Picture(s) of the Week

This week, two pictures made it into most inspiring picture of the week category, although I can only show you one on this blog. The first is from Avaaz Climate Action Factory, which pulls together some of the most creative and timely actions in my opinion.

Tuesday evening, while President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, dozens of activists with Avaaz.org released a hundred Chinese flying lanterns and a floating balloon banner just south of the White House.

According to Morgan at Avaaz’s Climate Action Factory in DC:

Chinese flying lanterns are a symbol of hope traditionally released to celebrate the new year. The Avaaz action highlighted China’s proactive domestic climate commitments as a source of inspiration for the UN climate summit in Copenhagen this December.

The other picture I can’t find online unfortunately. But if you check out B2 of today’s Washington Post, you’ll see a picture of Matt Means and Ed Bush busy installing what will be the largest solar-energy system in the Washington area at Catholic University. More than 1,000 panels will be installed on four buildings this fall.

Virginia Students: Join the "No Coal Day," Nov. 18th

Of the many amazing things I get to do as CCAN’s Virginia campus organizer, one extra bit of inspiration is how often I find myself driving along a beautiful back road and am struck by the incredible views all around me. To think that in areas of Virginia those mountains and the communities surrounding them are directly threatened only makes me more anxious to reach my destination because I know that the work we’re doing around this state is going to help make the switch and create a clean energy economy here in Virginia and beyond.

I just got back from Wise County where I joined the Rrnew Collective and others from around the Southeast for “Weekend in Wise” a weekend of discussion, brainstorming and planning (plus a little dancing) about creating sustainable economic development in Appalachia. While it was the first time I saw mountaintop removal and ‘reclamation,’ the sense of determination from everyone there left me energized. Together, we’re going to create a better future for all of us.

That’s why young people from around the state have set November 18th was set as a statewide No Coal Day. It’s a Day of Action for a clean energy future because young people know it’s time for Virginia to make the switch. Join in! Email me at katherine[at]chesapeakeclimate.org

How clean are your local waterways?

In a recent report released by Environment America, The Commonwealth of Virginia comes in second in the country for the most polluted waterways. Not a designation any Virginian should be proud of to say the least. The data used in this report comes from the EPA’s very own Toxics Release Inventory.

The report also found that nearly half of our country’s waterways are too polluted for fishing, swimming or other recreational activities because polluters are continuing to use them as major dumping grounds. As I blogged about previously, coal-fired power plants are one of the biggest threats to our waterways yet there are no federal regulations on the proper disposal of toxins from these plants into nearby rivers and streams.

It’s time polluters cleaned up their act and federal and state governments started cracking down. One way our state government can begin working toward removing our beautiful Commonwealth from this list is by refusing to allow new coal plants such as the one proposed for Surry County in the Hampton Roads region. This coal plant would be the largest in the state, if built, and would only be a mere 35 miles from our precious Chesapeake Bay.

Want to join the fight? You can sign our petition or attend the public hearing on November 23 in Surry County. Tell your friends and family to get involved too. We can do better for our waterways and ourselves.

Trick or Treat!

IMG00124Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. For one day of the year, you get to be someone (or something) else. Today, a few of us dressed up as green jobs workers and delivered a message to our Virginia Senators: We want clean energy jobs NOW! Wearing green hard hats, work boots and tool belts, we delivered our messages in style- by presenting the staff of Senator Webb and Senator Warner with a Frankenstein halloween bucket filled with candy and petitions from folks all across the Commonwealth who want Congress to pass a strong climate bill this year. We think they got the message!
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Virginia youth for 350 parts per million.

cross posted from thinkaboutit.eu

This weekend, in conjunction with 350.org’s International Day of Climate Action, more than 100 students from across the Commonwealth of Virginia converged on the campus of George Mason University in order to plan the next phase in the fight for a clean and responsible future for Virginia the United States, and the globe.

Virginia Power Shift 2009 was marked by a wide array of workshops, panels and speakers, ranging from greening your daily living, political and direct action training (with help from the folks at AVAAZ), and new and diverse ways to spread and grow the youth environmental movement.

The phenomenal lot of keynote speakers included Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Jessy Tolkan, director of the Energy Action Coalition, and Gillian Caldwell from the 1Sky campaign, all key personalities in the struggle to end human-caused climate change. Representatives from Repower America and SustainUS offered valuable insight into the role of youth within America’s nonprofit and NGO culture. Continue reading

Washingtonians are NOT just fair weather activists!

Goucher students in front of White HouseWhat an incredible experience standing in front of the White House with hundreds of soaked, dedicated people taking part in a historic, global event! Standing there Saturday we were connected to schoolchildren in Ghana, mountain climbers in Vermont, women in Bangladesh, and activists in Egypt.

If you haven’t already, please head to www.350.org and spend a few minutes watching the pictures from around the world. As Bill McKibben wrote as he watched images flood in from every corner of the globe, “I finally saw what a climate movement looked like — and it looked diverse and creative and beautiful.”

Rally in Lafayette ParkYou can also check out the great images from the DC action. Thanks to Chris Eichler and Mark Fenton for these inspiring pictures.

Finally, Grist has a great roundup of coverage from across the world, including commentary by CCAN’s very own Keith Harrington and this account of the DC event by freelance journalist Carrie Madren.

There’s much to be done yet. But right now take a minute to soak in the pictures from across the globe and savor this accomplishment. It’s not every day you can be part of the most widespread day of political action the world has ever seen.

Landmark Op-Ed Means Climate Legislation

Cross-Posted from: here

**These are not necessarily the views of CCAN**

I knew as soon as I read the Op-Ed in the NY Times Sunday co-authored by South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham and John Kerry.

As Energy Smart Now concludes “Let us hope that that “legitimate bipartisan effort” emerges and is reality-based. If it does, again, this might well go down as the most important OPED to appear in an American newspaper in 2009 Continue reading

Clean Energy: Betting on the Future

Cross-posted from: here

I have a column out in the Diamondback today about why despite the opposition of the fossil fuel industry, America needs to pass a strong Federal climate bill in order to thrive in the 21st century.

Clean energy: Betting on the future

This past June, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a landmark global warming and clean energy bill called the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Now Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is doing something exciting for a change by introducing the Senate counterpart to the House bill called the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.

Continue reading

Climate, Kyoto, and Council

Cross-posted from: here

There is a very well written column in the Diamondback by a member of UMD for Clean Energy Jesse Yurow, who is also our Outreach Director. Jesse does a good job of explaining how we can’t only rely on the top down approach to make our society more sustainable, but we need to take charge at the community level. The group Jesse alludes to working with the City Council to develop a energy efficiency loan fund policy, is of course..us.

Guest column: Climate, Kyoto and council

Twelve years ago, world leaders signed the Kyoto Protocol, a global treaty that promised to develop strategies to mitigate the perils of global climate change. Epic fail. Without mechanisms of accountability and without the support of Earth’s largest polluter, the United States, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has skyrocketed to about 380 parts per million and is still rising. NASA climatologist James Hansen suggests that, in order to avoid ecological catastrophe, concentrations of carbon dioxide must be reduced and held steady at 350 parts per million (see www.350.org). People sit with their fingers crossed, awaiting climate change solutions to be handed down at the next global summit on climate change this December in Copenhagen.

Continue reading

Gandhi Today

Gandhi Today

“Somewhere there’s a sweet spot, that produces enough without tipping over into the hyper-individualism that drives our careening, unsatisfying economy. The mix of regulation and values that might make such self-restraint more common is, of course, as hard to create in China as in the United States; far simpler just to bless an every-man-for-himself economy and step aside. But creating those values, and the laws and customs that will slowly evolve from them, may be the key task of our time here and around the world.” Bill McKibben, Deep Economy

140 years today Mohandus Gandhi was born in Gujarat province in India. I didn’t learn this from the New York Times, CNN, or any other mainstream media source. I didn’t learn about it from progressive media outlets, although it is very possible that one or more of them publicized it and I missed it.

I learned about this as a result of being invited to speak yesterday at William Patterson University in northern New Jersey by a professor who organized a program about Gandhi’s relevance for today. Thanks to Balmurli Natrajan, Director of the Gandhian Forum for Peace and Justice, I’ve spent the last few days reflecting on this question.

When I was asked this question directly at yesterday’s forum, what came to mind is this: Gandhi is important, is of continuing relevance, because he wasn’t just a great, if imperfect, leader of India’s successful struggle for independence from colonial Britain. He is important because he understood that it was necessary for him personally, and for his people, to be about the process of personal and cultural change if they were to have a chance of truly lasting, truly revolutionary change, in the best sense of the term.

Gandhi did his best to live a life which reflected the values of justice and love which he understood were central to the teachings of all great spiritual leaders. He went on fasts that were directed not just against the British but for his own people, calling upon them to refuse to mimic English violence and repression in their struggle for independence.

The words of Gandhi that I have used most often over the years are these: “Fasting is the sincerest form of prayer.” I’ve used them as I’ve learned their truth, as I’ve learned about prayer, during long fasts that I’ve undertaken in connection with the campaign to free Leonard Peltier, against the Iraq war and for strong government action to address the climate crisis.

There’s another fast very much in the Gandhian spiritual and political tradition that will be taking place about a month from now, a Climate Justice Fast (http://www.climatejusticefast.org). This is a fast initiated by young people in Australia, Europe and elsewhere specifically directed at the leaders of the world’s governments as they move toward the Dec. 7-18 international meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark to try to come up with a stronger climate treaty than the Kyoto Protocol. As I write, things are not looking good at all that they will do what is needed.

Anna Keenan, youth climate activist and one of the initiators of this fast, wrote yesterday about Gandhi. She began with a quote of his, that “the world has enough for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed.” She went on to “share another great Gandhi quote: