Global Warming

Great new ad from Operation Free

Our national security organizations are taking climate change seriously and congress needs to do the same:

• The DOD has put climate change into their quadrennial defense review which was released this week.
• The CIA has created a center on climate change.
• The Marines are committed to reducing their carbon pollution by 30 percent by 2025
• The Navy is committed to reducing their carbon pollution by 50 percent by 2020 of homeland bases.
• The Navy is also going to sail a green battle group in 2020, using alternative fuels.
• The Navy is also testing a F18 that runs on biofuel.
• The Marines have a FOB or forward operating base training facility that is net zero.
• Many bases have implemented smart grid technology and renewable energy sources.
• The Pentagon (building) was weatherized and rehabbed to become LEED certified and their energy bill went down from 2.9 million to 2.2 million a month.

Please Retweet the video if you can:
RT @ceworks: Check out Operation Free's latest video on clean #energy and #climate change: http://bit.ly/djOmJQ #p2 #secureamerica

One of the greatest organizing projects ended at the Capitol this week with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson who spoke on the importance of a clean energy economy to protect our air and provide clean water to all communities across the country, especially for young people and future generations.

The seven day bus trip was part of the Hip Hop Caucus Clean Energy Now Tour and 30 national partnering organizations representing African American organizations and youth to bring awareness to the threat of global climate change.

The Hip Hop Caucus Clean Energy Now! Bus Tour kicked off in New Orleans and rolled through Indianapolis, Arkansas, Missouri, and Washington, DC for a variety of events including community rallies, roundtables on college campuses, tours of clean energy job sites and musical events.

Watch here the final event with tons of awesome youth standing up for our future.

HeadCount hosted a poll on health insurance last fall, asking users whether they had insurance, and if so, who provided it. Now, they are planning to launch a new poll every few weeks. Their first is "Solutions on Climate Change".

What's the best way to fight climate change?

• Strict limits and regulations
• Personal responsibility
• Taxing carbon and greenhouse gas emissions
• Climate change is a bunch of hooey!
• Other

Go vote, and afterwards, add a comment about why you voted the way you did.

HeadCount is also partnering (one of nine non-profits participating) with Reverb's new Green Music Group. HeadCount, along with various venues, labels, artists, and groups, will be working together to make the music industry greener.

Reverb, a non-profit organization involved in the industry and in climate change movements, founded the project and the launch event was held late last month. GMG is meant to be large-scale and widespread - which explains the great number of artists signed on, and their diversity. Their website lists four essential goals:

1. Creating an engaging online community of musicians, music industry leaders, and music fans all committed to addressing our greatest environmental concerns.

2. Facilitating large-scale greening of the music community through touring, venue, and label standards, resource development, green grants mentoring, and viral video and public service campaigns.

3. Providing environmental nonprofits with a megaphone for their cause, allowing them to expand their reach and support base.

4. Creating a sustainable green music guild to support and inform the efforts of the music community and position leaders in the music industry as voices for change, working to shine a light on the most pressing environmental issues of our time.

Seems like good stuff to me. Other groups, venues, artists, and labels involved include:

Warner Music Group
Brushfire Records
American Airlines Arena
Verizon Wireless Center
Comcast Center
Barenaked Ladies
Linkin Park
The Roots
Guster
and more!

GMG also has partnerships with DoSomething.org, The Sierra Club, and other groups. Overall, it looks like they've drawn in some big enough names to actually make some waves and get something done in the industry. We'll keep an eye on them to see what develops.

Another great video from orgs who are working to get young people to work on the upcoming legislation on climate change. Its part of the Sierra Club's 2Dirty4College campaign.

Consequences, the youth outreach organization fighting global warming and demanding a sensible solution to the climate crisis, has announced a special conference call next Tuesday with Sen. John Kerry.

According to their email

"Senator Kerry will engage young people across the country to talk about this historic moment in the fight for clean energy. Senator Kerry, the author of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, understands the importance of youth action on the climate issue and wants to hear from us."

The call will take place this upcoming Tuesday, October 27th at 9pm eastern. You can RSVP on their website here.

As the Senate prepares to follow the lead set by the House of Representatives and tackle global warming through a comprehensive climate change bill, a new poll shows young voters are united behind this action, no matter their party affliation.

The poll, released by the Clean Energy Works Campaign, campaign shows that 68% of those polled say "investing in renewable energy to create new jobs" should be an important priority for their Senator to address and 69% say they would be more likely to re-elect their Senator if he or she votes for the bill.

"Poll after poll shows that the American public strongly backs comprehensive clean energy legislation," said Maura Cowley, Clean Energy Works campaign youth coordinator in a press release. "This latest poll shows that America's youth—regardless of their party affiliation—stand strongly behind the president's clean energy agenda and are now looking to Congress for urgent action. It's time for the Senate to act on a clean energy and climate plan that delivers more jobs, less pollution, and greater security."

Click here to write to your senators today and encourage them to pass comprehensive climate change legislation this year!

Also, check out this new website to see just exactly what is at stake for our generation and how you can take action!

CBS's Morning Show had a piece on the youth activism around global climate change. Young people like 15-year-old Alec Loorz is taking

"his message across the country, using poles to illustrate the predicted sea level rise if nothing is done to prevent global warning."

But this generation of youth isn't new to global warming nor the activism surrounding it. The 1990's brought a nation wide effort in Canada called the Youth Alliance for the "Turnaround Decade" where young people advocated for solutions to climate change, and young people in California particularly advocated for recycling programs when environmental activists invested in a generation of young people who also convinced their parents to take action. And who can ever forget growing up with Jesse the good-hearted environmentalist on Saved by the Bell (before she became a stripper). There was even an entire episode about how "drill baby drill" on the school football field killed hundreds of the crew's beloved science pets in the school's pond.

A whole generation of youth from 35 and under grew up with saving the world from ourselves and the extenuation of "last chances" has sputtered on and on like an old diesel engine.

The fight among young people to stop global warming isn't merely a US fight, its become the common bond to unite a generation of our planet's youth. The UN's Environment Program announced Thursday it's new partnership with the Republic of Korea for increased reduction in carbon emissions.

But while UN officials met with State Leaders, 700 young people ranging from 10 to 24 attended the largest ever UN backed global youth gathering on taking action against climate change.

"They issued a declaration, entitled “Listen to Our Voices: The Future Needs Strong Vision and Leadership,” expressing their “concern and frustration that their governments are not doing enough to combat climate change,” and emphasizing that “we now need more actions and less talking.”

The week-long Tunza Children and Youth Conference on the Environment is part of the UN’s “Seal the Deal” campaign spearheaded by the Secretary-General, who has made tackling global warming one of his top priorities.

The young people’s “voices will and must be heard because they will inherit the outcomes of our actions,” Mr. Ban said."

India too has noted the importance with incorporating youth into a global climate change agenda.

"Calling for strengthening the scientific foundations of environment policies with mass participation, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Tuesday. "We must involve more stakeholders, particularly youth, to lead the movement for environmental protection."

If only we'd listened to Saved by the Bell back in 1991, we wouldn't be drilling anymore or using styrofoam containers. Instead a quiet majority works through the process to enact meaningful social change in hopes that the threats of a last chance decade can be pushed off for another ten years.

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.

Bumped. --Mike

Written by Sujatha Jahagirdar, Student PIRGs.

As the youth community begins to put together post-election plans, I thought it would be useful to send out an initial list of some of the major upcoming federal legislative opportunities that we see coming down the pike in the next few months. Young people expressed a great deal of investment in these issues during the election cycle.

Energy. President-Elect Obama is expected to make a big push for new energy investments via both an economic stimulus and stand-alone bill. This is a chance to press lawmakers to use these vehicles to set ambitious goals for renewable energy that result in 100% of America’s electricity coming from renewable sources within the next decade, while cutting oil consumption in half. This also is a chance to enact specific measures that get us towards those goals, such as pushing Detroit to reinvent itself by making the most fuel efficient cars in the world.

Healthcare. With several competing proposals already in play and more expected once President-Elect Obama is sworn in, this is our chance to press policy makers on a package of reforms that guarantee affordable health-care for both consumers and employers and ensure no one is denied coverage for pre-existing conditions. This will include measures that require greater preventative care, more purchasing pools for small businesses and consumers, and new requirements for insurers to spend at least 85% of premiums on care, not administrative costs.

Financial Security. With lots of momentum underway to fix the underlying problems in the bailout, this is a chance to ensure that taxpayer money is used to prop up assets and increase credit flow, not line the pockets of executives. This is also a chance to break the stranglehold that banks and credit card companies have on America by promoting a credit card holders’ bill of rights that bans unfair and deceptive practices that hook consumers into a downward spiral of debt.

Transportation. As part of both the economic stimulus and the stand-alone debate on the federal transportation bill expected to begin this winter, there is more political space than ever to double the public investment in public transit, and jumpstart some of the country’s most promising projects, including overhauling Amtrak into a high-speed rail system.

Voting Reform. Technology changes resulting from the passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) following the 2000 election make it possible to rethink how we run our elections and open the door to a registration system far more inclusive, efficient and accountable than our current system. We are considering a push to move to an automatic, permanent voter registration system. This could enfranchise millions more voters and reduce the litany of problems that currently plague the voter registration system.

Service. There are a number of proposals on the table to provide greater incentives – including a $4,000 tuition credit – for young people who devote a year of their lives to service. As when the original Peace Corps and Americorps programs were established, we expect this proposal to capture the imagination of millions of young people.

As we get specific legislative proposals around these issues, we'll send out updates on policy, political dynamics and key opportunities where the youth community could engage.

Over the course of the last week, I've picked through the polling results from the recent Harvard Institute of Politics Survey and the joint MTV/CBS News poll. We've talked about Obama's lead among young voters, and McCain's deficit among the same, and we've talked about how young people are engaged at a much higher level this year than in previous years. Now I want to take a look at young voter's policy concerns.

There tend to be a few bits of conventional wisdom when it comes to young voters and policy issues. The first is that the only thing young people care about is the draft, or as Ralph Nader recently (and inaccurately) stated, the only thing that will increase youth engagement is the threat of a draft. The second is that young people are consumed by humanitarian issues like the genocide in Darfur. There are grains of truth in both statements - in 2004 there was a lot of messaging done by Rock the Vote and other groups around the draft that did in fact help spur youth turnout, and young people are disproportionately active around the issue of genocide. As with most pieces of conventional wisdom, though, these do not convey the whole truth.

The results of the Harvard IOP Survey reveal that the concerns of young voters have shifted radically since the fall of 2007. Six months ago, Iraq was the #1 issue for 37% of young Americans. Today, that number has shrunk to 20%. In March 2007, the economy was the top concern of just 5% of young people. Today it ranks as the greatest concern of 30% of young voters. The war was a motivator for youth action in 2004, but in 2008, it seems that the tanking economy will drive young people to the ballot box.

The Harvard IOP Survey honed in on these concerns through its novel use of multiple criteria in ranking the importance of youth issues. The survey asked respondents what issues were most important in determining how they would cast their ballot in November and what issues were most relevant to them personally. They used answers in both categories to construct a composite score that could more accurately reflect the importance of various policy issues to young voters:

The reasons for this shift, it turns out, is that most young people feel that our current economic downtown has a greater impact on them personally than the war. Young people who are applying to college or attending school are worried about the skyrocketing costs of tuition. Many are graduating from college, on average, with $20k in debt, and they are worried about their job prospects. According to the survey, 70% of college students believe that it will be difficult to find a job upon graduation. By contrast, the war only directly affects a small portion of young people today. If you are worried about how you will pay off your student loans and make rent next month, it gets a lot harder to worry about something happening on the other side of the globe. It's probably even harder when you consider how much activism has gone to opposing the war with so few tangible results.

Looking through the chart, there are some other interesting facts to be gleaned about the activism and policy concerns of the Millennial generation. In most polls that I've seen, the environment ranks well below bread and butter issues like the economy and health care. As the graph above shows, the environment typically garners a paltry 5% or so of support from most youth. Yet the environment usually is considered one of the policy areas around which young people - particularly college students - are most active. Meanwhile, health care consistently ranks as one of the top concerns of young people, but there is almost no youth activism around universal health care. It's a strange dichotomy and I've been at a loss to explain it.

Judging by the IOP results, "Net Relevance" seems to be the key. Both issues are perceived as important ones, yet for some reason young people tend to see the environment as a policy concern that more directly affects their lives. It's an interesting finding, and may be skewed by the fact that the survey sampled 18 - 24 year olds, fully half of which are in college and are thus likely to be on their university's health care plan (or that of their parents). I wonder if the two stats might reverse (and fall more in line with conventional wisdom) if the sample was expanded to cover all 18 - 29 year olds?

What's clear is that young people are driven by a variety of concerns, but the economy trumps all. In a year of record youth turnout, candidates up and down the ballot would do well to talk about creating an economy that help the Millennial generation - also known as Generation Debt - climb out of the economic hole.