Climate Change

From the Houston Airport, here is some Sunday reading for you...

• Some churches are trying to make inroads with the Millennial Generation, though they recognize they're falling short in many areas.
• Where W focused on K-12 education, President Obama has shifted the focus to higher ed. USA Today has the story.
• Forward Montana is making sure youth have a voice in the healthcare reform discussion with Generation H.
• It's Getting Hot in Here recaps Powershift '09.
• More Powershift wrap-up -- Democracy Now interviews attendees.

Lots of stuff today hitting on the relationship between technology and democracy. Enjoy!

• Sam Stein details the rise of thirteen year old Jonathan Krohn, the latest excuse for the GOP to not have to do anything to court the youth vote. Check him out here.
• Micah Sifry's post on the complexity of user rights on Facebook.
• At tech President, Nancy Scola examines the governing tension inherent in Facebook's relationship with its users and vice versa.
• Adam Green argues that Facebook, in order to become the ultimate organizing tool, needs to eliminate a few self-imposed barriers first. One of those involves the group mass-email policy.
• More Micah: Sifry examines the larger, philosophical questions regarding the 'net's impact on democracy.
• "Youthanized" is a documentary short from Project Youthanize that examines something which we discuss on this blog quite frequently -- the transition from youth-led, street protest-based activism in the 1960s to youth-led, digitally-inspired activism today.
• Glenn Hurowitz's discussion of the Powershift Conference, focusing on one member of a group of young climate activists that Glenn Beck describes as "Hitler youth," Meg Imholt.
• Rock the Vote announces the premiere of Rock the Vote Radio -- a weekly 30 minute, roundtable discussion centered on politics and current affairs, with a rotating panel of young adults. Check it out!
• More testimony to the "parasitic nature" of student loans.
• Rev. Lennox Yearwood sounds a call for action among America's youth, given the increased importance in governance over elections. I wish Tom Friedman sounded more like this.
• Where is Obama's CTO? A Politico article asks the question and searches for the answer.
• Mayor Daley of Chicago has a YouTube channel.

From the absurdity files, Glen Beck (I know right?), has decided that Al Gore's attempts to reach out to young people in efforts to fight the climate crisis qualifies him for the label of the mass murdering herr wolf Adolf Hitler.

Seems the admirable former Vice President was at a youth conference (though I can't figure out which one) where he praised the teens and pre-teens in the audience for their understanding of the climate crisis. Gore acknowledged that there are some things that young people know that older people don't ... though it wasn't clear from the Glen Beck clip whether Gore was talking about Facebook or the impending problems we face because of our royal screw-up with global warming.

Beck apparently believes that Gore is building a purist race of greeniacs to fight the front lines of the climate crisis armed to the max with reusable grocery sacks, recycling containers, and and LED lighting. My god... can you imagine the tragedy if these people were allowed to organize. The effects would be ... go green or To the Camps!

Imagine what Beck would say if he heard audio of some of the conferences where we talk about things like health care or fully funding education.

Politico is reporting that Rep. Waxman is "looking to youth" to help him in his fight against Rep. Dingell (Congressman, General Motors) for control of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The results of this fight will likely dictate just how progressive energy legislation coming out of the House will be in the next session.

I wish I could say that Waxman is looking for help from young voters and youth climate groups, but that's not what Politico is talking about. No, this is shaping up as a fight with moderates and the old guard who have been in congress for quite some time on one side, and more progressive legislators on the other. To increase his support, Waxman is wooing new legislators recently elected to congress to join his coalition:

This week’s showdown between Reps. John Dingell and Henry A. Waxman could come down to the votes of members too young to remember Dingell’s glory days — votes Waxman has been courting with a series of well-timed campaign contributions.

Dingell outraised Waxman by a sizable margin over the past two years, and he’s been more generous with his money, giving nearly five times what Waxman gave to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dingell has also given substantially more than Waxman to the Frontline program for Democrats in the most competitive districts.

But Waxman, whose district includes Beverly Hills and other wealthy Los Angeles suburbs, has been extraordinarily deliberate in his campaign giving, spending liberally on the party’s best pickup possibilities just before Election Day — and hence, just before the time when members will vote on whether Waxman replaces Dingell as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

In October alone, Waxman cut $2,000 checks to 19 Democratic candidates. Some fell short. Most won. Among the winners: Kathy Dahlkemper in Pennsylvania, Steve Driehaus in Ohio and Larry Kissell in North Carolina, each of whom knocked off an incumbent Republican to add a seat to the Democratic Caucus, and Gerry Connolly, who won the seat Rep. Tom Davis is vacating in Virginia.

Waxman has done this before and could win, but I'm sure he needs all the help he can get. Credo Action is running a petition in support of Waxman, and I can't help but think that a quiet effort on the part of youth climate groups would be beneficial as well.

I say quiet because no one wants to destroy their political capital before the new administration has even started, and I'm sure that many student/youth green groups are worried about coming down on the wrong side of this fight and getting locked out of any access to the legislative process next year.

Yet at the same time, we shouldn't be too afraid to fight for what we want. Young people voted in record numbers this year or Democrats, creating a mandate for real progressive change. High on that agenda was smart energy legislation to prevent climate change, and the creation of a green jobs economy. I'm no expert on how things work on the Hill, but everything I'm reading suggests that the outcome of this fight could radically affect the quality of legislation coming out of the house on this issue in the coming congressional session.

That seems like a big enough deal for youth climate leaders to - if not launch a full-blown campaign - at least be making phone calls to new legislators and use their new power at the ballot box to exert some under-the-radar pressure on behalf of Waxman.

I'm leaving to catch a train down to DC in about an hour. I'm going to try to do some number crunching on the train. If that works out, I might have something interesting to report Thursday morning. Otherwise, I've got meetings tonight and all day tomorrow, so posting may be light depending on how much down-time I get.

• Nate Silver has some excellent data on how young voters - of all races - drove the opposition to Prop 8 in California. While we are all disappointed at the moment, that bodes well for the future. (h/t Jesse Singal)
• The University of Michigan College Democrats didn't like my post about the Dingell/Waxman fight, however their opposition seems based more on blind loyalty to Dingell than on the merits of my argument.
• In the NY Daily News, Gen-We authors Eric Greenberg and Karl Weber talk about what young voters will expect from an Obama administration.
• This is a little old and I can't believe I missed it. Columnist E.J. Dionne swipes our brand and writes a column about Obama and the Future Majority:
  

  Since the Nixon era, conservatives have claimed to speak for the "silent majority." Obama represents the future majority. It is the majority of a dynamic country increasingly at ease with its diversity. It reflects the forward-looking optimism of the young. It draws in new suburban and exurban voters whose priorities are resolutely practical -- jobs, schools and transportation -- and who dislike angry quarrels about gay marriage, abortion and religious orthodoxy.

• NPR's Farai Chideya says America's youth vote grows up, wields power.
• Slate has a great article about the potential and pitfalls of transitioning Obama's participatory, tech-driven campaign into a new era of participatory governance.
• King Politics provides us with a more nuanced view of the 2008 "youth only" electoral map:

Will the youth turnout?

• The Wall Street Journal, which has run a mixed bag of good and bad youth vote stories this year, follows up with a piece describing the two campaigns youth strategy for the final days. Read this for nothing else if not the hilarious attempts by the McCain campaign to explain anemic youth outreach as an important strategic move.
• The AP thinks that this year youth could actually "rock the vote," though they are bizarrely touting a poll that has an astounding margin of error of 9%.
• Fox News says much the same thing in a piece that seems to be written culled from the same wire copy.

Voting Rights

• The Twitter Vote Reporting Project is gaining steam. Tech President has the latest on their efforts. Or visit the Voter Suppression Wiki to follow along and contribute to their efforts.
• The College Democrats have their own election protection program up and running - Respect the Youth Vote.

Miscellaneous

• Campus Vote lists 37 things you can do between now and election day to engage students.
• It's Getting Hot in Here reports that 90% of young people around the world want action on climate change. That's a global consensus.
• Walden University held an "online debate" between the candidates in which all the questions were written by young people, and both McCain and Obama responded by creating videos. You can view their answers here.

It's Getting Hot in Here is live blogging from the Clinton Global Initiative conference, and they note that Al Gore is calling on young people to practice civil disobedience to stop climate change. Now, I don't know exactly what he said because I'm getting this second-hand, but Al Gore has made these claims before and they kind of piss me off.

For one, last time he made such comments he implied that young people weren't doing such things, which is patently false. If you read It's Getting Hot in Here at all, you've certainly encountered stories of young people doing exactly that.

Second, it's not at all clear to me what that would accomplish. Protest requires a novelty and element of surprise, as well as the complicity of the media, in order to be effective. The reason anti-war protests were ineffective in preventing the invasion of Iraq is that they were totally unsurprising, and the media didn't care one bit about them. Contrast that to the student immigration marches - they caught the media completely off guard and were thus "a real story." That meant good coverage and a higher level of efficacy.

It's not at all clear to me that kids blocking bulldozers or protesting a power plant meets the threshold required for successful action via the protest model. Gore's comments are somewhat insulting to me as part of a generation doing quite a bit to raise awareness, alter our lifestyles, and prevent climate change. They also strike me as terrible strategy advice.

In case you missed it . . .

• A loophole in Ohio voting law that will allow for one-stop registration and voting this fall could be a huge boon to Obama (and young voters) in the state.
• Yesterday activists launched a campaign on Facebook against Evan Bayh as the potential VP pick called 100,000 Strong Against Evan Bayh. You would already know this if you were friends with Future Majority on Facebook.
• Huckabee youth group "Huck's Army" is now recruiting for McCain.
• Future Majority friend, activist, and videographer "noneck" Noel Hidalgo was deported from China this week for filming protests in Tiananmen Square. Noel and his crew might be following me around during the DNC convention producing video for FM. Let's hope it doesn't get quite so dicey in Denver.
• Jared Polis won his primary in Colorado and will go on to become the next Democratic congressman in his district. Not only that, he is the first openly gay candidate elected to congress and he may well be one of - if not the - youngest congressman in the country. I'm proud to have had Jared as a guest in our live blog series. Congrats to him and everyone who worked on the campaign.
• I'm sure I don't need to tell you this, but in the next few days, Barack Obama will announce his VP nominee via text message. This was a great idea on their part. They probably received thousands of cell phone numbers that can now be used to get out the vote in November via text.
• The New York Times has more on that in Garret Graff's op-ed about text messaging in the Presidential campaign.
• Blender asked the candidates about their favorite songs. John McCain - what happened to Usher? I thought he was your favorite artist?
• The Washington Post has the skinny on the hottest parties at the DNC.
• In Nevada, a 22 year old is running against an incumbent state Senator who has held office since 14 years before his challenger was born.
• The Wall Street Journal finally picked up on James Fowler's study of the Colbert Bump.
• Generation Vote has a put together a Youth policy platform.
• The Post Chronicle has some thoughts about what Obama's youth supporters need to do post-election day.
• Tom Friedman actually wrote a decent piece about McCain's energy policy.
• It's Getting Hot in Here explains the whole "Gang of 10" energy compromise and why it's a win for Obama.
• David Burstein of 18 in '08 explains the significance of just one vote.
• Medill reports that this may be the geekiest of all conventions.
• Wow:

George Bush must have really loved the cult classic Total Recall. I mean how else can you explain his persistent unwillingness to make responsible decisions when it comes to the environment. He must really get turned on by watching his home boy Arnie (say it again....C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A) run around Mars with half-alien/half-mutant revolutionaries. I mean forget the environment...we all can live in caves!!! SHEEZ!

That's the only way can I can explain his latest move to lift the moratorium on drilling in Alaska. Well other than the fact that his people in the oil industry are gonna get a whole lot of guap (translation for non hip-hop speakers: MONEY) if we ever start digging through the not so frozen tundra again.
click here for the link to the nytimes that was posted at DailyKos today.

But you can't really place all the blame for this backward (hmm...more like insane) move on Bush. There are still millions of Americans who forget that they can park their SUV and walk four blocks to get their hot lattes.

And I am not trying to make fun of latte drinkers who don't like to walk, cause I haven't completely broken my driving addiction yet. But at some point us consumers are going to have to be intentional about bringing the demand side of the oil *uckery down to a reasonable level. Otherwise greedy politicians like Bush will continue to have a justification to drill for oil in places like Alaska.

Bumped. Great story about how college students created effective, on the ground change on their campus without protesting and by using the internet and available levers of power. --Mike

Crossposted at Politics of the Common Good.

Many blogs focusing on politics and the Millennial Generation have written about comments made by former public officials, New York Times columnists, and others that criticized Millennials for their lack of activism (equating activism with the 1960s-style protests) and that encouraged them to get offline and start demanding change.

Al Gore's comments about the Millennials:

"I can’t understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers," Mr. Gore said, "and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants."

New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman's comments:

I just spent the past week visiting several colleges — Auburn, the University of Mississippi, Lake Forest and Williams — and I can report that the more I am around this generation of college students, the more I am both baffled and impressed.

I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be.

...

The Iraq war may be a mess, but I noticed at Auburn and Ole Miss more than a few young men and women proudly wearing their R.O.T.C. uniforms. Many of those not going abroad have channeled their national service impulses into increasingly popular programs at home like “Teach for America,” which has become to this generation what the Peace Corps was to mine.

It’s for all these reasons that I’ve been calling them “Generation Q” — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad.

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good. When I think of the huge budget deficit, Social Security deficit and ecological deficit that our generation is leaving this generation, if they are not spitting mad, well, then they’re just not paying attention. And we’ll just keep piling it on them.

...

America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.

Sally Kohn (Director of the Movement Vision Lab at the Center for Community Change) had something to say as well, in an essay published in the Christian Science Monitor:

Today's American young people feel a deep connection to people in Tibet and Darfur, want to hold corporations accountable to environmental standards and worker justice, and value the role of government in meeting our shared needs. Yet the Internet tools that help Millennials appreciate our interconnectedness may actually erode the community values they seek.

...

Internet activism is individualistic. It's great for a sense of interconnectedness, but the Internet does not bind individuals in shared struggle the same as the face-to-face activism of the 1960s and '70s did. It allows us to channel our individual power for good, but it stops there.

This is great for signing a petition to Congress or donating to a cause. But the real challenges in our society – the growing gap between rich and poor, the intransigence of racism and discrimination, the abuses from Iraq to Burma (Myanmar) – won't politely go away with a few clicks of a mouse. Or even a million.

...

To avoid eroding the values Millennials so appreciate, and to truly influence the world around them, they must transform their online activism into off-line communities and build an effective movement for change. From church basements to campus meetings to voters' doors, Millennials need to add face-to-face action to their innate sense of community.

All of these comments are ignorant and miss many things.

Georgia10, from DailyKos, wrote a fantastic rebuttal to Kohn's essay this past Sunday, pointing out many of the mistakes Kohn makes in coming to her conclusions. Mike, here at Future Majority, has taken down these intellectually lazy comments many a time.

But in this post, I wanted to show an example, a case study, of student-created positive change that happened on a college campus without the kind of demonstrations Thomas Friedman and Al Gore seem to advocate.

Harvard University's president, Drew G. Faust, has just announced a commitment to reduce Harvard's greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by the year 2036. From the Crimson:

Faust announced the formation of a student and faculty task force in February to study cuts in Harvard's greenhouse gas emissions, giving the committee until the end of the academic year to outline a set of recommendations.

In a statement today, Faust praised the group's recommendation for a 30 percent cut as "ambitious and far-reaching" and "reflecting both the urgency of the climate problem and Harvard's opportunity to show leadership in addressing the issue." The sizable reduction target and the very aggressive timetable make the goal among the most ambitious that any university has committed itself to.

...

Student organizing efforts in recent months have focused on pressuring Faust to sign a pledge committing Harvard to "climate neutrality."

While Hunter said that student activists "still would have preferred" such a pledge, they were pleased with the outcome because the task force's recommendations will put Harvard "on track to achieve climate neutrality even before the 2036 timeline that the EAC originally advocated."

While reading about this effort, I decided to dig a little deeper. I e-mailed the Crimson editor-in-chief Paras Bhayani (a contributor to the story) to ask whether or not the student organizing efforts had started as a result of Faust's pledge or whether they had led to it. Paras noted that Faust's task force (which included four students) was a result of the student organizing:

The organizing efforts have been going on for years so they predated Faust's task force by some time (indeed, they actually predate her presidency!).

For example, the initiative that got the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (the central part of the university) to commit to an 11 percent reduction below 1990 levels was a student enviro-sponsored referendum that ran as a ballot initiative during the student government elections. There was also a student push to get Faust to sign the university presidents' commitment to climate neutrality. As a result, the task force included four students.

Not only were the students engaged; they used technology to do it! A Facebook group called "The Harvard Climate Change Colloquium" had 161 members as of today's post. The Harvard Environmental Action Committee, which appears to be the primary climate change organization on campus, has a very nice and organized website with a lot of information for students, faculty, staff, and anyone else that might be interested, from events and resources to contact information.

Here is an effort in which Millennials identified something they wanted to be changed, they worked within the system, were patient, compromised a bit, and came out with a pretty good commitment. Technology was used to organize this effort. This wasn't a Facebook group or a website merely dedicated to hosting diatribes about Harvard's use of greenhouse gases. The technology was a vehicle for an organized, interpersonal effort offline that was successful.

I understand that some Boomers have the natural instinct to march in streets, demanding change. After reading Nixonland, I can understand why they had to do that. The society and establishment was not responding to any petitions for change. Working within the system was not an option for them because, to them, there was no system.

But we do have a system. Even if John Mayer laments the system's molasses-like qualities, we do have a system with which we can work. Harvard has proved this.

The other thing we can take from this is that Internet activism is not limited to the web. As the National Conference on Citizenship report notes, internet use is a signal of engagement among young people.

Contrary to predictions that the Internet might replace face-to-face participation, the survey finds no trade off. In fact, the netizens are much more likely than other people to attend public meetings in which there was discussion of community affairs (38 percent versus 23 percent), attend a club meeting (72 percent versus 47 percent) or take part in a protest or demonstration (31 percent versus 15 percent).

Student organizers used the tools they needed in order to better organize their offline efforts. The real change ended up taking place face to face in some meeting room on Harvard's campus. As Paras pointed out, because of the students' efforts that predated Faust's presidency, they were given four seats at the table at those task force meetings. Students showed that they were more civically engaged than merely clicking a mouse or typing on a keyboard.