Hill Heat

Today saw thousands of Power Shift participants coming to Capitol Hill for a day of testimony before the House Global Warming Committee, a large rally on the Capitol steps, and perhaps most importantly, hundreds of meetings with staff and legislators.

The youth activists introduced the 1Sky platform and asked for a commitment to the goals of making green jobs, strong emissions cuts, and no new coal top climate legislation priorities. They also called for 100% auction of pollution permits, and for an energy bill with the Senate 35 MPG standard, the House renewable energy standard, the Green Jobs Act, and no coal or nuclear subsidies.

Monday, November 5 will be Power Shift Lobby Day. Following the hearing on youth and climate change, Power Shift members will meet with representatives from 10 am to 5 pm, with a noon rally on the steps of the Capitol, and a Congressional reception at 6 PM.

Speakers at the rally will include:

• Global Warming Committee Chairman Ed Markey
• Rep. Chris Van Hollen
• Van Jones, Ella Baker Center
• former EPA Admin. Carol Browner

Brought to you by the group that did the April 14th event up on the hill, this promises to be the biggest DC event! We will meet at the Lincoln Memorial from 1-3 pm for speakers, video petitions and a whole lot of awareness.

Confirmed speakers include Van Jones, head of the Ella Baker Center, and Dr. Beverly Wright of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.

In I Have a Dream where I’m Biking, bicyclists will be leaving from American University around noon and will be meeting “The Big One in DC” down at the Memorial as they are about to start.

Based on this morning’s listing, as Step It Up 2 gets underway:

HOUSE

Leadership

• Nancy Pelosi (Cal.), Speaker of the House
• Chris Van Hollen (Md.), DCCC Chair

Not participating: Hoyer, Clyburn, Emanuel, Larson, and the Republican leadership

Energy Independence and Global Warming

• Ed Markey (Mass.), chairman
• Earl Blumenauer
• Jay Inslee
• Jerry McNerney

Not participating: Larson, Solis, Herseth Sandlin, Cleaver, Hall, and every Republican

Energy and Commerce

• Tom Allen (Maine)
• Lois Capps (Cal.)
• Charles Gonzalez (Tex.)
• Baron Hill (Ind.)
• Jay Inslee (Wash.)
• Ed Markey (Mass.), chairman of Global Warming Committee
• George Radanovich (R-Cal.)
• Henry Waxman (Cal.), chair of Oversight and Government Reform Committee
• Anthony Weiner (NY)

Not participating: Baldwin, Barrow, Boucher, Butterfield, DeGette, Dingell (chair), Doyle, Engel, Eshoo, Gordon, Green, Harman, Hooley, Matheson, Melancon, Ross, Rush, Schakowsky, Solis, Stupak, Towns, Wynn, and all Republicans except Radanovich

Agriculture

• Mike McIntyre (NC)
• Brad Ellsworth (Ind.)
• Kirsten Gillibrand (NY)
• Steve Kagen (Wis.)
• Nick Lampson (Tex.)
• Joe Donnelly (Ind.)

Not participating: Baca, Barrow, Boswell, Boyda, Cardoza, Costa, Cuellar, Lincoln Davis, Etheridge, Herseth Sandlin, Holden, Tim Mahoney, Marshall, Peterson (chair), Pomeroy, Salazar, Scott, Space, Walz, every Republican

People in italics are sending a representative or a statement of support to a Step It Up event.

On November 3rd Step It Up will gather at places across the country named after historic leaders to demand that our representatives address four key priorities to stop global warming.

They plan to ask every Senator and Representative, and every candidate for those offices, to come to these rallies, along with state and local officials. Once they’re there, we’ll present politicians with the three “1 Sky” priorities prepared in the last few months by climate campaigners across the country. They are:

• Green Jobs Now: 5 million green jobs conserving 20% of our energy by 2015
• Cut Carbon 80% by 2050: Freeze climate pollution levels now and cut at least 80% by 2050 and 30% by 2020
• No New Coal: A moratorium on new coal-fired power plants

On November 2, 2007, thousands of young adults will converge on Washington, D.C. for Power Shift 2007, the first national youth summit to solve the climate crisis. Youth of all backgrounds will use their experience from local and state level climate change movements to create a fresh, positive, and inspiring vision of the future, one focused on our potential to overcome the challenges of the 21^st century, build a clean energy economy, achieve energy independence, create millions of green jobs, increase global equity, and revitalize the American economy.

Power Shift will take the climate movement to new levels. At this conference, leaders of our generation will share ideas, learn new skills, make new connections, establish a national voice for our generation, and send a united message to our national leaders: we are moving beyond the same old special interests, empty promises, and inadequate results to embrace a new paradigm that leverages our strengths and achieves what is possible for our future. Something incredible is happening.

Our organizing committee has set out three ambitious goals:

1. Make the U.S. Presidential candidates and Congress take global warming seriously. It is widely accepted that the next U.S. president must make global warming a priority for us to solve the crisis before we reach a point of no return. With youth voting rates on the rise, we have the opportunity to drastically affect the 2008 Presidential Election and ensure our next president puts us on a path to stopping climate change.
2. Empower a truly diverse network of young leaders. The organizers of Power Shift understand the limitations of mainstream environmentalism and its history of engaging primarily white, highly educated, privileged citizens on the left while leaving behind other communities. We must diversify our movement to include every community in America and shift our culture towards one of sustainability and justice for everyone, addressing traditional racial, ethnic, geographic, and ideological divisions.
3. Achieve broad geographic diversity. We want this convergence to represent nearly every Congressional district in the United States in order to demand scientifically based solutions from all who represent us. Only when this fire is burning in every state of the union with broad awareness and pointed activism from the ground up, will we have the political power needed to take on the fossil fuel industry.

That’s where you come in. To reach our goal of uniting thousands of young people at Power Shift, we need your help. Please share this message with at least ten friends and help grow our movement. The shift starts with you. Become a Campus Coordinator!

Influential leaders will gather for a U.S. Leadership Retreat on Climate Change & a Green Energy Future. This is the second leadership retreat convened by the Garrison Institute designed to help a broad cross-section of leaders and organizations strengthen ties, build the capacity to actually reverse global warming, and coalesce around a positive vision of a prosperous, green and more equitable future.

The emerging climate movement does not lack ideas, leaders, or organizing capacity. It lacks coherence and collective power. Inhibited by institutional imperatives and political constraints, we have not yet aligned ourselves (let alone America!) behind solutions as big as the problem. At the same time, leaders seldom have the chance to pull back from campaigns and projects to take stock of the larger picture together. This retreat has three primary objectives:

• To create an opportunity for some of the most innovative leaders working on global warming & a green economy to meet, share, and explore new opportunities for mobilizing America for real climate solutions;
• To shape, develop and advance the 1Sky campaign to its next stage of development;
• To provide leaders with time to slow down and explore practices that can help deepen vision, gain perspective, and sustain commitment, energy and hope in the face of immense loss.

The retreat will be facilitated by Robert Gass, one of the most gifted facilitators and leadership coaches in the country.

On October 4th, mayors and other local government leaders across the U.S. will convene meetings in their communities to discuss the science and what is needed to solve global warming as part of the first annual National Conversation on Climate Action, an initiative sponsored by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, an international membership association of local governments dedicated to advancing sustainable development and climate solutions through local action; Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and the Association of Science-Technology Centers, an organization of science centers and museums dedicated to furthering the public understanding of science among increasingly diverse audiences.

Toyota, maker of the 46 MPG Prius*, is lobbying against the Markey-Platts fuel-economy bill (HR 1506), which calls for 35 MPG by 2020, and for the significantly more industry-friendly Hill-Terry (HR 2927) as part of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. (An AAM rep has even commented on this site).

NRDC is challenging Toyota on its blog and with its How Green is Toyota? campaign, which asks people to email the Toyota North America president and stop opposing Markey-Platts.

Irv Miller, Toyota North America’s VP of corporate communications, promoted Hill-Terry on the Toyota blog in July and fired back at NRDC in September.

Today, from Thomas Friedman in the New York Times:

Representative Edward Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said to me that Toyota could meet a 35 m.p.g. standard in Japan and Europe today, “but here — even though they bombard Americans with ads about how energy efficient Toyota is — they are fighting the 35 m.p.g. standard for 2020.”

Mr. Markey said he has tried to persuade Toyota that “a lot of people have bought Priuses or Camry hybrids to fight global warming and reduce our dependence on foreign oil” and “they would be shocked to find out” that Toyota is lobbying against the highest m.p.g. standards for America.

In a clearly manipulative move, George Bush is inviting top leaders from around the world to Washington, D.C. on Sept. 27th and 28th to officially convey his “deep concern” about global warming. His proposed fix: more useless “voluntary” measures and huge subsidies for “clean coal” and nuclear energy. The event is clearly meant to undermine real international efforts now underway to achieve mandatory greenhouse gas cuts under the Kyoto process.

Join other concerned Americans in protesting this cynical conference on September 28th from noon-1:00 p.m. We’ll be holding a rally downtown next to the State Department, in the park at intersection of 21st St. and Virginia Ave. NW between D and E.

Register for the rally.

Sponsored by: Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Energy Action, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Oil Change International, SustainUS, the U.S. Climate Action Network, and the U.S. Climate Emergency Council.