Every week, tons of groups come out with great videos about the climate crisis. Some focus on youth activism, some are just plain funny, while others are compelling more than any before. I’ll try to share the best ones with you all in a semi-weekly blog post. Happy viewing!
Fist off, legislators and the media love to say that people don’t support climate legislation even though every poll and common sense show the opposite. Check out the RepowerWall and add your voice to demonstrate the unstoppable avalanche of support for ending the climate crisis:
Can you imagine if every child in the world knew how much older generations are dragging their feet on climate? I can’t, but fortunately Moms Against Climate Change did the thinking for me, check it out:
And finally, exposing corruption. Dunno if you heard, but a bunch of coal industry lobbyists were recently caught red (green?) handed for sending fake letters to congresspeople from groups of color in opposition to the climate bill. As much as most of our reaction would be to punch them in the face, the Avaaz Action Factory one-upped them by wearing astro-turf suits and shaking the culprit’s hands. Check out these courageous fighters:
On Saturday, people in over 181 countries gathered in solidarity for the International Day of Climate Action. With nearly 5,200 events taking place around the world, most news sources credit it to be “the most widespread day of environmental action in history”.
The international day of climate action was coordinated by 350.org, an international campaign dedicated to resolving the climate crisis. 350 represents the amount of CO2 emissions that scientists have identified as the safe limit for our atmosphere—we are currently around 390.
The event in our nation’s capital began at Malcom X Park where performers and speakers, including Reverend Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus, Danish Ambassador to the U.S. Friss Peterson, and Mike Tidwell, the Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, spoke out on the crisis facing our environment and the need for action by our leaders. Despite the pouring rain, hundreds of people marched from Malcom X Park to Lafayette Park to show their support, declaring “Rain or Shine, Now’s the time, We got 350 on our mind”.
At Lafayette park, the hundreds to supporters rallied by forming a circle of hope with a banner signed by 1,200 students from across the country. While this began as a grassroots movement, the time has come to demand action by our leaders. As mentioned in the post below, a conference will take place in December in Copenhagen where world leaders will determine solutions to the climate crisis and hopefully craft a new global treaty. The next step is to make sure that President Obama attends the conference and is one of the leaders in resolving the current climate crisis.
No, the purpose of the trip is not to convince the Olympic committee to reconsider Chicago for the Olympic bid. I am going to Copenhagen in December because the United Nations is convening a conference to decide the fate of our climate and the next steps for the Kyoto Treaty.
Interesting fact #1: The United States is the only developed nation never to have ratified the Kyoto treaty.
Young people from throughout the world will be convening to make the case for climate justice and show the faces of the people who will be affected the most: our generation. I will join these climate activists and provide support to their efforts.
Interesting fact #2: The United States has one of the highest per-capita emissions in the world, especially when you exclude small petroleum exporting countries.
In Copenhagen I will bring the energy, enthusiasm, and ideas of the Campus Progress Network, I will be blogging on Funding Our Future to let you all know about how progress is looking on the ground, and I will be working with fellows from the Center for American Progress to try to influence the direction of the negotiations.
If you have any ideas, thoughts, or questions about the trip, please leave a comment. I will be convening a conference call for Campus Progress Network members as we get closer to my departure, hope to see you all there!
“A Woman Is Not a Pre-Existing Condition.” So declared the T-shirts sported by several of the (mostly female) audience members at Thursday’s Senate hearing addressing the urgent problem of gender-based discrimination in the health insurance system. During Congress’ struggle over the past months to pass effective health care reform, this is one vital issue that has been falling between the cracks. Stopping unequal treatment of women by health insurers seems like a no-brainer initiative – one that we should have dealt with years ago – but it has not gotten the public attention it deserves.
In thirty-eight states, it is legal for insurance companies to charge women astronomical premiums compared to those for men, and to treat pregnancy and domestic violence as “pre-existing conditions.” A 2008 report published by the National Women’s Law Center shows that “insurers who practice gender rating charged 40-year-old women from 4% to 48% more than 40-year-old men.” Additionally, in eight states plus the District it is legal for insurers to refuse coverage to a woman because she has been/is being domestically abused. This practice especially, in which women are punished for being victims, is a horrific measure of how unjust our current system is.
Yesterday morning Campus Progress attended the House Subcommittee for Education and Labor hearing on “Ensuring Student Eligibility Requirements for Federal Aid”. The hearing addressed how colleges and universities administer and enforce student eligibility requirements for federal financial aid.
In recent years, the Department of Education has begun auditing recipients of financial aid in order to ensure that the eligibility requirements are being enforced. They discovered that this was not the case and there were several incidents of fraud.
Testimonies at the hearing were given by Harris Miller, CEO/President of the Career College Association, Mary Mitchelson, Acting Inspector General of the Department of Education, and Robert Shireman, Deputy Undersecretary of the Department of Education. Mr. Miller set the tone of the discussion by stating that “there is no room for cheating in the rules of higher education”.
Cases of fraud [PDF] were found to be most common in ATB (Ability to Benefit) testing. The ATB test is administered to students who did not receive a high school diploma but wish to pursue a secondary education with federal financial aid. Mr. Miller presented evidence of cases where test administrators have given answers to students to ensure that they pass the test. Mr. Shireman argued that “this lack of oversight has resulted in fraudulent access to federal aid which questions the integrity of higher education”. The issue of online coursework was also of concern. Mrs. Mitchelson argued that fraud is common among students who take online courses, stating that the “online context has a lot of ambiguity of who is participating for what purpose”.
Federal financial aid plays a very important role in the ambitions of students, especially those students who don’t have the resources to attend college. The issue with ATB testing and online courses, however, is that they are often provided by for-profit schools which means they are profit driven and their intentions are not in the best interest of the student. These schools are constantly in trouble for aggressive recruiting practices. They make tons of money by recruiting as many people as possible while the students who don’t finish their courses end up in enormous amounts of debt.
Campus Progress is currently working to fight issues like these in our Students Over Banks campaign. If you want to learn more about this campaign, go to http://www.studentsoverbanks.org/
The winner of this year’s Solar Decathlon was just announced today and for the second year in a row, it’s the Germans.
If you haven’t been following this amazing event, the Solar Decathlon is amazing and probably the only fun thing that comes out of the Department of Energy (mind, I said fun, not ‘not nerdy’). Every 2 years, 20 schools from around the world challenge each other to build the most energy and water self-sufficient house. Participants build the homes in their own communities, disassemble them, and rebuild them on the Capitol Mall for the week-long event where they are judged on 10 categories:
If you are in D.C., go down to the Mall this weekend and check them out. If you aren’t you should check out the pictures and the website.
As Adam Siegel argues at Get Energy Smart Now!!!, Germans had it easy due to the impressive renewable-friendly policies* that they are subject to at home. Feed-in Tariffs especially have been responsible for rapidly increasing the market viability of solar panels (feed-in tariffs force utilities to pay a fixed rate above market price for unused power produced by renewable energy). This gave the German team an incentive to cover their house with solar panels, whereas teams from the United States had to decide whether to prioritize solar production (”Net Metering”) or cost of the house (”Market Viability”).
It is time to set up similar renewable energy incentives in the United States to promote decentralize energy production, put more money in our pockets, create millions of domestic jobs, and reduce our carbon emissions.
* Check out this map of solar energy potential in the United States and Germany. It doesn’t make any sense for Germany to be the world leader in solar energy production when we have so much more potential than they do.
The Government of the Maldives is getting antsy. While the international community is discussing CO2 reduction targets that fall way short of what’s needed, the Archipelago-State is already dealing with the first signs of sea level rise.
The current proposals on the table would allow concentrations of CO2 to rise to 450 parts per million (ppm), giving us a 50-50 chance of preventing catastrophic climate change. 50-50 doesn’t sound like good odds to gamble the future of human civilization, right? At 450 ppm, temperatures would already be high enough to doom Island Nations like the Maldives. Imagine knowing that your whole country is about to be slowly drowned by the ocean while the countries that caused the problem in the first place discuss ’solutions’ that only help themselves.
The Diver Association of the Maldives is committed to preserving their homes and coral reefs. They joined 350.org – an international movement to reduce CO2 concentrations to 350 ppm and guarantee a stable atmosphere – and shot this fantastic video. Check it out:
On October 24th, the International Day of Climate Action, President Nasheed and his whole cabinet will join the divers and hold an underwater cabinet meeting to show the Maldives’ destiny if the climate negotiations will result in a weak treaty.
Why is this relevant to Funding our Future? Island States aren’t the only places vulnerable to sea level rise. The same CO2 concentration that would doom the Maldives would have a devastating effect on Florida, New York City, New Orleans and the rest of coastal United States. A future where we have to abandon our cities isn’t the future that our generation deserves. We need more than a 50-50 chance, we need 350ppm.
Isn’t it clear? ‘Clean Coal’ is the process of taking the CO2 and making it disappear somewhere! As John Hodgman from the Daily Show would say: Climate change? Solved!
* Disclaimer, this post refers to ‘Clean Coal’ based on definition #345 – Carbon Capture and Sequestration. To read more about the thousands of different meanings that the term ‘Clean Coal’ can conveniently have depending on what’s convenient for the coal industry, check out this post.
These newly organized conservative town hall disruptors are old, loud and irrationally angry. They are showing up at every political event claiming to represent the majority of voters, while progressives are struggling to catch up.
Will we let them speak for us? Will we let them stop progressive legislation, keep college out of reach for millions of our peers, keep putting road blocks on our path to a clean energy economy, and keep us in a corrupt and dysfunctional health care system?
As you can see in the video, if you don’t speak up, they will! This week I am calling my Senator and my Representative to demand that they cease compromising on our future. Will you join me?
This post was written by Erica L. Williams, Deputy Director of Campus Progress
As a young person dealing with a dramatically depressed economy, I wish that I had the luxury of viewing our current crisis as simply a matter of dollars and cents. As a member of the most diverse generation in American history (the Millenial generation) who voted on a platform of unity, I wish that I could discuss the solutions to the crisis as equally beneficial to all Americans. And as an unabashed supporter of large, progressive investments in our education, health, and energy sectors, I wish that I could judge the success of Obama’s work in these areas, particularly as it pertains to job creation, only in numbers.
But as a person of color, the staggering statistics released daily about the state of our national economy become that much more disheartening when viewed in color and through the lens of race.
The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, issued a report last week analyzing racial and ethnic jobless rates in the 50 states. It said the 18-month recession has erased many recent gains for minorities because manufacturing, construction and trade jobs, often the easiest for them to obtain, are melting away.
Funding our Future is a campaign to pass a progressive federal budget for 2010 and ensure that our nation.s key economic choices invest in our education, spark reform of our health care system, and address climate change through cap and trade and clean energy investments. Click here for more info.
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Young people from throughout the world will be convening to make the case for climate justice and show the faces of the people who will be affected the most: our generation. I will join these climate activists and provide support to their efforts.
“A Woman Is Not a Pre-Existing Condition.” So declared the T-shirts sported by several of the (mostly female) audience members at Thursday’s Senate 
The winner of this year’s 
The Government of the Maldives is getting antsy. While the international community is discussing CO2 reduction targets that fall way short of what’s needed, the Archipelago-State is already dealing with the first signs of sea level rise.
This post was written by Erica L. Williams, Deputy Director of Campus Progress