Virginia Power Shift

The youth of Virginia are ready to turn up. They are ready to bring it squarely to the jaw of the fossil fuel polluters. I know this because 350 students showed up in Fredericksburg, Virginia in February for Virginia Power Shift 2015. They chose to spend their Valentine’s Day weekend rallying for Global Divestment Day & building a loving movement, and that is why I know we will win.

Virginia Power Shift Keynote by Reverend Lennox Yearwood
Virginia Power Shift Keynote by Reverend Lennox Yearwood

Looking back just 10 short months ago, when Virginia Power Shift 2014 drew in about 150 attendees. Or a little farther back to Virginia Power Shift 2011, which played host to fairly similar numbers as 2014. While correlation may not be causation, I’m going to declare that the Virginia youth climate movement is growing. It is growing fast. And if I made my money by intentionally dumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, I would be shifting uncomfortably in my seat right now.
Virginia Power Shift was kicked off by an action in tune with Global Divestment Day meant to elevate the noise of the Divest UMW’s (University of Mary Washington) divestment campaign one week before they met with their Board of Visitors. Over 200 students marched across the campus cheering “Hey BOV, Listen to me, We want to be – fossil free!” and “Show me what democracy looks like,” before lining up to take a few aerial shots.
Later that evening, students were invited to participate in an open mic event facilitated by Good Clear Sound, an award winning slam poetry group from Virginia Commonwealth University. I never knew it was possible to feel that intimately connected with a room full of hundreds of strangers. Originally slated to end at 10 pm, the event ran until 11 pm as the flood of students eager to share their stories never relented to dry up. They shared really personal and inspired stories touching on issues such as gender identity, racial discrimination, sexual orientation and how their lives have been shaped. Music was performed, poetry was read, and laughs were had. It undeniably helped shape the weekend from a convergence into a genuinely inclusive community.
Saturday kicked off with a convergence wide training on systems of power and anti-oppression. No small task when you’ve got a room filled with more than 300 students!
Virginia Power Shift Anti-Oppression Training led by Maryland Campaign Coordinator Shilpa Joshi
Virginia Power Shift Anti-Oppression Training led by Maryland Campaign Coordinator Shilpa Joshi

(Thanks to our awesome facilitators who willingly chose to develop and facilitate an anti-oppression training for 300 people!)
The rest of the day was a blur of workshops, trainings, and panels on topics from fighting fracking to Black Lives Matter organizing, from food justice to direct action training to queer organizing in the south. The halls were buzzing with new ideas, friendships, and energy.
Saturday evening capped off with two standing-ovation drawing keynotes from Elise Keaton and Reverend Lennox Yearwood. Elise Keaton lives in West Virginia and has spent her life fighting mountain top removal mining and new fracked gas pipeline expansions. Reverend Yearwood is the founder of the Hip Hop Caucus to engage hip hop’s political and social voice. I won’t capture a fraction of their eloquence, and I don’t intend to not do justice to their words by trying to reiterate their keynote addresses. I can tell you both of them left the crowd on their feet screaming for more. At the end of their talks students were hugging, jumping, and cheering. The room was electric, the energy was tangible, and the students were ready to forge the future right then and there.
Sunday, we dug in. We took the energy and the knowledge gained over the weekend and funneled it into a strategic plan for the year. The Virginia Student Environmental Coalition is ready to jump into the next level of its organizing capacity, and after what happened in Fredericksburg I don’t think anyone would doubt the likelihood of that happening. Dominion, we’re coming for you.

Maryland Students Celebrate Going Green

This blog post was written by Emily Saari, a Maryland Intern in the Takoma Park office this summer!

Last Friday, thousands of K-12 students, teachers, parents, and administrators got together on a gorgeous, breezy day for the 2011 Maryland Green Schools Youth Summit at Sandy Point State Park. This annual event of the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education commemorates the achievements of the schools that are meeting MAEOE standards for incorporating environmental issues into their curriculums, partnering with green community organizations on local initiatives, and implementing policies to reduce their building’s environmental impact. Mike Tidwell gave the keynote address at the conclusion of the Summit.

Two student volunteers and I represented CCAN at one of the many booths at the Summit working to increase students’ environmental awareness across the broad spectrum of issues. We talked to kids and their mentors about supporting our campaign for offshore wind in the next year. It was fantastic to see such enthusiasm for clean energy initiatives, and I was so impressed with amount of support we got over the course of the afternoon. When speaking about the installation of offshore wind turbines, I heard teachers and parents say to me again and again, “I don’t know why we haven’t done this yet!” Even the elementary school kids were brimming with knowledge about fossil fuels, renewable energy, and restoration of damaged ecological systems like riparian buffers! It’s amazing how easily young kids can grasp this critical information, especially when the facts can be distilled down and taught to them without the complications and blurriness of politics. To them, it just makes sense. We should all take a cue from these inspired green students and remember that at the end of the day, clean energy just makes sense.

Step right up to the CarnivOIL!

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Yesterday I joined with friends from Environment Virginia at Monroe Park next to Virginia Commonwealth University to celebrate CarnivOIL, a traveling carnival for the oil industry where everything’s free (because the oil industry never has to pay!) The tongue-in-cheek event highlights the cozy relationship between the oil industry and Congress- particularly the Senate that has failed to act on climate change. The lively event attracted many VCU students who stopped to play games like “Tar the Goldfish” where you tossed tar balls into fish habitats and the “Spill-O-Rama” which measured how strong you are by how much oil you can get away with spilling. In the boxing ring, a crab battled an oil executive. A fair fight, until the referee made the crab remove his gloves so the oil exec could clobber him. A great, fun event but it highlights a sad reality. Luckily, CarnivOIL-goers know it’s time to put a stop to the fun and games and get serious. At CarnivOIL, they signed a petition calling on Senator Warner to take action and pledge to take action themselves by signing the Power Vote pledge.

More pictures after the jump. Continue reading

EPA Holds First Public Hearing on Coal Ash Proposal

This is a guest post by Jason Von-Kundra, a student at George Mason University. It is crossposted from the Mason Goes Green blog.

On Monday, August 30th, the Environmental Protection Agency held its first public hearing on a proposal to address risks of unsafe coal ash disposal. The EPA is proposing an unprecedented national rule to ensure the safe disposal and management of coal ash from coal-fired power plants. Students from George Mason, Virginia Tech, and University of Maryland joined hundreds of other citizens at the hearing in Arlington, VA to deliver statements in support of strict regulation of this hazardous waste.

Coal is dirty from mining to burning. Coal ash, a byproduct of the combustion of coal at power plants contains contaminants such as mercury, cadmium and arsenic, which are associated with cancer and various other serious health effects. Coal ash is disposed of in liquid form at large surface impoundments and in solid form at landfills. The dangers associated with structurally unsafe coal ash impoundments came to national attention in 2008 when an impoundment holding disposed waste ash broke open, creating a massive spill in Kingston that covered millions of cubic yards of land and river. The spill displaced residents, required hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup costs and caused widespread environmental damage.

In testimony at the hearing, GMU student Emily Miles criticized the coal industry for “continually putting profits over people”. She urged the EPA to regulate the coal industry to limit their destruction. “As a concerned citizen, I am here today to tell the EPA to do its job and protect people and the environment.” Kara Dodson, a student at Virginia Tech working on their Beyond Coal Campaign, described the negative health effects that coal ash from her campus’ coal-fired power plant has on students. Jason Von Kundra, an earth science major at Mason, delivered a statement urging the EPA to put stricter regulation on the coal industry to embrace the “clean energy economy that our country and our president are calling for”.

Six more hearing on the proposed rule to address coal ash are scheduled for September. Public comments may also be submitted by email to rcra-docket@epa.gov and should be identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-RCRA-2009-0640. Continue reading

Youth question Governor McDonnell's offshore views

Last night Governor McDonnell addressed a crowd of almost-entirely-not college students at the University of Mary Washington. It wasn’t the students fault for not being there- it was only their second day on campus, so the Governor’s town hall was under the radar. Despite that, there was a group from the Mary Washington environmental club that was excited to ask the Governor about his stance on offshore drilling and wind development.

Power Vote Team at McDonnell's Town Hall

Here is Abbie Rogers, a Winchester native and sophomore in anthropology and environmental studies, asking Governor McDonnell why he continues to support offshore drilling.

Governor McDonnell spoke at length about his support for offshore drilling- and for offshore wind- but failed to answer Abbie’s concerns. While the Governor is correct that currently Virginia and the US depend on oil and other fossil fuels for our energy use, he did not address Abbie’s questions about why he continues to support offshore drilling. He claims we need domestic offshore oil to avoid relying on ‘unfriendly’ foreign nations, but the Navy and NASA have voiced concerns about drilling off Virginia’s coasts. Beyond that, solving the foreign oil problem with a domestic oil problem is only shifting the problem, not providing a solution. In a followup question to Abbie’s, the Governor was asked about his plan to keep Virginia competitive in offshore wind development. He again spoke favorably about wind, but focused more on his concerns about regulatory burdens, such as permitting timelines, than his plans to bring wind development to Virginia’s coasts. Offshore wind is part of a true solution, one that may time to implement but that other countries- and states- have started and Virginia is being left behind.

Below the jump, the transcript of Abbie and Governor McDonnell, since the video quality was poor.
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CCAN Youth and Power Vote Stand with Little Village

Last night I arrived home from an action-packed training for Power Vote 2010. Over 100 students and young people joined with the coalition and partner staff of the Energy Action Coalition and our trainers from Wellstone Action.

On Thursday we joined the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization in their protest of the Crawfod Coal Plant. The Crawford plant is one of the oldest and dirtiest in operation,
causing 41 premature deaths per year. At the rally, speakers spoke against the dangers their community faces daily- several nearby coal plants, other manufacturing centers- as they lit candles in remembrance of those whose lives are cut short by pollution. They also connected the devastation in their neighborhood back to recent mine collapse in West Virginia, to communities threatened by mountaintop removal, and to the entire dirty death-cycle of coal. It was a powerful moment that connected each of us there, young people from across the country with the residents of Little Village. In closing, we were reminded that an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere. And right now there are far too many coal plants and mines in our backyards.

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If Only this was an April Fools Joke

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.

As Morgan Goodwin wrote:

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.

Student Response to the State of the Union

This blog was written by Caroline Selle, a student at St Mary’s College of Maryland

I just read the transcript of the State of the Union Address and don’t really know what to say. So here goes.

I’m running on empty. I’m exhausted. School plus my job plus the all of the environmental organizations I’m involved with equals something that’s probably not sustainable. But I’m going to keep working. Along with all of the rest of you amazing people, I’m going to keep making sure that my voice is heard.

Some (okay, many) of the things in the President’s address were disappointing. Coal and nuclear will never be clean sources of energy. But the fact that the President spoke about clean energy at all gives me hope. In his own words, he called for, “a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.”

I’m going to go ahead and call that one a success.

The White House is listening. We knew that before this speech, when they set up a meeting with youth environmentalists, three Cabinet secretaries and the head of the EPA. We knew that when Obama finally decided to go to Copenhagen. And know we now because the President addressed the nation on the issue of climate change.

The President is listening, so let’s keep getting louder. Let’s call for a clean energy revolution. Let’s build coalitions within our communities. Let’s work from the ground up to “Define Our Decade” and each ask our leaders to “Show Me Democracy.” Let’s reach out to each other. Let’s be an all inclusive movement, because the issues we’re facing don’t discriminate. Our President responded to our asks, so let’s keep asking.

I was exhausted before; I’m energized now. And I know that I’m going to keep working. I’m going to keep protesting and calling and petitioning and organizing and inviting and recruiting. Because now I am certain that my voice is being heard.

Who’s with me? Let’s start a non-violent, all inclusive clean energy revolution. We know we have power. The last election had the largest youth voter turnout, ever. (And ever is a pretty long time). Our government is listening, and we need to tell them what we want.

Let’s call for clean energy. Now.

MD Students…at the White House!

This post was written by Caroline Selle, a student at St Mary’s College of Maryland and an active member of the Maryland Student Climate Coalition.

Hey everyone! I was lucky enough yesterday to be one of the youth invited to the White House for the Clean Energy Economy Forum. It was a great opportunity for those of us involved in the environmental movement to hear from the Obama administration and also to make ourselves heard. The 100 plus members of the audience included youth from all over the country, representing small and large environmental organizations and non-profits. We came from a variety of backgrounds, but we were all together to ask Obama and his administration to take charge on environmental issues.

The forum was broken up into two parts. First, a panel made up of three Cabinet members (Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu) and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson answered questions from the audience. There were some great, encouraging answers from the panel and some very political ones, but overall we ended with a lot of clear answers on a wide range of issues. Topics ranged from mountaintop removal (the EPA is looking at Clean Water Act violations, a good sign) to creating green jobs that won’t just provide a temporary salary but a true career path so that a stable clean, green economy will eventually be created.
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