The tweet making its way around the youth climate movement: “wishing Obama’s #drilling plan was a Fossil Fool’s Day joke- not funny, nor worth the costs.”
That’s what youth across America feel after President Obama’s announcement yesterday.
Is this a joke? We voted in record numbers, knocked on doors, made phone calls, and dragged our friends to the polls with the hope that we were voting for clean energy and climate change solutions. Instead our leaders didn’t lead in Copenhagen, we still don’t have a climate bill, and now President Obama wants to open up half of the east coast to offshore drilling. 
I wish this was a joke. It’s not a funny one. This is our future. Our jobs. Our economy at stake.
The last few weeks youth across the country voted to Define Our Decade to show what we wanted as a generation. Overwhelmingly youth voted to use 100% clean energy in the next decade. We didn’t vote for more of the same, or selling out to industry. And it isn’t what will motivate us to turn out to the polls in 2010 either.
Youth, the millennial generation so inspired by Obama to vote in record numbers, have the most to lose from the expansion of drilling. Even some coastal governors and senators will be angry about the announcement because of the small amount of oil and huge environmental risks. If white-haired governors and senators are worried, what about young people who are thinking about protecting this coastline for us and our children, long after the tiny amounts of energy have been extracted?
Obama inspired our generation to turn out to the polls, and he can do it again if he moves to actually inspire us. But youth across the country have longer memories than this short-sighted political thinking. Under this proposal the first lease sales for drilling would be held in 2012, a year that Obama will be hoping to connect with us and convince us he stands for our interests. That’s not change we can believe in. If young people don’t believe him, they aren’t going to be inspired to vote.
No joke.
