or you will threaten the lives of youth and the world’s most vulnerable.

You must set aside partisan politics and let science dictate decisions.  You must pledge ambitious targets to lower emissions not expectations.  Citizens across the world are being held hostage by stillborn negotiations.

We need leaders who will commit to real change, not empty rhetoric.  Keep your promises. Keep our hope alive. 2020 is too late to wait.

Two years ago, I wrote you a letter. I talked about climate change, and hope, and about a generation pulling together. I did not tell you that I myself was falling apart.  The gory details are not important– life can break your heart, and sometimes it conspires to break it in multiple ways all at the same time.  But if we are lucky, life puts us right again. And it was in all of that–not in graduate school, not on the Hill, not in the halls of Copenhagen–but in the growing pains of young adulthood–that I learned the most important lesson I can bring to the international climate negotiations.

The world over, for centuries, people have made the unspoken but persistent mistake of thinking that if only we lump enough of us together in institutions, we will somehow become immune to the experience of being human– that we can govern with documents and dollars, rules and regulations, brackets and bureaucracy.  See the protocols, not the people. That we can–and should–separate who we are at home from who we are at work.  That if we expect to be taken seriously, we should avoid getting emotional.

But we are quicker to criticize inhuman institutions and take their services for granted than we are to help them along. We tear them apart just as quickly as our blogs, twitter, and statuses allow.  We find a lot to be against.  We forget to remember what we are for. All over the world this year, people have taken to the streets. They have had a lot to say, but most of all,  they have said that inhuman institutions are not working.

Two years ago I fell apart. Friends saw me through it. They sent messages that read simply, “How are you?” Over and over again they sat with me at picnic tables on DC patios, proffering pizza and soda and supportive silence.  They managed somehow to see my best self even after the good version of me had gone decidedly missing.  Eventually I started to see it too. It is in no small part because of this vigil, because of their stubborn expectation of what I could be, that I am myself again. Of all the things I have learned in my ongoing effort to accumulate an arsenal of skills to bring to bear on the UNFCCC–finance, diplomacy, negotiating tactics, number crunching–none is as important as this:

In our finest moments we are humans first. And–albeit with all the formal courtesies due my President– so are you.

I will be the first to admit that on climate, I have been your unapologetic critic. But now I choose to do for you what my friends did for me. I will sit here across this metaphorical table, for however many “pizzas” it takes– looking you in the eye until you see what I see. I will not see the last two years or the last two decades, I will not see Kyoto or Copenhagen or Cancun. I will not see the conversations that may have already doomed the talks in Durban, or a closing window of global opportunity. I will see only wild possibility. And I will not go anywhere until you see it too.

Toward Ecological and Social Revolution

This is a reconstruction from notes of a keynote address delivered to the Power Shift West Conference, Eugene, Oregon, November 5, 2011.

All of us here today, along with countless others around the world, are currently engaged in the collective struggle to save the planet as a place of habitation for humanity and innumerable other species.  The environmental movement has grown leaps and bounds in the last fifty years.  But we need to recognize that despite our increasing numbers we are losing the battle, if not the war, for the future of the earth.  Our worst enemy is denialism: not just the outright denial of climate-change skeptics, but also the far more dangerous denial — often found amongst environmentalists themselves — of capitalism’s role in the accumulation of ecological catastrophe.¹

Recently, climate scientists, writing in leading scientific journals, have developed a way of addressing the extreme nature of the climate crisis, focusing on irreversible change and the trillionth ton of carbon.  Central to the scientific consensus on climate change today is the finding that a rise in global temperature by 2° C (3.6° F), associated with an atmospheric carbon concentration of 450 parts per million (ppm), represents a critical tipping point, irreversible in anything like human-time frames.  Climate models show that if we were to reach that point feedback mechanisms would likely set in, and society would no longer be able to prevent the climate catastrophe from developing further out of our control.  Even if we were completely to cease burning fossil fuels when global average temperature had risen by 2° C, climate change and its catastrophic effects would still be present in the year 3000.  In other words, avoiding an increase in global average temperatures of 2° C, 450 ppm is crucial because it constitutes a point of no return.  Once we get to that point, we will no longer be able to return, even in a millennium, to the Holocene conditions under which human civilization developed over the last 12,000 years.  Many of you are aware that long-term stabilization of the climate requires that we target 350 ppm, not 450 ppm.  But 450 ppm remains significant, since it represents the planetary equivalent of cutting down the last palm tree on Easter Island.².

It is here that the trillionth ton enters in.  In the last couple of years, climate studies have determined that once we emit the trillionth metric ton of carbon — counting all the carbon put into the atmosphere since 1750 — we will have exhausted our cumulative carbon budget.  This means that if we burn no more than the trillion ton of carbon we will still have a reasonable chance (though this may not in fact be much more than 50-50) of not exceeding the 2° C, 450 ppm boundary.  The trillionth ton of carbon is thus viewed as an absolute cutoff.  Growing scientific evidence, however, suggests that it is essential to remain below the 2° C, 450 ppm level.  Consequently, some prominent climate scientists, such as Myles Allen at the University of Oxford, have stipulated that we need to target 750 billion tons of carbon as the limit, which will give us a 75 percent chance of staying below a 2° C increase in global average temperature.

How far are we from emitting the 750 billion — or even the trillionth — ton?  Since 1750, we have emitted 550 billion tons of carbon and the rate is accelerating.  If present emission trends continue, we will reach the 750 billionth ton of carbon in 2028, that is, in sixteen years.  In order to avoid emitting the 750 billionth ton by 2050 we will need to reduce our global carbon dioxide emissions by 5 percent annually.  In order not to emit the trillionth ton of carbon by 2050, carbon dioxide emissions would have to drop by 2.4 percent per year.  This is much greater than the 1.5 percent drop in global carbon dioxide emissions, resulting from the Great Recession in 2008-2009.  The longer we wait to make the reductions the steeper the decline required.

Another way of putting this is that if we burn even half of today’s proven, economically accessible reserves of oil, natural gas, and coal, we will almost certainly reach/exceed the irreversible 2° C, 450 ppm, boundary.  If we want a 75 percent chance of staying below a 2° C increase, we have to lock up all but a quarter of today’s proven economically accessible fossil-fuel resources.³

If all of this were not enough, climate change is only one of the rifts in planetary boundaries that scientists are now pointing to: the others include ocean acidification, ozone depletion, species extinction, disruption of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, land cover loss, freshwater shortages, (less certainly at present) aerosol loading, and chemical proliferation.  Each of these has the potential of disrupting the global environmental order on catastrophic levels, and the trends for each (with the possible exception of ozone depletion) are presently a source of concern.  Already we have crossed three planetary boundaries: climate change, disruption of the nitrogen cycle, and species extinction.⁴

Faced with such enormous environmental problems and the need for massive, urgent changes in society, our worst enemy, as I have indicated, is denialism.  Here it is useful to look at what I call the “three stages of denial” with respect to the global environmental crisis.⁵  The first stage of denial is straightforward.  It is the denial associated with Exxon-Mobil and climate skeptics — who say either that there is no such thing as climate change or that it is not caused by human actions.  Sometimes they contradict themselves and argue both at once.  This of course is the inevitable response of capital, which is invariably concerned, first and foremost, with protecting its bottom line — even at the expense of the earth itself.

The second stage of denial — often advanced by self-designated environmentalists themselves — is to admit that there is a problem, and even to factor in the proximate causes.  Most of you are no doubt familiar with the environmental impact or IPAT formula.  Environmental Impact = Population X Affluence X Technology.  This is a mere truism, where the drivers of environmental impacts are concerned.  It frequently leads to the notion that the solution is a simple matter of promoting sustainable population, sustainable consumption, and sustainable technology.  Nevertheless, this conception doesn’t actually take us very far, since we then need to explain what drives population, consumption, and technology themselves.  In fact, such multiple-factor analysis is all too often used as a way of denying the underlying background condition: the capitalist treadmill of production.⁶

The third stage of denial has the look and feel of greater realism, but actually constitutes a more desperate and dangerous response.  It admits that capitalism is the problem, but also contends that capitalism is the solution.  This general approach emphasizes what is variously referred to as “sustainable capitalism,” “natural capitalism,” “climate capitalism,” “green capitalism,” etc.⁷  In this view we can continue down the same road of capital accumulation, mounting profits, and exponential economic growth — while at the same time miraculously reducing our burdens on the planetary environment.  It is business as usual, but with greater efficiency and greater accounting of environmental costs.  No fundamental changes in social or property relations — in the structure of production and consumption — are required.  This is the magical world view advanced by such diverse figures as Al Gore, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, Paul Hawken, and Jonathon Porritt — if not Thomas Friedman, Newt Gingrich, and the Breakthrough Institute, as well.

From a policy perspective, this normally divides into two streams, one state-centered and the other market-centered.  Green Keynesians like to think that we can ameliorate our environmental problems (and our economic problems too) by having the state promote economic growth through the creation of green jobs.  Green Schumpeterians, like Friedman, Gingrich, and the Breakthrough Institute, offer as a solution green technological innovations, supposedly a natural outgrowth of the market — but usually seen as requiring additional subsidies to corporations to harness its full strength.  Here too the promise is one of heightened economic growth on greener terms, equated simply with greater energy efficiency.

The main problem, which all of this denies, is the nature and logic of capitalism itself.  Capitalism, as its name suggests, is quite simply, thesystem of capital.  Its sole purpose is the accumulation of capital through the exploitation of human labor.  It is a grow-or-die system dominated by the 1% (the capitalist class) and giant corporations.  It is prone to periodic economic crises, and constant — and today deepening — unemployment.  Capital accumulation and economic expansion occur by means of gross inequality and monopolistic competition, generating a war of all against all and a world of waste.  The wider public/social/natural sphere is an object of theft — a realm in which to dump “externalities” or impose unpaid social costs, which then fall on nature and humanity in general.

Endless capitalism requires unlimited economic growth.  Economists generally consider a 3 percent average rate of economic growth over the long run as absolutely essential for the stability of the capitalist system.  Yet, if we were to have a continual 3 percent rate of economic growth, world output would expand exponentially by around sixteen times in a century, 250 times in two centuries, and 4000 times in three centuries.  Already we are overshooting planetary limits — consuming resources as if we had multiple planets at our disposal, undermining the very basis of our existence.⁸

What then is the alternative?  The answer is a cultural-power shift — opening up the world to the creative efforts of hundreds of millions, even billions of people, and unleashing a process of sustainable human development.  Today the world Occupy movement is showing the way.  It is time, as Noam Chomsky contends, not simply to Occupy Wall Street but to go on to “Occupy the Future.”⁹  As the 99%, we need to take direct action with respect to the environment: locking up the three-quarters of the proven, economically available oil, natural gas, and coal (remembering always that the poorest countries have to be allowed to develop while the richer countries need disproportionately to pay the cost); blocking the Canadian-U.S. tar sands pipeline; and imposing a carbon fee at the point of production (i.e. at the oil well, mine shaft, and point of entry) — the funds from which would be returned immediately to the population on a per capita basis, so that those with the largest carbon footprints, predominantly the corporate rich, would be the ones that paid.  (This is the proposal of U.S. climatologist James Hansen.)¹⁰  In the end we will need to go on and culturally Occupy the system itself through a long-term ecological and social revolution, opening the way to democratic planning at all levels of society from the local community on up.¹¹

Under twenty-first century capitalism the world is being buried in commodity waste.  We are compelled, simply in order to live and breathe in this society, to engage in useless and alienated labor directed at satisfying artificial wants through the production of mere “stuff,” the bulk of which ends up being disposed of soon after it is purchased.  This all takes places simply so that the whole process can start up again, more commodities can be generated, and more profits can be made by the 1%.  As radical economist Juliet Schor says, we have lost any sense of “true wealth.”¹²  In the United States today we spend about $1 trillion on the military spending each year, far more than all the rest of the world put together.¹³  U.S. corporations and businesses today spend more than $1 trillion on marketing annually, simply in order to persuade people to buy things that they don’t want or need.¹⁴  Our very cultural apparatus is shaped so as to conform to the imperative of marketing — not democratic communication.  If we are to save the earth, this gargantuan waste and destruction which dominates our lives needs to be brought to an end, so that we can focus on the real issues: making sure that everyone in every part of the world has enough of life’s basic needs; building community; promoting substantive equality; and creating the basis for sustainable human development.  Some have called this a socialism for the twenty-first century.

In a 1962 speech to the National Maritime Union, Martin Luther King declared: “We are presiding over a dying order, one which has long deserved to die,” and he ended his speech with the words of the great American socialist Eugene Debs: “I can see the dawn of a better humanity.  The people are awakening.  In due course of time they will come into their own.”¹⁵  Now is the time of which Debs and King spoke, the time in which to create a new society where human beings no longer deny, but affirm, their connections to each other and to the earth.

Notes

1  On ecological denialism as a complex social construct see Kari Norgaard, Living With Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life(Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2011).

2  Susan Solomon, et. al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 6 (February 10, 2009): 1704-1709; Heidi Cullen, The Weather of the Future(New York: Harpers, 2010), 264-71.

3  Myles Allen, et. al., “The Exit Strategy,” Nature Reports Climate Change, April 30, 2009, and “Warming Caused by Cumulative Carbon Emissions Towards the Trillionth Tonne,” Nature 458 (April 20, 2009): 1163-66; Malte Meinshausen, et. al., “Greenhouse-Gas Emission Targets for Limiting Global Warming to 2° C,” Nature 458 (April 30, 2009): 1158-62; TrillionthTonne.org; Catherine Brahic, “Humanity’s Carbon Budget Set at One Trillion Tons,” New Scientist, April 29, 2009; Cullen, The Weather of the Future, 264-71; International Economic Agency, CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion (Paris: IEA, 2011), 7.

4  Johan Rockström, et. al., “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,”Nature 461 (September 24, 2009): 472-75.

5  See John Bellamy Foster, “Capitalism and the Accumulation of Catastrophe,” forthcoming Monthly Review63, no. 7 (December 2011): 1-17, where the three stages of denial are put in the context of an overall accumulation of catastrophe under capitalism.

6  Allan Schnaiberg introduced the treadmill of production critique in his book The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity(New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), based on earlier Marxian conceptions.

7  See Al Gore, Our Choice (New York: Rodale, 2009), 346; Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism(Boston: Little Brown, 1999); L. Hunter Lovins and Boyd Cohen, Climate Capitalism(New York: Hill and Wang, 2011); Jonathon Porritt, Capitalism: As If the World Mattered(London: Earthscan, 2007); Thomas Friedman,Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008); New Gingrich, A Contract With the Earth(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, Break Through(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007).

8  Charles Morse, “Environment, Economics and Socialism,” Monthly Review 30, no. 11 (April 1979): 15.

9  Noam Chomsky, “Occupy the Future,” November 2, 2011,NationOfChange.org.

10  James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren(New York: Bloomsbury, 2009),211-20.

11  For a more developed argument on short-term, radical ecological changes and long-term revolutionary ecological change see Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011), 123-44.

12  Juliet Schor, True Wealth(London: Penguin, 2010).

13 For the data on military spending see John Bellamy Foster, Hannah Holleman, and Robert W. McChesney, “The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending,” Monthly Review 60, no. 5 (October 2008): 9-13.

14 ”U.S. Marketing Spending Exceeded $1 Trillion in 2005,” Metrics Business and Market Intelligence, June 26, 2006, http://metrics2.com; Michael Dawson, The Consumer Trap (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 1.

15 Martin Luther King, Jr., “All Labor Has Dignity” (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011), 71.

This article was originally published on  MRzine.

The Keystone XL Pipeline is Obama’s chance to turn tides and start to regain support from the many that voted him into office. The same people that slept on the floors of churches taking workshops on grassroots political campaigning are now using the same trainings to prepare to be arrested outside his front door in D.C.

There have been many articles written on the destruction this pipeline will bring to our environment, economy and communities health through out its almost 2,000 mile journey. What we would like to address is the need for involvement of everyone. Yes! You! Everyone! The capacity in which we all can contribute is different for everyone but we must mobilize to avert even the lesser of worst case scenarios.

If you do not have the time, resources or ability to go down and risk arrest with the many other courageous people in our nations capitol, that is ok. There are plenty of things that you can do in your own local community. It is imperative that we continue to push awareness of the issue as well as the actions happening in D.C. We should be blasting social media sites, doing class raps, writing letters to the editor and planning local solidarity actions. We are up against an industry that makes more money then any other in the history of money.  Our advantage lies in the numbers we have. The more publicity and the more people we get involved will only lead to the more our president sees how he has the support to make the right decision.

These are lyrics from my favorite song this summer, Battles by The Smart Brothers.

It’s a love song, but I also hear a call to action, a call to protect that which we care most about.

The Keystone XL pipeline, and the tar sands extraction it would spur, is so obviously one of the worst actions the United States could take with regard to climate change, not to mention all the communities along the pipeline route whose water and ecosystems would be threatened by crude oil spills. Today, leaders of the largest environmental organizations in this country united to release a letter calling on President Obama to block the Keystone XL pipeline.  You know when Environmental Defense Fund teams up with Rainforest Action Network that something big is in the air.

The tar sands industry has been trying for years to send tar sands crude to American refineries, and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, in James Hansen’s words, would be game over for the climate.  The predecessor to Keystone XL, the Keystone pipeline, has already had 15 spills in the United States and over 20 spills in Canada since it became operational last year.  The Enbridge pipeline dumped 800,000 gallons of tar sands crude into the Kalamazoo River, and the pipeline that spilled 42,000 gallons of oil into the Yellowstone River also carries tar sands crude (a full list of pipeline accidents can be found here).

President Obama himself, without any influence from Congress, can make the decision to deny or approve the Keystone XL permit. Since Saturday, 275 people have been arrested for protesting the Keystone XL pipeline outside of the White House, calling on Obama to deny the permit.  If this is not an act of love to protect our neighbors, country and planet from the tar sands evil at our door, I don’t know what is.  And it is incredibly encouraging that the environmental leaders who sent the letter to Obama said “there is not an inch of daylight between our policy position on the Keystone Pipeline and those of the very civil protesters being arrested daily outside the White House.”

If you have the means, please join our brothers and sisters in DC through September 2nd to urge Obama to stop the pipeline.

For folks who cannot travel to DC to participate in the protests, please contact the White House Comment Line.  Call 202-456-1111 between the hours of 9AM and 5PM Eastern, and say “The tar sands represent a catastrophic threat to our communities, our climate, and our planet. We urge you to demonstrate real climate leadership by rejecting the requested permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and instead focus on developing safe, clean energy.”

You are encouraged to call the White House Comment Line as many times as you would like! If you want to learn more about the tar sands action, visit http://www.tarsandsaction.org/.

“And I’m leaving in the morning, to meet the evil at our door…You are the one I fight my battles for, you are the one that I adore.”

I’m a lifelong Nebraskan. I was born in Omaha, Nebraska 22 years ago, and although I was swept away to the East Coast for school and sustainable farming opportunities in the past few years, my heart still bleeds bright Cornhusker red. I’ve been in love with my home state for as long as I can remember (in love enough to recently get the outline of my Midwestern home state tattooed on my back…yeah…I’m not kidding!)

In the summer of 2010, a few friends and I started the organization Guardians of the Good Life (GOTGL), a home-grown, grassroots group of activists and clean energy economy  radicals in the urban center of Nebraska, Omaha. An eclectic group of people, GOTGL, admittedly a cheesy name for such a fantastic organization ( “the Good Life” being Nebraska’s unofficial state motto), is made up of urban eco-activists of all walks of life. Formed under the core beliefs that urban Nebraskans have a vested interest in protecting our state from the dangerous Keystone XL Pipeline, Guardians of the Good Life has continuously kicked out creative and engaging campaigns to stop the tar sands from ever entering out state…and for that matter, ever leaving their dirty home in Alberta.

Sadly, not living in Nebraska anymore, I have not been able to participate in the Guardians activities since last summer. However, as a large group of Nebraskans were arrested today in front of the White House today and as I prepare to risk arrest next week, I felt it necessary to write about the activities and interests of urban Nebraskans fighting the pipeline. Last August, the Guardians hosted a Week of Action against the pipeline, including educational lectures, street demonstrations, a “tar sands lemonade stand” tasting, and culminating in a 100 person “Human Oil Spill” flash mob and banner drop over Omaha’s most busy thoroughfare during rush hour. Since the week of action last August, GOTGL have hosted bi-weekly roadside demonstrations, hosted benefit concerts and parties against the Pipeline, an aggressive public advertising campaign and anonymous members recently installed a large scale anti-pipeline public art piece illustrating the potentially disastrous effects of the pipeline on Nebraska’s people, environment and economy. An entirely citizen driven effort, the Guardians have partnered with groups like Bold Nebraska, the Nebraska Wildlife Federation, and the Nebrasksa Farmers Union to educate and empower Nebraska citizens from both rural and urban communities to resist this incredible threat to our state.

The pipeline, which stretches from the Alberta all the way to Texas threatens every state along its winding path. But Nebraska has quite a lot to lose from this pipeline being approved. Seriously, Nebraska’s farmers (including some of my own family who run the family farm I hope to take over when I’m older), ranchers and the general population have A LOT to lose from what will, if this population is approved, ultimately destroy the precious Nebraska Sand Hills, the largest water source for farmers and 82 % of drinking water for those who live over its boundaries, the Ogallala Aquifer.

The Keystone XL pipeline is not a threat anyone, from Alberta to Nebraska all the way to Texas, can ignore any longer. My state’s livelihood is at risk, as fellow Nebraskan Ben Gotschall recently illustrated in his blog post here. We are facing gargantuan opposition, which obviously calls for an equally gargantuan response from we the people. That’s why I’ll be in Washington D.C. next week to represent all those from my home state who could not make it out to our nations capitol to express their anger about the Keystone XL Pipeline, rage about the current administrations incredibly frustrating inaction and to put forth their collective vision for a clean, tar sands free Nebraska.

See you in D.C.!

Aaron

But that original vision still remains unfulfilled.

In the last four years, our movement is has grown bigger, more diverse and more experienced.  So why aren’t we running for office?

It won’t be easy (neither is stopping a coal plant).  We may be new at this (same with creating sustainable communities).  But unless we take a risk and try something a little crazy, our communities will be stuck with the same candidates as usual.

I have a couple of theories why we aren’t seeing a wave of young people running for office: we tend to move around a lot; we are worried older folks won’t take us seriously; campaigns can cost money and most of us don’t have a lot of savings; some people don’t want to work from “inside the system.”  The reasons (excuses) for not running for office could go on and on.  But ultimately few climate organizers are running for office because we just haven’t stepped up to do it.

To help us figure out how to overcome those barriers and make successful runs for public office, a national conference call will be hosted by 350.org, Energy Action Coalition, Young People For, the Front Line Leaders Academy, and the Young Elected Officials for young climate organizers interested in running for office.

The call will be Wednesday, July 27^th at 4:30pm EDT.  We’re asking you to RSVP for call details (and so that we can send you follow up resources easily).

Running for office may be a big (but surprisingly simple) decision, but it is one that we should start preparing for now.  Join the call and get started.

This blog post was cowritten by Monica Christoffels, student activist in Eugene, Oregon and Anastasia Schemkes, Green Transportation Organizer at the Sierra Club Cascade Chapter. 

More than 50 students from around the Pacific Northwest joined hands across the coast of Samish Island, WA in recognition of the second annual Hands Across the Sand international day of action against oil drilling. With the island’s lush forest behind them, they looked out on a serene Puget Sound – their view only to be interrupted by the looming smokestacks of the Anecortes Oil Refinery.

These students stood in solidarity with thousands of Americans across the country in sending a message to our elected officials and fellow citizens: we must do all we can to move America beyond oil.

With toes touching the water and eyes fixed on the ominous smokestacks, the students dug their feet deeper into the sand, becoming more determined to stand against America’s dangerous addiction to oil and for clean energy solutions.

These 50 students were attendees of the Sierra Student Coalition’s Northwest SPROG, one of six summer organizing training programs to be held around the country this summer. They spent a week at a camp on Samish Island, WA learning organizing skills such as messaging and framing, tactics and strategy, campaign planning and articulating a compelling narrative that inspires others to act.

Northwest SPROG attendee Monica Christoffels felt compelled to organize Hands Across the Sand event this year because she wanted to remind people of how much is at stake in the clean energy future.

“I took part in Hands Across the Sand last year, when the BP oil spill galvanized hundreds of thousands of people from literally every corner of the globe, all linking together to protest offshore oil drilling.” Christoffels said.

This year, Hands Across the Sand came at a moment of opportunity to weaken the stranglehold oil has on our economy. This summer, the Obama Administration is working on new efficiency standards for cars – and we need to call on our leaders to increase fuel efficiency as one way to reduce our nation’s dependence on oil.

The White House is set to announce new fuel efficiency standards for 2017-2025 this September. The highest standard under consideration, 62 miles per gallon, would cut the average car’s oil consumption by half – reducing America’s dependence on oil by over 44 billion gallons per year.

“Hands Across the Sand shows me that people all over the world are ready for a clean energy future, and gives me hope that we can achieve that someday.” Christoffels continued.

The youth that attend SPROGs around the country every summer – including those at NW SPROG this year are not only ready for a clean energy future, they are the ones helping create it.

With the tools they learned at SPROG and the same passion that brought them together on the beach, the students at NW SPROG are among those pushing their communities, local leaders and the Obama Administration to make “someday” right now – we can start with 60mpg by 2025.

Tell the Obama Administration you want higher fuel efficiency standards, visit Go60mpg.org.

The employee claims she found it in a briefcase that had been turned in to the lost-and-found desk at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort.  It is worth noting that the resort was the location of a retreat hosted by Charles and David Koch just one day prior to the briefcase being found. The letter includes no conclusive evidence that the letter was addressed to Charles and David Koch.  [I transcribed the letter below due to the difficulty of reading the handwriting. Notes added are in italics and bracketed. Links are included for background information.]

TRANSCRIPT:

Dear Charles and David,

Scanned image of the leaked "Chucky letter" Other pages are below transcript

[continued]

I was glad to get a letter from you. In the mail. You guys are great. Who sends letters anymore? And sealed with a wax stamp…ha ha, you creeps

Well, I have been thinking about the dilemmas you mentioned regarding global warming. And yes, of course I’m happy to offer some advice!

Let’s start with the facts, and don’t let them discourage you–we can beat these pencilnecks[sic]:

There is overwhelming. global, peer-reviewed, all that stuff, scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. All of the top um, scientific bodies around the world (even your friends at NAS) [National Academy of Sciences, presumably] are convinced. And you know how they are about things they are convinced of.

So.

You need an elaborate–I mean, Ocean’s 11, 12, 13 AND 14-style–elaborate–HOAX. You gotta do what it takes to keep the public guessing. Otherwise, they’re going to realize you’re boiling ‘em like frogs in a pot. As dumb as they are, those American Idol wannabe fatasses outnumber us, boys. Ha ha? No but seriously.

Here’s what you do:                    ran out of room–>[sic]

The IPCC is the UN‘s big gang of credible scientists that have the loudest voice in climate change findings. They issue statements and conclusions after they get together at a conference, right? Well, You can have a conference, too!

Call it something similar to the IPCC so it’s hard to tell yours apart from the real one. Call it… the International Conference on Climate Change. IPCC? ICCC?  ICUP? ;-p The media’ll never get the distinction across in one headline.

You won’t get many actual scientists to come to your conference, of course. So focus on inviting smart people who either look good on camera or don’t have any friends left in at their jobs. You know the type–insecure academics who’ll do anything to stand out in their field. Letters after their name is preferable–but not crucial. You can always just make something up.

Better yet–just promote them as scientists on your conference’s website. [This is happening now. Read about it.] It’s a free country, right? What they gonna do, take your birthdays away? (I’ve been to your parties, they couldn’t afford it.)

I did you the courtesy of sending along with this a list of ppl to invite. Ya, you owe me another elephant-shoot. Really. [List was not included. See link in previous paragraph]

(Sorry, this was the only other paper I could find. Just don’t lose this letter.) [letterhead at top of page reads: "Chamber of Commerce / United States of America]

Note: your companies can’t directly host the conference.  You need a wholesome-sounding name for a front group or two that you can control from behind the scenes. Call it the “American Dream Freedom Alliance”…no, no good…the “Institute of the Heartland”  yeah… almost…I’ll work on that one. OH! I got it: “Americans for Prosperity.” I’m on a roll. “What’s that, Dr. Scientist? I couldn’t hear all those numbers you were using in your argument because I was deafened by your HATRED for Americans AND Prosperity!”

That should keep them guessing for long enough to keep the UN from getting in your way. Gotta warn you, though. Your[sic] going into pretty public territory now, (and we’re talking about, like, the death of the planet and all, so be careful.)

Talk soon,

CHUCKY

P.S. And don’t overreact when knucklehead bloggers figure you out. No one reads them anyway.

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For those that can’t take a joke: This is a spoof–a prank, a parody, a mockery–produced in the tradition of a political cartoon. It is designed to shine some light on the serious, deadly mockery of science that is being perpetrated at the ICCC. The sources linked to this article are real, consist of credible information, and their authors were not involved in the creation of the content here.

The one thing I do apologize for is the handwriting.

Please hit “thumbs up” below if you value the tradition of unconventional truth-telling. Thanks. – AA