It’s Getting Hot In Here

The Ohio state Senate unanimously passed legislation setting strong new renewable energy and energy efficiency standards last week, sending the bill on to Governor Ted Strickland for signature. Sub. Senate Bill 221 establishes a 12.5% by 2025 renewable energy standard (RES), making the Buckeye State the 26th state in the nation to adopt a renewable energy requirement for electric utilities (see this previous post on numbers 24 and 25). The legislation also includes a strong energy efficiency standard that is expected to result in a 22% cumulative reduction in energy usage by 2025.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, the Ohio RES is expected to result in 5,000-7,000 MW of new wind power capacity by 2025 and early-year targets will drive 650-750 MW of new wind power installation over the next 4 years. The bill also includes a small solar “set-aside” to help boost solar power in the Buckeye State.

Continue reading ‘Buckeye State Goes Green: Ohio Passes Renewable Energy Standard’

Raise a Rope for Climate Hope: a youth-driven, community-service, climate-action project

The Wolfeboro, New Hampshire based nonprofit, Global Awareness Local Action (G.A.L.A.) is gearing up to join thousands of other youth from around the world on Global Youth Service Day to help tackle their generation’s most pressing environmental issue - climate change. Their strategies are local in practice and global in scope. Collectively these actions will make a difference.

In collaboration with local youth groups including Kingswood & Kids, Kingswood Youth Center, and the Brewster Environmental Club, G.A.L.A. is proud to share one plan of action - Raise a Rope for Climate Hope. This climate action project will connect advocacy and service. First, Alex Lee, Founding Director of Project Laundry List will give a presentation to raise awareness about the “Right to Dry” bill (S.41). At the presentation, attendees will have the opportunity to register for a free clothesline of their choice to be installed by youth teams later in May. Continue reading to learn more about this exciting Earth Week and Global Youth Service opportunity.

Continue reading ‘Raise a Rope for Climate Hope’

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!’

Fossil Fools Day is making a splash around the world. We are following dozens and dozens of actions in the US, UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand! Here’s a brief update on some of the bigger actions thus far - but more are still to come! Solid media coverage on many of these actions on Reuters, BBC, Associated Press and beyond! For the latest news all day- check out FossilFoolsDay.org

8 Arrested as North Carolina, USA Residents Shut Down Construction at Cliffside Coal Plant

At 6:30 this morning, North Carolina residents locked themselves to bulldozers to stop the construction of Duke Energy’s massive Cliffside coal-fired power plant being built 50 miles west of Charlotte, NC. “In the face of catastrophic climate change, building a new coal plant is tantamount to signing a death sentence for our generation,” said local farmer Matt Wallace, while locked to a bulldozer. The concerned citizens also roped off the construction site with “Global Warming Crime Scene” tape and held banners that read “Coal Fuels Climate Change” and “Social Change, not Climate Change.” (more…)

We’re actively looking for donations to get people out of jail!

Continue reading ‘Fossil Fools Day Highlights From Around The Globe!’

Looking for an amazing experience working with other youth leaders of the climate movement this summer? Check out the Summer of Solutions:

We’ll be using the principles of Open Space organizing to empower participants to engage in creative action on their own terms, yet as vital members of the team. As student climate organizers at Macalester College, the organizers have been building grassroots community partnerships and strategic initiatives around green manufacturing, entrepreneurial community energy efficiency, community-based clean energy development, and much more for the past two years. Using this base and our collective skills and insights, we will work together to advance these initiatives and create more while building a base of young leaders ready to lead their communities all across the country towards a sustainable future. We will realize the Climate Positive Vision by using “a mind-set that engages eagerly in the opportunities inherent in solving the climate crisis” to generate the solutions that will get us there. In the process, we’ll meet lots of amazing people, discuss so many amazing things, build skills that will last a life-time, and have lots of fun!

The Summer of Solutions will be June 1 - Aug 1 in St. Paul, MN. If you’re interested in helping build innovative solutions to climate change, fill out the simple application by one of the priority deadlines: April 1, 15, or 29 - PLEASE apply ASAP! After you apply, we’ll help you figure out how to get paid through various programs/ fundraising that we’ll help you with. The application and much more info can be found at
http://grandaspirations.org/summerofsol/summerofsolutions.html.

Questions (AND Applications) can be sent to summerofsolutions@gmail.com. We hope you can join us!

If this won’t fit your schedule, but you’re looking for other amazing options, check out the Summer Opportunities Page.

On Monday, March 3 a group of four hundred concerned students gathered for the Youth Forum on Global Warming Solutions, a collaborative and nonconfrontational conversation with Minnesota’s Governor (and possible vice president candidate) Tim Pawlenty. Organized by the Governor’s office, the Will Steger foundation, the Transcampus Energy Action Movement (TEAM MN), and Youth Environmental Activists (YEA MN), the event sought to present both the Governor’s and student visions for what Minnesota can do to combat climate change. Continue reading ‘Minnesota Students hold Forum with Governor Pawlenty’

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.

Happy Friday! Oil hit record-prices today: $103.05 per barrel. Bully for us…

That tops the inflation adjusted high of $102.53 set in 1980. Oil first inched over $100 to welcome in the new year on January 2nd and has hovered around $100 since then, routinely spiking into new record territory. Now we’ve blown past the final record: the inflation adjusted highs reached in the ’80s.

This news comes as analysts predict $4.00 per gallon gasoline when refiners switch over to reformulated blends in Spring.

Of course, you and I already know that. We see it every time we drive past a gas station, or god forbid, actually pull in to fill up our tanks!

You’d assume President Bush would be clearly aware of the state of gas prices as well, given how much they impact average Americans every day. Well, you might assume that about another president anyway… I wasn’t too shocked to learn that President Bush is actually completely clueless that gas prices are soaring towards $4.00!

In a press conference today, he revealed his complete ignorance of what life is like for real Americans on the street in an interview that began with a simple question from Peter Maer of CBS News. Here’s the transcript of the exchange, courtesy of NTYimes blog, “the Lede”:

Q: What’s your advice to the average American who is hurting now, facing the prospect of $4 a gallon gasoline, a lot of people facing –

MR. BUSH: Wait, what did you just say? You’re predicting $4 a gallon gasoline?

Q: A number of analysts are predicting –

MR. BUSH: Oh, yeah?

Q: — $4 a gallon gasoline this spring when they reformulate.

MR. BUSH: That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that.

“I hadn’t heard of that?!” Seriously?! Well that explains a lot…
Continue reading ‘Oil Hits Record Price. Gas Nearing $4.00. President Bush, Clueless…’

“I really like Tagore’s poem about the sun,” said Liang Xu, an independent investment consultant and my new found Chinese friend. “Let my love, like sunlight, surround you and yet give you illumined freedom.” He put such emotion into the recitation of this verse that I sat speechless in the back of the cab: first, because a man in China was expressing his appreciation for Tagore, an Indian poet and philosopher, and secondly, because he was specifically recalling a poem mentioning the sun. I was after all in Beijing for the Solar World Congress (SWC) sponsored by the International Solar Energy Society (ISES), the Chinese Solar Energy Society (CSES), many Chinese solar companies, and supported by the Chinese government. This single experience could probably sum up what is beginning to happen in China. The country is waking up to address the need to invest in renewable energy technologies, especially when the demand for energy is stretching supplies of conventional fuels thin and the impact of pollution from use of abundant coal reserves has put China under international pressure. The latter being a key worry for Beijing because it is hosting the 2008 Olympic Games despite the city’s legendary air pollution. Certainly all eyes were on China during this event as over 1,000 delegates were present from 60 different nations.

There has been much hype regarding China’s emergence into the solar arena because of their manufacturing abilities. According to CNN, China “will become the world’s dominator in solar energy industry.” With some 300 manufacturers of solar photovoltaics and approximately 3000 manufacturers of solar collector technologies, China has propelled itself into the world’s largest manufacturer of solar technologies. This has in large part helped bring down the costs of solar products in places like Europe and the US. When asked about the irony of the fact that despite China having such a large number of manufacturers but most of the products being made for export to other countries, Head of Chinese Solar Energy Society simply brushed aside the question and continue to boast of China’s ranking of largest solar product manufacturer in the world. Furthermore, upon questioning of what concrete steps the Chinese government is taking to reduce CO2 emissions, the session was nervously concluded and the moderator of the session pushed for a concluding applause. Though all of this may make it seem like there is a thin veneer for the solar cause over the reality that in China’s development ambitions, solar is still but a blip in terms of the foreseeable energy mix—after all, China is set to become the world’s largest energy consumer by 2010 according to the International Energy Agency. Continue reading ‘China Looks to the Sun’

Sylvia is a great-granny living down river (and down wind) from Marsh Fork Elementary School on the Coal River in Southern West Virginia. Recently a book came out, Coal River, about the mountain community that has been fighting Mountaintop Removal, and other effects of coal — dust, blasting, toxic waste disposal, overweight coal trucks barreling down the road towards school buses — for years now.

When you fight for climate justice, it’s not just “to protect our future” — it’s also to protect our Grannies’ present day. Sylvia wrote this in response to a Charleston Gazette article critiquing the book.

Editor: The Gazette editorial called the great new book “Coal River” an “attack on the coal industry.” The Gazette has it backward. The coal industry is the one with the explosives. We’re the ones getting blasted. They attack Coal River and other communities with almost 4 million pounds of explosives daily. The poison water from sludge and valley fills is another attack on us. I am truly disappointed and insulted that this paper tries to twist and spin the destruction that the coal industry is heaping upon us.

The coal industry and the Gazette don’t seem to like how the outside world sees the destruction of mountains, streams and us mountaineers. If you don’t like the image you see in the mirror, don’t blame the mirror. Continue reading ‘Notes From a Granny On Fighting Coal!’