Jessy Tolkan rallies the crowd on Capitol Hill as the House votes on ACES inside

As a young person, you care about global warming. You know that a clean energy economy will create millions of jobs and pathways out of poverty, reduce pollution, and save the planet. And you are willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. Right?

Well, Thomas L. Friedman, the popular New York Times columnist, isn’t convinced. In fact, Friedman concludes his latest column* by calling us out! He writes:

“Attention all young Americans: your climate future is being decided right now in the cloakrooms of the Capitol, where the coal lobby holds huge sway…. Play hardball or don’t play at all.”

Does Friedman have a point? Do we need to be bigger and louder?

I think the answer is yes.

We know that thousands of young people across this country are working tirelessly to usher in a clean and just energy future for us all. But if we want to truly achieve our goals, we need our elected officials to know that we are watching closely as they debate the climate policy that will shape the rest of our lives.

Take the first step. Let President Obama and your Senators know that you demand bold, just, and science-based climate solutions, and ask your friends and family to do the same.

Let’s send a strong message to our President and Senators that we are here, we’re watching, and we are ready for action. And let’s ask our friends and families to do the same. It’s going to take big numbers to fight back against the thousands of letters and calls generated by the dirty energy industry (not to mention their well-paid lobbyists).

Send a message to the President and your Senators, and forward this email to everyone you know.

But we know that sending email isn’t enough. In order to drown out the voice of the dirty energy industry, we’re going to need to mobilize in unprecedented numbers. Tom Friedman isn’t kidding when he suggests we should have a million people marching in the streets.

Ready to take a bigger step? Sign up to be a leader in your community, and to help get millions of feet in the streets for climate solutions.

We’ve gone big before, but now we need to go bigger. And the only way we will get there is if people like you do more. Ready to take a bigger step? Sign up today to get active in your community, to get in the faces of our elected officials, and to recruit the huge movement it will take to win.

In it to win it,

The Energy Action Team

* -Read Thomas L. Friedman’s Op-Ed

Join ACE this July 4 as we break up with oil! Declare your Independence from Fossil Fuels and Sign the Declaration:

www.climateeducation.org/petition

The below article is an attempt to use a satirical historical comparison to demonstrate how we have drifted away from moral messages that convey our values and the seriousness of the situation in favor of treating a societal evil (emitting greenhouse gases) as a trade-able commodity that has a rightful place in our society.

“Cap and Trade Bill Passes House, Democrats Attack as Assault on Economy”

June 26th, 1859

The United States House of Representatives, in a victory for the nascent Republican Party, narrowly voted to substantially reduce the amount of slaves in the United States by the turn of the century.

“This is a great victory for freedom and equality” said Rep. Daniel Webster, Chairman of the Committee on Commerce of the House and lead author of the bill.  ”By the end of the century, about 80% of the slaves alive right now will be free.”  Webster worked closely with long-term ally Henry Clay to draft the legislation.

The two worked hard to negotiate in advance with representatives from slave states, crafting a compromise that would muster enough votes to pass, but still reduce the number of slaves in America.

Anti-slavery groups hailed Webster & Clay for their courageous vision: “Daniel Webster & Henry Clay took a bold and unequivocal stance that our current levels of slavery are unsustainable, and that we should gradually decrease the amount of slaves over the next fifty years,” said Andrew Smith, head of the Abolition Advocacy Program of the anti-slavery Former Slaves for Freedom (FSF).

The bill puts a “cap” on the total amount of slaves permitted in the United States, and gives each slave-owner a “credit” for each of the slaves they now own, with a few industries exempted.  As the years go on, there will be a gradually diminishing supply of “credits” for slaves, until the turn of the century, where permits will exist for only 17% of the current number of slaves.

Slave Tax?

Democrats voted almost universally against the bill, saying it was equal to a ’slave tax’ that would cost hard-working Americans their jobs.  “Our economy is dependent on slaves, plain and simple.  How many small farms will go bankrupt because of Lincoln’s Slave Tax?” asked Rep. Joe Barbarion (D-TX), the ranking Democrat on the Committee of Commerce.  “When we regain power, we will repeal this assault on American jobs.”

Most economists agree that a tax on slaves would be a more efficient way to reduce the number of slaves, but the ruling Republican Party did not want to be seen raising taxes with mid-term elections only a year away.

Freedom-Industry Jobs

Instead of losing jobs as Democrats claim, Republicans argued that the cap and trade slavery program would actually create new  “freedom-industry” jobs.  “Think about it,” said Rep. John Smith (R-MD), “every slave that’s freed is a slave who is going to need someone to teach them everything from grammar to farming.  An entire new industry dedicated to the service of newly freed slaves will create far more jobs than will be lost.”

Yet this argument did not win over many recalcitrant swing-district Republicans, most of whom have substantial plantations in their districts.  “Now look, as a privileged white male in congress, I care as much about equality as the next guy,” said Rep. James Bartholomei (R-VA), “but you can’t expect me to vote my district and this great nation into bankruptcy.  We need slaves to power our economy.  And if we start freeing them, even gradually, then other countries that still have slaves will undercut our cotton prices, and our nation’s economy will crumble.  I just can’t vote for that.”

On to the Senate

The bill now waits an uncertain future in the Senate.  Senate leaders indicate that they want to try to pass the bill this summer, but the Republicans have a smaller lead in the upper house of congress.  While anti-slavery groups are publicly expressing optimism that they can increase slave reductions in the Senate version, they publicly admit that the opposite is more likely.  An anonymous senator confirmed this, stating: “We just don’t have the votes to free that many slaves.  But we’re hoping to pass a bill that will allow us to free as many as half of the slaves by the end of the century.”

Anti-slavery groups hope that once people start seeing former slaves become free, autonomous individuals without destroying the economy, public support for slave reductions will continue to grow.

Abolition

A few fringe anti-slavery groups attacked the bill, claiming that it was too little, too late.  “Slavery is wrong, period.” said Josiah Bartlett, of Patriots for Freedom (PfF). “This bill will actually allow the number of slaves to increase until 1880, as slave owners here can buy new slaves, so long as other slaves abroad are ‘freed’.  This will create a perverse incentive for people to capture slaves abroad so that they can free them, and slavery will continue to reign in our nation.  This madness has to end now.”

Please note that this article is entirely satirical, and that the author is very much glad that slavery ended as early as it did, and indeed wishes that more citizens had been willing earlier to take a stand on this once-controversial issue in favor of liberty and justice for all.

Tom Friedman’s piece in yesterday’s New York Times gets a few things right: Waxman-Markey (ACES) is disappointingly weak thanks to the GOP’s unwillingness to find solutions, we must strengthen and pass it through the Senate, “We The People” owe it to the future to rise up like never before to make this happen.
But he narrows “We The People” to mean We The Young People.

I’ve got news for you Mr. Friedman – young people are rising up like never before to make this happen. We’ve been to DC twice and stormed Capitol Hill with young lobbyists to counter dirty energies hired hacks. We’ve held hundreds of events engaging members of Congress with their constituencies to call for action. We’ve flooded their offices with phone calls and letters. And we’re just getting started.

The youth climate movement deserves at least some of the credit for the passage of ACES – the bill barely made it through, and the youth movement has been pushing on it hard via campaigns like Power Shift and Focus the Nation’s nationwide clean energy town hall.

You say we should get off of facebook and into legislators’ faces, out of the chat rooms and into the cloak rooms. Check and check. We’re in their faces, we’re in the cloakrooms, we’re doing every last thing we can. And by the way, we use the internet to organize real on the ground action – that’s called innovation, something you’re supposed to be a fan of.

Now we’re turning up the heat even further to push Senators to strengthen this bill and make it something we can be proud of. My question to you, Mr. Friedman: When is your generation going to rise up the way we have? You owe it to us, to your kids, and to ours.

He listened! Obama listened!

We chanted during PowerShift’s march on the Capital Coal Plant and even later that night outside of the While House calling for “Food, Not Bombs! Plant a Garden on the White House Lawn!” It sounded good, and I remember seeing the lights go on in an upstairs window as we sang late at night, but maybe that was just a twinkle in the White House’s eye.

Either way, I just learned that Obama did plant a nice big vegetable garden on the White House lawn in March, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s Victory Gardens, and things are coming up golden. They’ve 90 pounds of food,  enough produce for the White House kitchens and local soup kitchens as well.  Good and always with honor have released a detailed map of the White House Garden – let’s hope more people follow suit, eating as locally as physically possible, their own backyards!

In his most recent blog post, Ken Ward highlights Rick Boucher’s love of the climate bill because of the amount of coal support in it:

…The EPA projects that by 2020, coal usage in America, under the terms of this bill, will actually grow.

As transportation electrifies and the demand for electricity increases, coal, our most abundant fuel, will still be the fuel of choice to meet that rising demand. The claims of opponents that the CO2 controls under the bill will force utilities to surrender coal use, causing an overreliance on natural gas with attendant broad economic harm to the Nation are also simply wrong.

~Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., on the climate bill

If you didn’t know already, Boucher is the man that has taken more money from the coal industry than any other representative — despite the fact that he has run unopposed! His dirtying up the climate bill inspired this awesome protest last month.

Ward also points out that

The United Mine Workers union concluded the bill ensured that “the future of coal will be intact” (but still withheld its endorsement, seeking more concessions for coal companies and coal-fired utilities).

Perplexed by the inter-related problems India faces as it develops at the cost of 2/3 rd of its population living outside the economy, two young activists from Switch ON, rode their cycles 1800 kilometers across India through the coal belt – to question India’s growth based on fossil fuel, and to seek and highlight alternatives for a sustainable and equitable development.

Why New Coal gives a new perspective to Coal in India – addressing India’s growing energy needs, problems of energy security and Climate Change Vulnerabilities – by interviewing experts across the nation, while also documenting Vinay and Hoob’s epic journey across the nation.

Speakers in the video include energy experts from across the country including S.P. Sethi (Planning commission), Dunu Roy (Hazard Centre), Vandana Shiva (Navdanya), Chandra Bhusan (CSE) Siddharth Pathak (Green Peace), S.K.Chand (TERI), Shirish Sinha (WWF) Ashok Agarwal (Jharia Bachao Sangharsh Samiti), Girish Sant (Prayas), Dr. Gonchowdhury (WBREDA), Sanjeev Ghotge (WISE), Nitin Desai (United Nations), Ambuj Sagar (IIT), Dr. M P Narayanan (Coal India)

If you like Vinay and Ekta’s trailer for Why New Coal, you’ll love his earlier video below, and the full-length feature film about the Climate Ride 2009.

I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t constantly on the move — around the world, across India, through Delhi, or pacing across my bedroom. It’s probably true for most of the youth movement. But, maybe that’s what works – messages that move. That move us, and that move themselves.

It’s been six months today since we launched the Climate Solutions Road Tour and began our journey across India, 3500 kilometers in solar electric Indian-made cars, which took us farther than we’d ever imagined — from the NY Times to skype calls with groups of young people in the Philippines, Israel, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, US, and the UK who are hitting the ground on their bicycles, their electric cars, their trains and their own feet to see what solutions they find — to create, communicate and celebrate change, as we had tried to here.

There have been so many journeys that inspired us – the Road to Detroit and the BioBus, the Australian youth Overland journey to Poznan, Rolling Sunlight and even Guster’s eco band tour – to set off across India in solar supported electric cars, with a solar band and a vision to showcase the solutions we knew were around us. We wanted to build trust and confidence between nations, and never realized the most important was building this in ourselves.

I’m getting restless, again, so its time for another move. But now, where I go, the message moves, too — Yes we can! So we will.

We’re glad to see that the Indian government got the message — people like messages that move!

Here are two more mobile environmental campaigns around India – the one on the right is the Tamil Nadu Energy Development Authority’s big truck. It helped us launch our road tour, but it has now set off on its own, to travel Tamil Nadu and teach students about solar and plastic! “A novel aspect of the campaign would be distribution of postcards carrying messages on source segregation and avoiding plastics to students, who could send them to their relatives and friends, Mr. Amuthasekaran said.” Neat! Now how about social media — Twitters?

On World Environment Day, Shiela Dixit (Chief Minister of Delhi) and the Arch Diocese of Delhi launched a joint campaign against plastic, in a converted Maruti van to spread the message about alternatives to plastic bags. ”The Chief Minister’s voice to be broadcast through a loudspeaker attached to the vehicles will urge customers to give up the use of plastics and buy jute bags.” How about broadcasting music, folks? They are hoping that by the end of 2009, they’ll have 15 vehicles in their jute fleet, selling these bags for 15 to 30 Rupees each.

This project is being supported by the Archdiosese in Delhi, who said at the launch that this campaign would keep our streets safe… from plastic. Next step, from Maruti vans themselves…

We’re off to tell Shiela Dixit about some more bags we’ve got up our sleeves, and to see if her Maruti’s would do a face-off with our Revas.

Cross-posted from the Understory by Adrian.

The Yes Men – the same folks who have posed as corporate and government hacks to announce Dow’s apology for the Bhopal chemical spill and to admit the failure of HUD’s reconstruction efforts in New Orleans – have just launched a new website as part of a national climate justice nonviolent civil disobedience pledge campaign.

The goal of the website is to create an international network of people willing to commit civil disobedience to prevent climate change. And given that the Mobilization for Climate Justice – which will coincide with the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen – is happening five months from today, now is the time to get involved in taking direct action to stop climate change.

Sign up today! (And if civil disobedience isn’t really your thing, you can always help out by buying an action offset to help other people get trained, or pay bail.)

Written by Peebles Squire, cross-posted from the CCAN blog.
Yesterday, the EPA performed a turn-around on its protection of the locations of 44 “high risk” coal ash impoundment sites, signaling a desire to make the regulatory body more transparent. Formerly protected under the auspices of national security, the ash impoundments, located in Ohio, Arizona, and throughout the southeast, have been determined to be particularly vulnerable to failure. In a time where the future of American energy remains stuck between antiquated fossil fuels and cleaner, renewable technology, concerns over proper disposal of coal ash has risen to the top of the debate, particularly after last December’s TVA sludge disaster in Roane County, Tennessee.

The reason behind this concern is, of course, fairly easy to identify. Coal slurry ponds, which may hold several billion gallons of the toxic sludge, are typically held in place by earthen dams made of rock and other fill material. While typically sturdy, history has shown us that these dams are definitely prone to failure, especially when not regulated properly. In fact, the dangers surrounding slurry dams have been well known and well documented for decades. West Virginia’s Buffalo Creek Flood of 1972 destroyed over 500 homes with a 30-foot high, 132 million gallon wave of the toxic stuff. When blasting occurs near these ponds (as it does near Marsh Fork Elmentary in Sunrise, WV), the risk becomes intensified as nearby shockwaves may threaten the structural integrity of the dam.

Fly ash, though dry and therefore less at risk to flooding, presents just as serious a hazard to the local ecosystem, including surrounding communities, wildlife, and groundwater reserves. Fly ash is stored in landfills, most of which are lined, but all of which are failure-prone. Particles in the air, blown from these ash impoundments, can cause serious health problems such as asthma and other respiratory diseases. Like wet slurry, fly ash contains a cocktail of harmful heavy metals and other contaminants that present a serious threat to the local and regional ecosystem… and to human health.

“CCRs [coal combustion residues] contain a broad range of metals, for example, arsenic, selenium, cadmium, lead, and mercury, but the concentrations of these are generally low. However, if not properly managed, (for example, in lined units), CCRs may cause a risk to human health and the environment and, in fact, EPA has documented cases of environmental damage“ (courtesy EPA.gov).

The collection and storage of coal ash is but one piece in a larger fossil fuel regime that thrives on the continued exploitation of the United States’ natural, non-renewable resources, known to cause significant air pollution and contribute to global climate change. The coal extraction, combustion, and disposal process is among the most destructive practices in human history, and with the continued popularity of mountaintop removal mining, the coal industry goes so far as to threaten the geography of Appalachia itself.

The EPA has made positive steps in naming these so-called high-risk sites, but seems to be avoiding tackling the bigger picture; coal is an unsustainable resource that is dirty, harmful, and dangerous. While 44 of these impoundment sites may be deemed more at-risk than others, the fact remains that anywhere coal is extracted, burned, or stored, safety is a non-issue, because coal is not, and never will be, “safe.”

President Obama, who has so far struggled with fulfilling his promise of increased transparency and accountability within government, has made significant forward progress by allowing the release of these 44 sites. However, the larger issue of formulating an American energy future – one without coal – rests untackled. As long as coal is allowed to thrive in Appalachia, the Midwest, and elsewhere, American citizens will remain at risk. The fossil fuel industry represents an old and outdated way of thinking: the idea that our actions now will bear no consequence on the future. We have now stepped healthily into the 21st century, largely thankful to the energy that fossil fuels of yore have given us, and as we continue to evolve as a species and a society, we are charged with abandoning a tradition that will serve no other end but to continue to harm Americans.

President Obama, Congress, and the EPA, if we are to bring the United States into a clean energy future, one that emphasizes the importance of renewable technologies, green jobs, and energy that is free of filthy, harmful substances, then we must see a real effort to focus on goals that do not give coal a future in the grid. The EPA seems to think that the term, “high risk,” should be reserved for a mere 44 out of the hundreds of slurry ponds and fly ash fills that sprinkle the American landscape. A more appropriate move would be to extend the “high risk” moniker to its proper breadth, across the entire industry.