When people look back fifty years from now, this administration and Congress will be remembered for Iraq, the mortgage scams, the collapse of the dollar, an era of right wing-ruled politics. Nationally the greatest long term effect may be the shredding of the Constitution. But internationally, the issue that will define this era in the history books will be global warming, the time that the United States, the world's number one greenhouse polluter, fiddled while the rest of the world took action.
With luck, we the people also will be remembered as having saved the world, the United States, the future by stepping up to the challenge and starting the greatest grassroots movement of all time to stop being the problem and to start being the solution.
And it will probably be this coming weekend, at the Power Shift Youth Summit, that will be remembered as the start of the revolution, when the next generation of leaders demanded "a clean and just energy future."
Power Shift is expecting over 6000 students (up from an originally scheduled 2500) to convene from all across the country.
They're unabashed about their goal to spur a movement, one that breaks out of the traditional environmental box that is dominated by liberal white activism and ignores economic and social justice.
Their goals:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
One thing that especially excites me is the Lobby Day on Monday, during with thousands of Power Shift participants, having gone to workshops on lobbying, activism, and action, and having learned all about the science and the issues, will challenge their representatives to take specific action on global warming. I think there will be fireworks.