Things have been so busy with AYCC I haven’t had much time to write for a while. Our ‘Targets Tag Team’ campaign is ramping up, as there is now only 3 weeks until Rudd announces his carbon pollution reduction targets for 2020. And we’ve been doing high schools workshops (see pic below), employing young organisers to work on Power Shift (the national youth climate summit to be held in April next year) and sending our youth delegation for the UN Climate Talks in Poland this December.
But I wanted to quickly share this with you all; an op-ed from Al Gore today in the NY Times:
But in every case, the resources in question are much too expensive or polluting, or, in the case of “clean coal,” too imaginary to make a difference in protecting either our national security or the global climate. Indeed, those who spend hundreds of millions promoting “clean coal” technology consistently omit the fact that there is little investment and not a single large-scale demonstration project in the United States for capturing and safely burying all of this pollution. If the coal industry can make good on this promise, then I’m all for it. But until that day comes, we simply cannot any longer base the strategy for human survival on a cynical and self-interested illusion.
Here’s what we can do — now: we can make an immediate and large strategic investment to put people to work replacing 19th-century energy technologies that depend on dangerous and expensive carbon-based fuels with 21st-century technologies that use fuel that is free forever: the sun, the wind and the natural heat of the earth.
And on young people and the climate movement:
In an earlier transformative era in American history, President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon within 10 years. Eight years and two months later, Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. The average age of the systems engineers cheering on Apollo 11 from the Houston control room that day was 26, which means that their average age when President Kennedy announced the challenge was 18.
This year similarly saw the rise of young Americans, whose enthusiasm electrified Barack Obama’s campaign. There is little doubt that this same group of energized youth will play an essential role in this project to secure our national future, once again turning seemingly impossible goals into inspiring success.
I worked on the Obama for New Hampshire primary campaign; it was amazing, and I’m privileged to have also worked closely with the Energy Action Coalition, who ran Power Vote. Definitely check it out.
