It’s Getting Hot In Here

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!’

Continue reading ‘Northwest Climate Policy Update: Two Victories and a Setback’

Cascade POWER SHIFT 2008, the Northwest’s largest youth climate summit, ended on February 11th, wrapping up two weeks of intense climate action across the Northwest that also included nearly 50 Focus the Nation events across the region on January 31st, a giant rally in Oregon’s Capitol to oppose new liquefied natural gas importation on February 6th, and Oregon and Washington’s first-ever youth global warming lobby days in both Salem and Olympia on February 11th.

That’s a lot of climate ass-kicking! No wonder I’m exhausted today…

Cascade Power Shift: Mobilizing Youth for Climate Justice took place February 8-10th at the University of Oregon campus in Eugene, Oregon, and brought together over 200 young people from more than 20 colleges, universities and high schools across Oregon and Washington. The weekend summit was followed by a Citizen Action Lobby Day on Feb. 11th in both Salem and Olympia brought dozens of students and youth to their state capitols to amp up both youth political engagement as well as politicians’ response.

Entirely volunteer-driven and youth-organized, the weekend was sponsored by the Cascade Climate Network, the new network of Northwest youth climate activists, and pulled together people from across the region for a blow-out event aimed at training, engaging and activating hundreds of youth in the region to take on the most important challenge and opportunity of our generation: climate change. Continue reading ‘Cascade POWER SHIFT Summit Wraps Up Two Weeks of Intense Northwest Climate Action!’

On Saturday, December 8, students and conservationists from all over South Carolina braved cold weather and colder water to raise awareness about climate change and clean water. The message? “Keep our winters cold! Keep our waters clean!”

Polar plungers wearing nothing but bathing suits stood by the banks of the Reedy River in downtown Greenville, as local community leaders discussed climate change impacts on South Carolina, especially on our water resources. Student activist have sent over 500 postcards in the past two weeks, to South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control, in order to help stop the proposed 1,300 megawatt Pee Dee Coal Campus facility outside Florence, South Carolina. The plant is expected to emit a ridiculous 9 million tons of Carbon Dioxide, and nearly 140 lbs of Mercury into the already heavily contaminated Pee Dee River.

Students, community members, and non-profits throughout the state, anticipate hard times for the developments of Santee Coopers Coal Plant plans, and rejoiced Saturday as the U.S. Department of Interior seemed to join the cause , requesting a halt to, and recommending termination of the plants proposal.

“With thousands of miles of rivers and lakes already impaired by contamination and drought, South Carolina’s freshwater resources cannot bear the threat of climate change,” said Colin Hagan, a graduate of Furman University. “So we are baring our swimsuits in December.”

Continue reading ‘SC Students Polar Plunge: “Keep Our Winters Cold! our Waters Clean!”’

I’m going to join everyone in saying that Powershift was absolutely mind-blowing! The energy there was incredible and no words can describe what we all felt when we were together as a growing movement with its eyes on a clean energy future. We are ready to take this to the next level. It’s Getting Hot In Here should continue to grow and tell the stories from around the world (see here). I wanted to share with everybody Ted Glick’s Future Hope Column for this week. Ted, one of the best activists in the nation, has been fasting for over 60 days now. He was at Powershift sharing with all of us young people the incredible energy that this movement has. His column sums up what most of us feel like after Powershift:

“Words fail me as I try to figure out how to capture in words the profound significance of the student-based Power Shift conference which took place November 2-5 at the University of Maryland and on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

Historic—Powerful—Deep—Amazing—Awesome—Astounding—Incredible—Hope at the Highest Level: these are the adjectives and phrases that come to mind.

So what happened?

Continue reading ‘“We Want More”’

The Youth Climate Movement is poised to explode off of campuses and into our nation’s capitol for PowerShift 2007, November 2nd-5th.

Thomas Friedman, the popular New York Times columnist, recently labeled teens and twenty-somethings coming to age in the early years of the 21st century the “Quiet Generation.” Accusing today’s young people of being “too quiet, too online for [their] own good, and for the country’s own good,” Friedman went on to say that today’s students and youth are “so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be.” (See “‘Generation Q’ - the Quiet Americans,” New York Times, Oct. 10th, 2007)

Well, in two weeks, Mr. Friedman – and the rest of the nation – will hear what this young generation really sounds like, and it will be anything but quiet! More than 3,300 young people will explode off of their campuses and away from the internet, descending – in person and in droves – on the nation’s capitol for Power Shift 2007, the first-ever national youth summit on global warming, November 2nd-5th.

Power Shift will bring together thousands of students and youth from all 50 states to wrestle with our generation’s greatest challenge and our greatest opportunity: The climate crisis. At the conference, attendees will learn new skills, share ideas, connect with fellow activists and ultimately use their collective experience, enthusiasm and commitment to forge a powerful movement to end the climate crisis and make their innovative and inspiring new vision of a sustainable, just, and prosperous future a reality.

Continue reading ‘Generation Anything-But-Quiet: Just Wait for the Noise at Power Shift 2007!’

Note: If anyone suggested that a campaign with the words “carbon” and “consumer” would somehow benefit the climate, I would have told them maybe when pigs fly. But low and behold! New American Dream has put together yet another fabulous campaign to help people reduce their carbon-footprint. But today is the last day to make the “Junk your Junk Mail” pledge!

The Carbon Conscious Consumer, coined “C3”, is a national campaign/contest that focuses on one easy, habit-forming step people can take each month to reduce their carbon consumption. The steps are:
Continue reading ‘Junk Your Junk Mail Today!’

From Treehugger.com: Jeremy is a recent college graduate, and leading up to the Step It Up effort, Jeremy was also involved in the inception and advocacy work of the Middlebury College Sunday Night Group. He also spent a summer driving the country advocating fuel efficiency with Road to Detroit, a project of Energy Action. Now that Step It Up was such an overwhelming success, Jeremy and the rest of the crew are helping to document what happened, and are already at work on the next steps of this national movement.

TH: Did [Step it Up] work? Did you get the anticipated numbers, and what are the indications that the media, and ultimately, congress were listening?

JO: Completely, overwhelmingly, yes, it worked. We had originally hoped for something on the order of a hundred actions. Fourteen hundred pretty much blew our socks off, and it seemed to blow the socks off of everyone else as well. Local organizers worked hard pulling in their local papers, and blogs (including yours) helped us go viral with the message. We just recently received a (incomplete) compiled list of media on Step It Up events that is 322 pages long! As for Congress, over twenty members (from both the House and Senate) attended rallies, and Bill was called to testify before a House committee three days after Step It Up. The real test on the quality of Congressional ears, however, will be the strength of climate legislation – anything less than 80% by 2050 doesn’t measure up to the science, or to the call of the 1400 Step It Up rallies around the country.

Find out what is next and more of what Jeremy has to say about Step it Up here.

I just got off the streets of Boston to upload this video and my feet hurt after just 5 miles. It’s amazing that some of these folks have been marching for the past 8 days. If you’re in the Boston area you should really try to get out tomorrow for the final day, if all goes well there will be a couple hundred people in the streets of Boston. Check out the climate walk site for details.

MTV has a hot news story on the Campus Climate Challenge and the recent week of action. The clip shows great footage of the Billionaires for Coal rally to protest Merrill Lynch’s investment in a company that plans to build ELEVEN new coal power plants in my home state of Texas. The story also includes interviews with a range of young people talking about climate change and why its crucial step it up and make their voices heard.

View the clip here.

MTV is also an important partner for the Challenge with the Break the Addiction Challenge, an awesome contest in which students can win cool prizes for greening their campuses.

A brief word about me: I am new to the Its Getting Hot in Here scene, but not so new to blogging If interested, you can check out my personal blog Bloggernista. I am the new communications director for Energy Action and the Challenge and looking forward to working with all of y’all on ringing the alarm about climate change. I am a former associate field director for the Human Rights Campaign, have worked on a number of political and ballot campaigns and helped to organize a national march on Washington for LGBT equality.