It’s Getting Hot In Here

So, if you are regular reader of It’s Getting Hot in Here, you may have noticed that I have been a little absent recently. Why, you might ask, as what could be more exciting than sharing information with the youth climate movement? Well, I have been working on a project behind-the-scenes that I want to share with you all.

I have been working on launching Fired Up Media. Let me take you for a spin. Fired Up Media just won Project Slingshot for our Youth Action TV proposal, so we are terrifically excited and want to tell all of you about what we are doing!

What is Fired Up Media? Fired Up Media is a growing network of videographers, editors, and journalists reporting from the front lines of the youth climate movement and disseminating through the Fired Up Virtual Newsroom. The network has grown out the diverse media projects of the youth climate movement, such as It’s Getting Hot in Here, I Shot Power Shift, and CSSC TV.

Fired Up Media is harnessing dynamic advances in digital communications and new media, creative social entrepreneurship, and existing youth media on and off-campus to build a revolutionary media network. Read more here.

What do we do? Fired Up Media is launching two major projects this summer, Fired Up: Youth Action TV and Fired Up Africa.

Read more after the fold.

Continue reading ‘Introducing Fired Up Media’

Our good friend over at Think MTV, Pete, had a splendid idea to build environmental consciousness into MTV’s most popular show, The Real World. MTV has been a good ally to the youth climate change movement–from Break the Addiction to covering Power Shift — and this is another testament to great ways of reaching out to a young audience. I had the privilege of joining Peter in showcasing the house. Listen to how the cast responds to it too! I love it.

I don’t know how to post the videos for some reason, so you can view all four of them here.

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968

There are few speeches that people remember. Most of us know at least the first few lines from the Gettysburg Address, or FDR’s ‘a date which will live in infamy’ response to the attacks on Pearl Harbor. And who hasn’t heard a politician quote from JFK’s inaugural ‘ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country’ speech? But no speech is more powerful or symbolic of a movement than the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’.

On this fortieth anniversary of King’s assassination, I feel that it is important for all of us to stop and take a minute to appreciate all the amazing strides the civil rights movement made in the 60’s. Dr. King and other civil rights leaders laid the groundwork for the social justice movements going on today. As we continue to strive for equality and we work to improve our environment, take some time to remember how far we have come and be inspired by the changes we have already made.

The bustling halls of the United Nations climate negotiations still ringing in my ears, it’s been an incredible few months since I and other youth delegates from SustainUS returned from Bali. So many friends and neighbors emailed or stopped by to say “Thanks for sending your email updates from Bali!” and “Welcome home!” I still feel the excitement of working with the best & brightest of the youth climate movement around the world.

Upon returning from Bali as a US youth delegate, I was filled with hope that humanity will create a global consciousness by rising to meet the climate emergency. In the last few months, worsening scientific predictions have only strengthened my belief that we are the leaders we seek. It’s up to us. We have the power to make the climate emergency, and the immense economic opportunities we will realize from solving it, our top priority. A bold, broad movement is needed on a scale larger than the mobilization for World War II. This mobilization will only be accomplished by unleashing a renewed civic engagement.

Continue reading ‘Post-Bali Dispatch: “Lighting Up” a movement in Upstate New York!’

Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America! For his company’s massive support of the coal industry and other carbon intensive industry.

The final results are in for the “Foolies.”

Here are the other winners:

Outstanding Performance in Corporate Greenwashing: GM CEO Rick Wagoner, for his company’s creation of GMNext.com, a website designed to promote GM’s environmental progress even as the company attempted to block the efforts of California and 11 other states to reduce vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.

Most Inauspicious Newcomer: Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) CEO Patricia Woertz, for her company’s newfound recognition as a massive contributor to global warming for its role in clearing pristine rainforests around the world for the production of soy and palm oil, in part for biofuels. Biofuels produced on newly cleared land result in more climate-changing carbon emissions than traditional fossil fuels.

Biggest Human Toll: Cargill CEO Gregory R. Page, for the agribusiness giant’s displacement of frontline communities throughout South America, Southeast Asia and the Pacific to make way for the expansion of its massive soy and palm oil plantations.

Lifetime Achievement: George Bush and Dick Cheney, for their persistent efforts to deny the reality and impacts of global climate change, promote carbon-intensive energy solutions, and block progress toward curbing climate change.

Thousands voted in an online contest over the past few weeks to determine “Fossil Fool of the Year.” Beginning tomorrow, there will be actions and pranks all over the world, some of which will be delivering awards to winners and nominees.

You can check out the full nominees here.

Ever since unveiling “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore has become a symbol for the fight against climate change. The image of him standing on his pedestal, Earth in peril looming large in the background, has etched itself permanently on our minds. Gore’s film raised environmentalists’ whisper-warnings to shouts coming from the mouths of elites. Given his immense contribution of elevating the importance of the climate challenge, it’s easy to forget that Gore had a political career that predated his current one as environmentalist advocate.

Gore the environmentalist

But the former vice president has been many things over his political career, and one of those permutations is worth revisiting. Al Gore the high-tech aficionado may have been the butt of jokes for his claim that he “invented” the internet, but what he actually said was true:

During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our education system.

His 1991 High Performance Computing and Communications Act led to what is now known as the “Information Superhighway,” and was a springboard for the development of the commercial Internet. The “Gore Bill,” as it was often referred to, played a major role in helping to hoist an obscure military project across the technology valley of death, and Gore has been hailed as the first political leader to recognize the Internet’s importance. His early support of the Internet — which dates back to the 1970s — is evidence of wise foresight. Continue reading ‘The Many Sides of Al Gore’

Greetings from Lebanon,

I guess it has been a while since my last post to the wonderful itsgettinghotinhere, but thats not for good reason.  I moved my life to the roots that have built who I am today, my homeland, Lebanon.   I’ve finally committed myself to a semester of school and instead of taking off time to organize, I’ve taken time off organizing to study and be with family.  Although, media-wise I am still an avid participant.  For instance, YES! Magazine, which focuses on social-change through justice, sustainability, and compassion, has just released their Spring Edition. 

That’s right, it’s all about climate and the solutions that are needed.  You’re probably wondering who the features are, and you’ll be pleased to know that it’s all of you!  The youth climate movement, rocks it out in YES! Magazine, so check it out and subscribe for a trial issue.

According to Wikipedia, people of color in the United States represent 26% of the total population. In August, Energy Action Coalition did a survey of 467 students and youth involved in the Campus Climate Challenge with 78.9% identifying themselves as white and 6.6% declining to answer. These numbers suggest that the green movement may not be as homogenous at the grassroots as it seems. However, a survey mentioned in Grist this week suggests that the demographics at the staff level for mainstream green groups are decidedly white. I’m not a sociologist, but experience tells me that when your staff lacks diversity, issues that are important to communities of color consistently stay off the agenda, whether the group is well-intentioned or not. Here is the skinny from Grist:

When it comes to race, the actual color of the green movement is decidedly white. According to a survey conducted from 2004 to 2006, more than one-third of U.S. mainstream green groups and one-fifth of eco-related government agencies have no nonwhite staff members. Minorities tend to join up with grassroots environmental-justice groups, leaving mainstream groups open to the consistent criticism that they are elitist. And while environmentalism was undeniably elitist in its beginnings — in the early 1900s, the movement was led by whites trying to protect wild land and animals from the masses — at this point, surveys indicate that nonwhites care just as much about eco-issues as whites do, from climate change to deforestation to pesticide use to air pollution. Success in the ongoing effort to bring everyone together will get results, says activist Charles Jordan: “Once society sees this is really going to be color-coordinated, I think we’re going to perform miracles.”

Hoo-boy! New York Times online has a smart article connecting meat consumption and global warming. It’s great to see such a solid source making these connections — though people have been making this argument for decades, it’s generally over shadowed by other issues. To me, this is one more way our world will look different when we create the sustainable, healthy communities we’re striving for.

Here’s my favorite quote:”Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.”

See the article, “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler” by Mark Bittman complete with some great graphics connecting meat consumption with fossil fuels consumption for yourself