Labels: Campus Climate Challenge, climate action, climate change, global warming, Time Magazine, youth action

Governor Chris Gregoire
Office of the Governor
PO Box 40002
Olympia, WA 98504-0002

Dear Governor Gregoire,

As a constituent of Washington and staunch supporter of clean energy solutions and racially-just green collar, I am writing to thank you for supporting the Washington State Climate Action and Green Jobs Bill.

This historic piece of legislation will not only help build a sustainable economy for the state of Washington, but will also serve as a model for the rest of the country. I have full faith that when the time comes to fund the green jobs training program, you will provide your support. As you already know, enacting the bill will be fundamental to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty and fight ever-rising green house gas emissions.

Sincerely,

Labels: apollo alliance, cascade climate network, climate change, climate solutions, direct action, Green Festival, green jobs, Seattle green festival, Washington climate action, Washington State

Labels: Alexis Rockman, Antarctica, art and climate change, climate change, glaciers, global warming, Leo Koenig

Can you hear me now?
Of course if you ask a telecommunications person what will solve world poverty, he’s going to say, “Telecommunications;” and ask an agronomist what will help solve the fuel crisis, and he will emphatically respond, “Agriculture.” Ask a buttoned-up economist how he sees the world, and he’ll say, “an industrialized free market economy,” and give the Chairman of the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority the podium on climate change solutions, and she’ll talk up nuclear like it’s a half-silver bullet solution out of hell...

Labels: "Summer Rayne Oakes, climate change, global warming, jeff sachs, jeffrey sachs, lady barbara thomas judge, nuclear energy, state of the planet

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

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

Be Carbon Neutral™, in partnership with SustainUS, is now offering a special "Bali Edition" Wind Turbine Brooch as a gift to donors contributing $699 or more to send youth members to the Bali delegation.

Be Carbon Neutral™ features Al Gore and Summer Rayne Oakes donning select jewelry made by Anthony Aletto from reclaimed metal using carbon-free processes. Be Carbon Neutral™ will offset the donor's emissions for one month and an accompanying greening guide provides solutions to continue the green journey.

Labels: Be Carbon Neutral, Be Carbon Neutral jewelry campaign, climate change, climate change solutions, Donate Bali, eliminate carbon, global warming, Power Shift 07, Summer Rayne Oakes, sustainus

taking care of the nursery. Photo: M. Arnoldus

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Labels: "Summer Rayne Oakes, a.d. schwarz, Africa, climate change, climate crisis, eco speaker, global warming, Race Against Global Warming

Midwest group march. photo: Christine Irvine

photo: Christine Irvine

What it took to get off my ass.
I didn’t get truly involved in the youth climate change movement until the beginning of this year. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know it was out there. On the contrary, I knew Billy Parish early on – when Energy Action and the Campus Climate Challenge were just a glimmer in his eye. We had our own paths – I was working on environmental issues – but aside from my work in mine reclamation, it was in an entirely different capacity. Our work was linked, but not necessarily collaborative or even synchronous.

Part of my work shifted in February 2008. I had more opportunities to work on climate change issues – through new clients and a growing base of friends and colleagues feverish for the issues.

I didn’t find the movement. The movement found me.

I wasn’t aware how big and how connected this entire movement was until I called Richard at Energy Action in February. I was specifically looking for a contact in Australia to fill me in on what universities were doing down under in regards to climate change. President Levin from Yale University had just finished speaking at DAVOS on Yale’s climate change policies and was headed to Australia to get other universities to follow their lead. It occurred to me that I knew very little of what was going on in Australia.

In enters Anna Rose, 24: a vivacious young woman and founder of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. Richard directed me to Energy Action’s Google excel sheet of Climate Change organizers and told me to reach out to her.

Perhaps a name and a contact on a virtual spreadsheet do not mean much in this day and age, but it was at that point that I suddenly felt connected to the movement at large. All of a sudden my work for Yale in the U.S. was being connected to the work on the ground in Australia. For some that may not seem so huge, but for me it was a revelation: A revelation that the next greatest movement was underfoot and I had just dipped my toe in the water.

I’ve never met Anna Rose. One e-mail and one phone call with her, however, brought me a step closer to the movement. All of a sudden I started to feel…ownership.

A sense of ownership…That’s the key to revolutionary movements: tapping the power of peer relationships, feeling a sense of responsibility – like you are “one of the team.” If you’ve ever played sports, you’ll know what I mean. Did you ever miss the last basket – or conversely hit the three-point shot in the last two seconds – to win the game? That sense of loss or gain, that sense of camaraderie you felt with the other team members – is because you have stake in something that you care about.

My sense of ownership in the youth climate movement may have waned quickly if it weren’t for another significant moment. (Just goes to show you that sometimes you need a few kicks in the pants to get your ass out of bed). That particular event was an e-mail from Billy Parish. I wish I had saved it. It was simple. It was straightforward. Someone reading over my shoulder may have found it to be insignificant. I found it to be monumental. It was in regards to Power Shift. He and the group just decided that they couldn’t wait until next year to do the conference. The time was now. The e-mail said something like this:

“What would you do if you had 5,000 youth at your fingertips?”

Damn that Billy Parish. (And I mean that in the most loving of terms).

This is the stuff dreams are made of. I met Billy in 2003. We both received Udall Scholarships that year and were flown along with seventy eight other scholars to Tucson, AZ for the awards ceremony. I remember him gathering about two or three dozen of us in the conference hall and telling us his desire to build a campus-wide climate change movement. I doubted him. I thought to myself: “Yeah, you say this now, but as the intoxication and energy from meeting everyone comes to an end and people go their separate ways, it’ll be a hard sell.” I was wrong.

The more I spoke with Billy, the more I realized he is a force of nature. I mean really, this kid dropped out of Yale because he was moved by this movement. He realized that this stuff isn’t going to wait for us to graduate.

Shit man, did you read the news today? The Northwest Passage is melted. Polar bears will be a dying species by 2050. Africa continues to get drier. Hurricanes continue to hit harder. It’s not a time to be lazy. It’s a time for action.

Energy Action and The Campus Climate Challenge, (whether you realize it or not), have emerged as a powerful force in this movement. Most of us in it don’t realize it yet. We don’t realize the capacity that we have – as individuals and as a revolutionary movement. I know my own energy and enthusiasm – transferred from Anna’s and Billy’s and others, has been passed on. I know I have given others a sense of empowerment, and in turn, other young leaders are emerging and their willpower and energy serve as fuel for other new leaders. It’s infectious. It’s contagious. It’s inevitable. That’s what keeps me waking up bright and early every day. That’s what makes me believe that this is what I was always meant to do. It’s the most powerful positive feedback loop I’ve ever seen and felt, except this one has the potential to spiral out to infinity.

I call Massimo (a good friend, climate change psychologist at CRED, and one of the members on Power Shift’s communication team) weekly and our energy and enthusiasm transfers so much back-and-forth over the phone that I’m afraid the both of us are going to hop out of our skins from excitement. You need people like this in your life because there are so many naysayers out there who tell you “No, No, No,” “I don’t know,” or “That’s probably not going to happen” all the time. It can wear you down. Frankly, I don’t even care if all of Massimo’s and my ideas get off the ground for Power Shift – but it’s the moment of dreaming up all the possibilities that are rejuvenating. All of them may not get done, but the few that will…are going to be spectacular.


This is the most important thing you will ever do in your life.
If you don’t believe that, then you don’t deserve to be in this movement.

I mean that.

I came to that conclusion over a Power Shift communications call a couple months ago. Someone (I don’t remember who) made the statement that we shouldn’t hold the march on Monday because students would have to go back to school. She wasn’t just speaking for herself, she was speaking for what was on the mind of other students like her. I can’t be angry at a statement like that, because I felt that way at some point in time too. But at that moment, however, I had a raging fit of passion that has not subsided because I have come to the conclusion that this is the most important thing that we will ever do in our lifetime. If you do not think that this is more important than an 8AM biology class, then what on God’s not-so-green earth are you doing? We have got to believe that this is significant because if we don’t, then who else will? How will we inspire others if we cannot lead by example? How will we get people to take ownership if we don’t show them that they can be a part of the solution?

I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the last eight months connecting with people, seeing more colleges sign up to the President’s Climate Commitment, watching the Power Shift story shapeshift with each contribution. The youth climate movement is roiling, boiling magma coursing deep underneath the technological crust of wikis, google docs, e-mail strings, and social networks. We are all little volcanoes – blogging, organizing, speaking, writing, lobbying – from Australia to North America, China to Europe – connected by this magmatic movement.

This is in real time. The movement is alive. It breathes. It’s a story and an action coursing through all of us, waiting to be unleashed. Think about all that untapped energy that lies in each of us still waiting to be opened like Pandora’s Box. My question to you: When will you wake up and realize that we are what fuels the change?

Power Shift is our opportunity to unleash what lays dormant inside of us. We are the movement. We are the people we have been waiting for. This is what we were meant to do.

November 2-5, 2007 – Maryland University, College Park; I’ll see you there.

Labels: climate change, global warming, Power Shift 07, youth climate change, youth climate change movement

green living feature in Shape Magazine

Labels: climate change, climate crisis, global warming, green magazines, Race Against Global Warming, Shape Magazine, Summer Rayne Oakes

John LeKay: Can you please tell me about your interest in Native American culture and how this came about?

Summer Rayne Oakes: When I was about 9 years old, my best friend, Anna and I would take off to the woods behind my house, pretend that we were lost, and "live" off the land. We started tracing back our family history and I found out that I had Cherokee on my mother's side. Anna introduced me to an old book on American Indian medicinal plants and within a few days, I became so engrossed in the cultures.

Labels: "Summer Rayne Oakes, american indian rights, clean energy, climate change, heyoka magazine, Power Shift 2007, youth climate change

Images of old coal (culm) piles in Pennsylvania at Grassy Island Creek

Letter to Pennsylvania Senator, Robert P. Casey, Jr. in regards to the coal issue.


Don't be naughty.
Write your State Senator.

Labels: climate change, coal, energy bill, global warming solutions, no coal, Pennsylvania, write your senate

Write your U.S. Senator.

inspired by Jesse Jenkins - please feel free to use this letter as a template to your Representative. Makes life a little easier - and more time to sift through Vogue's ad pages.

Labels: carbon neutrality, clean energy, climate change, energy bill, no nukes, nuclear energy, nuklear power, Vogue, write your senator

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

Labels: Al Gore, climate change, climate crisis, global warming, global warming solutions, Inconvenient Truth