Labels: best musicians, buzzworthy musicians, Eagles, Energy Action, Greenowl Records, Hindu Kush, Huffington Post Green, music, Wyclef Jean

We're on it. Ibrahim and I. Organic cotton "Clean Up or Die" tee by Katharine Hamnett!

Michael - I lost your contact!!! Get in touch with me!

Welcome to the Gun Show!

Vincent, you're the man!

My good friend Billy Parish, founder of Energy Action

Recording the music

Vincent (left) was the shit. He and I kept it real at the dinner. Richard Halpin (right) runs AmericanYouthWorks.org out in Texas.

Van signs his early-release book for me.

Ibrahim (Saudi Arabia) & Ibrahim (New York)

Father of environmental justice, Robert Bullard speaks at Dream Reborn. Some other notables are Afeni Shakur, Tupac's mom, who spoke of black entrepreneurship; Majora Carter of the Sustainable South Bronx, Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center; Bracken Hendricks of the Apollo Alliance, and a host of others. They were all invigorating speakers.

A group of Dream Reborners gather for a photo opp.

We even took the trombone player to the streets

Labels: Dream Reborn, Energy Action, green jobs, racially-just green jobs, Van jones

A child's feet dangles from his school chair in Esiboniesweni
Photo: Bryan Johnson

Labels: Africa, Climate Challenge, Energy Action, power shift, powershift07, shoe drop, South Africa, Toms Shoes

Labels: Campus Climate Challenge, Energy Action, Power Shift 07, powershift07, Youth Activism

Labels: capitol hill, climate change, climatechallenge, Energy Action, global warming, lobby day, power shift, Power Shift 07, PowerShift 2007

Labels: capitol hill, climatechallenge, Energy Action, lobby day, power shift, Power Shift 07, PowerShift 2007

Elizabeth, who spoke on the Climate Legislation panel at Power Shift a few days ago, chuckled at the sound of worry in the woman’s voice. “And I’ll just add that every single person on The Hill knows you are coming.”

Damn straight they knew we were coming. Even Nancy Pelosi, who showed up to speak at Power Shift, was caught off guard.

Sure she is an ally, but it was clear that she was debriefed about the event 5-minutes before she got to the stage. She was nervous. She had 6,000 teens and twenty-somethings staring back at her and she knew that we were hungry for something real. That would make anyone shake in their shoes. I turned to my friend, Dan Roth, and barked like a dog. “We’re like dogs,” I joked with him. “We can smell fear.” He laughed. A girl in the front row turned around and shushed me, but pretty soon even she was screaming to the top of her lungs, “We want more! We want more. 80 by 2050, 80 by 2050!”

Yes Nancy, we weren’t looking for the same old plan-in-the-can speech because we know the “business as usual” will not inspire real solutions and will not be able to solve the climate crisis. We want change. And change is what we will get.

That was the essence of Power Shift 07. The “First” and “Biggest” in a long list of things”

• First-ever (inter)national youth summit to solve the climate crisis
• Biggest U.S. Climate Summit/Conference on Climate Change
• First time ever that youth have testified to the government on Global Warming
• Biggest lobby day on the Hill for Climate Change, and one of the largest lobby days ever

Perhaps that is why “historic” was on the tongue of every speaker, every panelist, and every attendee. It was a coordinated effort that took 8 months to plan and build, but a lifetime of passion, and a clear, unified vision for the future to pull off.

Fifty states, 300 Congressional districts, hundreds of colleges and high schools, 20+ countries, thousands of Step it Up efforts throughout the nation, and a 6,000-person crowd armed with green hard hats and one hard-hitting message: We will end the Climate Crisis. That was Power Shift 07, in case you were one of the people to have missed it. But don’t worry, you’ll get replays of it on blogs, news networks, newspapers, and everything in between. The four-day event kicked off at the University of Maryland with workshops, training sessions, musical acts, and keynotes. Today we found ourselves in the Official Hearing to the Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. It was jam-packed. Standing room only – which felt more like the energy at a Terrapin basketball game with 2 points to win it in the final seconds rather than a stuffy C-Spanesque committee meeting. I cried. Billy Parish, founder of Energy Action and Cheryl Lockwood, a high-schooler from the Alaska Youth for Environmental Action moved the wall-to-wall crowd to tears.

“I am 26 years old,” Parish said with strength and passion in his voice. “In four months I will be a father…I urge you to consider what we say, not as politicians, but as fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters. This is our future. This is our lives. As Evon Peter said yesterday, ‘The crisis that we are facing today is centuries old. We are not only in an economic and environmental crisis. This crisis is also a spiritual and cultural crisis that is occurring.’” Parish went on to say, “We will solve this, but we cannot do it without you. And if you do not join us, then find yourself another job. We are in the millions, and we are organizing. We put you in office and we will take you out of office. This is our lives at stake.”

So that is how it was. And I left the hearing early to go to lobby my representatives with a tear-stained face. When I got to Senator Casey’s office with 40 others to hear the Legislative assistant say, “Well, we are looking at “clean coal” technologies, because we know we can’t keep on having regular coal as the status quo.”

I gathered my energy and stood up. “I think I speak on behalf of everyone in this room, the 6,000 young people on the Hill today, and the millions of young people that we represent to say: All coal is the status quo…”

Remember, remember the Fifth of November.

Here begins our journey. Here begins the Power Shift.

Labels: climatechallenge, Energy Action, global warming, grassroots activism, lobby day, Power Shift 07, powershift07, Summer Rayne Oakes

Labels: Climate Challenge, Energy Action, power shift, Power Shift 2007, powershift07

Labels: Campus Climate Challenge, climatechallenge, Energy Action, lobby day, power shift, Power Shift 07, powershift07, Van jones

We have registered over 5,000 young voters to champion for clean renewable energy and green jobs on Capitol Hill. November 2-5. Join us! powershift07.org

image by: Christine Irvine

Labels: Campus Climate Challenge, Energy Action, lobby day, power shift, Power Shift 07, Power Shift 2007

This is my letter to Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle. He became the 51st and current mayor on January 1, 2002. He recently launched Seattle Climate Action Now, a grassroots campaign encouraging everyone in the Seattle area to reduce global warming pollution at home, on the road and in their neighborhoods. He also spearheaded the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, an accord signed by over 600 US cities committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

I'll be writing and meeting with mayors from many cities throughout 2007-2008 in order to bridge climate change action happening on university and city-level.
Click on the letter to enlarge and feel free to adapt your own letter from it.

Labels: Climate Challenge, Energy Action, power shift, Power Shift 07, President's Climate Committment, Seattle

Labels: 1 Sky, 1 Sky Campaign, Energy Action, NY Times, power shift, Power Shift 07, Summer Rayne Oakes, Thomas Friedman

Labels: "Summer Rayne Oakes, climate change, Elephant Magazine, Energy Action, power shift, Power Shift 07, powershift07

Labels: climate change, Energy Action, Power Shift 07, Powershift, PowerShift 2007, Youth Activism

Julia Bonds, Goldman Prize winner, was born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia. She's a coal miner's daughter and the director of Coal River Mountain Watch. Over the past six years, Bonds has emerged as a formidable community leader against the horrible destruction of mountaintop removal mining.

In 2001, Bonds and her family became the last residents to evacuate from her own hometown of Marfork Hollow where six generations of her family had lived. Marfork had been virtually destroyed by mountaintop removal mining, which involves completely blasting off the tops of mountains so that huge machines can mine thin seams of coal.

Labels: coal, coal mining, Energy Action, Julia Bonds, mountaintop removal, Power Shift 07, Power Shift 2007, Powershift

Power Shift 2007 to Take Place November 2-5, 2007 in College Park, MD

Washington, D.C. On November 2, 2007, thousands of young people will converge on our nation's capital for Power Shift, the first-ever national youth summit to solve the climate crisis. The conference will engage high school and college students from all 50 states about solutions to global warming and how they can put those solutions into practice on their campuses, in their communities, and in the political arena.

At Power Shift, young leaders from all backgrounds will share ideas, learn new skills, make connections and ultimately use their collective experience to create a fresh, inspiring vision of the future, one focused on America's potential to build a clean energy economy, achieve energy independence, create millions of green jobs, increase global equity, and revitalize the economy.

Power Shift's agenda includes issue briefings from the nation's leading scientists and policy experts, training sessions on organizing, advocacy and media relations, an "opportunities fair" featuring some of the country's leading environmental employers, and built-in networking opportunities for attendees. Conference participants are also urged to attend a Lobby Day November 5 on Capitol Hill, aimed at urging elected representatives to embrace bold, meaningful, and comprehensive legislation to solve the climate crisis and put America back on the path to a clean and just energy future.

"Special interests have taken precedence over human interests for far too long," said Richard Scott, a student at the University of Maryland studying political science, public administration, and theater. "By joining together to share our ideas and passion we will be establishing a national voice for our generation. We need to raise this collective voice to reach our elected leaders and demand that they take global warming seriously." Along these lines, event organizers have invited 2008 presidential candidates and influential environmental advocates to address the conference.

"Our world is at a crossroads," added Craig Altimose, Power Shift Organizer. "The actions we take today as a society to address the challenge of climate change will determine the future of our generation and generations to come. The time has come for us to make a change."

About Energy Action
Energy Action Coalition is a group of over 40 leading youth environmental and social justice organizations working together to leverage their collective power and strengthen the clean energy movement in North America. In August 2006, Energy Action launched The Campus Climate Challenge, a joint campaign by 37 organizations from the U.S. and Canada focused on uniting students to pass 100% clean energy policies on their campuses. Since its inception, the Climate Challenge has spread to students on more than 500 high schools and college campuses.

For more information on Power Shift, including a full conference agenda, registration guideline, and how to be a campus recruiter for the conference, please visit powershift07.org.

Labels: Campus Climate Challenge, carbon neutrality, Energy Action, Power Shift 07, Power Shift 2007, Powershift, Youth Activism

Labels: Campus Climate Challenge, climate negotitations, Climate talks, Donate Bali, Energy Action, youth climate change, youth climate change movement

Photo: from Change It 07 via IGHIH blog

It is all very, very exciting to see how PowerShift 2007 is shaping up!

James Hansen is Coming!
James Hansen, the venerable director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies just said he would be more than happy to address the 3,000-5,000 youth expected to attend! Massimo and I shared in on the excitement over the phone. I totally skipped Cloud 9 and went to Cloud 10. Twenty minutes of pure elation led to more ideas, more strategies, and a little bit too much adrenaline to my noggin. I had to call Arthur and Billy from Campus Climate Challenge immediately. It took a full day for me to calm down, but I was easily lulled back into stealth fighter mode on my way to the Charity: Water benefit at Project Greenhouse* with Massimo (three hours in a car with a rocking psychologist studying climate change will do that to you). We cogitated over all the mind-blowing projects we've been working on and plan to work on - which seems to have multiplied over the last few months.

There are just so many bang-up ideas swirling around - we just can't wait to get them off the ground and running. The programs are focused on how we can begin turning awareness into continuous engagement. The approach is really creative and engaging - so it'll be interesting to see how the public responds to them...(Speaking of getting people involved, a new report on how much impact Live Earth has affected people's engagement will be coming out shortly - a joint report out of Columbia and Yale Universities).

Photo: from the IGHIH blog

Let's Get Moving!
Everyone's effort is greatly needed, but we need to graduate from the "little things we can do" (i.e. changing every frigging light bulb in the house) and ramp up to a more concerted effort for a sweeping change. A report was recently forwarded to me with some startling comparisons compiled by the 2030 Research Center. An abridged summary is listed below:

The Campus Climate Challenge, a growing student movement in the US...calls for all high schools and college campus in the U.S. to go carbon neutral. If the challenge were met, the CO2 emissions from just 4 medium-sized coal-fired power plants each year would negate the CCC's entire effort.

Labels: Be Carbon Neutral, climate change, CO2, coal, Energy Action, PowerShift 2007, Summer Rayne Oakes

Ecorazzi and the New York Observer highlight Summer Rayne's fundraiser & event at Project Greenhouse in East Hampton. An intimate organic, locally-sourced dinner was prepared by Discovery chef, Nathan Lyons for the forty-person crowd. The event brought together a number of people involved in environmental issues, including scientists, entrepreneurs, green marketers, activists, environmental non-profit leaders, climate change psychologists, investors, media, environmental lawyers, and a conscientious fashion crowd.

From June 30 through July 31st, Project GreenHouse will host 4 weekends of intimate, high-profile benefit dinners and special events with celebrity hosts to help raise funds for environmental charities including the Riverkeeper, The Rainforest Foundation, Charity: Water, FEED Bags for the World Food Programme, tar art media to benefit Earth Pledge, and a private affair to benefit PowerShift 2007 hosted by model, entrepreneur and environmental activist, Summer Rayne Oakes. All proceeds go directly to each organization.

Margaret Teich (producer of Lazy Environmentalist) and Natasha give the Peace Sign

Tony Massaro (League of Conservation Voters), Summer Rayne Oakes and Massimo LoBuglio, climate change psychologist launching the BE CARBON NEUTRAL Campaign, part of CRED Institute.

Steve Glass and Monique Pean (eco-jewelry)

Blake Mycoskie (Toms Shoes) longboards with his crazy plaid pants.
Blake striking a pose with Lauren Bush, founder of the Feed Bag program.

2008 and Beyond: Candidates for the Presidency of the United States will speak to their plan to reduce GHG emissions 80% by 2050, providing examples of bold leadership.

Peter Strugatz (CEO of Icestone), Lauren Bush, and Josh Dorfman in the fashion closet

Hostess, Summer Rayne Oakes talks environmental politics all night with Tony Massaro of the League of Conservation Voters. Summer wears an organic cotton + re-created vintage dress by ENAMORE

Labels: Campus Climate Challenge, climate change, Energy Action, green NY, Hamptons, Powershift, PowerShift 2007, Project Greenhouse, Summer Rayne Oakes, youth climate change