This past weekend at the Virginia Powershift Conference, more than 100 students gathered to take part in the International Day of Climate Action. We joined people from over 180 countries and 5200 events worldwide to show our support for climate leadership and the need to take action to fight climate change.  Letters were written to Senators Webb and Warner to encourage them to vote for strong federal climate legislation this fall in the Senate.

Check out all of the 350 International Day of Climate Action photos.

The Virginia Power Shift was hosted at George Mason University this weekend. More than 100 students from VA campuses gathered to speak out for climate legislation and participate in workshops including introduction to anti-oppression and creative action planning and several workshops VA-specific such as Virginia's green economy, working toward environmental justice in Virginia, and understanding VA level environmental policy.

NWF's Campus Ecology team tabled at the event with Virginia Conservation Network (NWF's VA state affiliate), Repower America, and other organizations.

The VA Power Shift gave students the opportunity to learn more about the current climate bill in the Senate, learn about actions they can take as citizens to encourage their state leaders to VOTE YES for climate legislation, and probably one of the best parts of the weekend was meeting like-minded students and making new friends.

George Mason University, located in Fairfax, Virginia, is a green campus and committed to reducing their carbon footprint. GMU's President Alan Merten has signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment and their campus sustainability initiatives include purchasing of local foods, recycling, LEED standards for all new buildings, trayless dining, native habitat, and more. Learn more about GMU's commitment to climate leadership at: Office of Sustainability. GMU is also a NWF Campus Ecology member.  

Photo credit: Kristy Jones, Naitonal Wildlife Federation

Over 300 young people and students showed up at Lansing last weekend for Power Shift Michigan, an event intended to give activists, students, and community members a chance to take action on climate issues. Power Shift events are also taking place in other states this fall, such as Virginia and Missouri, all following up from the national Power Shift conference and rally that took place at the beginning of the year and brought more than 12,000 young people to the U.S. Capitol.

During a rally on Sunday, October 11th, Michigan students marched to the state capitol, carrying banners which said, “Senators Stabenow and Levin: We Want Bold Climate Action Now” and “Michigan wants Green Jobs Now.” Participants also signed hundreds of post cards and wrote letters to the two Senators, telling them that the youth of Michigan want strong, comprehensive climate legislation in 2009.

Not content with carrying signs, students also incorporated community service projects into the weekend's activities: 

• A bike co-op was started for the City of Lansing: two days after the conference the Power Shift committee was told that people have already begun to use the co-op for alternative transportation methods
• An urban garden was planted that the Michigan State University students will help maintain
• GreenNation was launched to address social equity through the green movement

Power Shift Michigan was covered by The Collegiate, Central Michigan Life, BusinessLansing, The State News, WLNS, and The Detroit News. The Power Shift Michigan site also has video uploads and blog entries about the event. 

The final event of Power Shift, which took place on a snowy, below-freezing day in Washington, DC, drew thousands of students to the Capitol for pre-scheduled visits to members of Congress.

Christopher Applegate, a Missouri transplant now attending the University of Oklahoma, said that his state has been underrepresented, so he came with a group of ten people to speak with Senator Coburn and Senator Inhofe.

"The biggest issue we’re facing is that they’re trying to get some nuclear energy and some coal plants put up, but Oklahoma already has 708 MW of wind energy and another 126 going on the grid this year, so we're looking for ways to transition to more of that," said Applegate. "Oklahoma has already voted down one coal plant and through grassroots organizing we got rid of another one." He noted that the University of Oklahoma has announced that it will be completely powered by wind energy by 2013.

Lindsay Randall, a graduate of Purchase College in NY who now works as the school's Environmental and Sustainability Coordinator, said, "“It’s incredible, there are 12,000 people here at Power Shift, and that’s just the people who could afford tickets, who could take the time off school. It’s just a fraction of the people who wanted to be here."

The 11 students who came with Randall, most in environmental studies, art and business, went to a meeting with Senator Gillibrand's environmental staffer, Ben Rosenbaum. "When she was Congresswomen, she was a co-sponsor of the state climate act, so we look forward to working with her. I think she’ll be supportive, and that we’re going to be able to make some good progress with her," she said.

Purchase College, a signatory of the President's Climate Commitment, recently completed its greenhous gas inventory. "We're looking at reductions right now," said Randall. "The students are going to be more involved. They learned skills here to organize on campus, and we’re going to do a lot more activism and awareness of federal legislation. We have a really strong non-violent action group on campus, and they’re going to do more."

After the rally and visits were over, many left not for home, but for a protest that ended up at the Capitol coal plant. Carrying signs advocating everything from a no-coal economy to green jobs, students from Power Shift joined groups from Greenpeace, the Chesapeake Climate Action network and other organizations. As they walked, the group of more than 2,500 protestors passed a rival protest from coal supporters that had attracted fewer than 20 people.

Several days earlier, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had announced that the U.S. Capitol Power Plant would be switched to burn only natural gas, a transition that will require significant retrofitting to the equipment that produces 35% of the plant's output from coal. No timeline for this transition has been determined.

During lunch on Saturday, I went from table to table to ask groups of students why they had come to Power Shift and what they were hoping to gain.

Two high school students from Lehman Alternative Community School in Ithaca, NY, were sitting with a friend of theirs who now attends college in Oberlin, OH. Younger than many of the attendees, they were deep in a discussion of the high-speed rail funding in the recently-passed stimulus bill when I interrupted.

At the Lehman school, which brought 16 students to Power Shift, environmental issues are not new. Miroslav Azis, 17, said, "I was at Bioneers By the Bay in October, and I thought it was an amazing experience. My ecology class back at school picked up on this and thought we should go to Power Shift. It’s great to meet people here who are like-minded. We’re still high school students, so we’re drawing a lot from those who are in college, who have already taken economics and other classes, and can talk about it in the workshops."

Lukas Friga, also 17, interjected. "I’m not the most active person in terms of political stuff, but I’m getting a lot out of the workshops that are more about information. I want to go into international relations, so the panels on what’s going to happen at Copenhagen are really interesting to me." He went on to describe other workshops he wanted to attend, most of which were academic in nature, rather than personal. Avis agreed that "there aren't any workshops on how to 'be green.' They're on what issues come up in making green things happen."

When asked what they were planning to take away from the conference, all three said that they hoped they would be better at talking to people who might not be interested in mingling with the environmentalists and social-justice advocates at Power Shift. "This is more of a cultural gathering than anything else," said Friga. "But we need to be able to pull in everyone. Hopefully, we can learn the skills here to go back and talk to the people that don’t want to hug trees. If you say, I know this area is losing jobs, what if you were all to work in x, y, z that’s more sustainable? That’s going to hit a lot more. You don’t want to be a treehugger, you want to be able to say that your ideals have all these logical supports to them, and that’s what we’re here to learn."

Miriam Rothenberg, who attended Lehman last year but now goes to college in Ohio, felt strongly that the impact of Power Shift wouldn't be felt this weekend, but as students dispersed to their separate schools. "There are a lot of people on my campus that are apathetic," she said. "But here I feel like we’re really a force. We have the numbers, and we have the drive, and we have the science to back us up. We all have different backgrounds, but there’s a sense of drawing together to be one unified movement, and then going back out to make all of this happen."

Power Shift, a conference and lobby event that aimed to bring 10,000 young people to the Capitol to take action on climate change and environmental degradation, took a turn for the socially-aware at last night's opening keynote speeches.

Almost 12,000 t-shirted twenty-somethings filed into the hall, sometimes breaking out into spontaneous cheers or songs. About 2,000 more people had registered than Jessy Tolkan and other members of the Energy Action Coalition had hoped, and they filled the room to capacity. Buses were unloading more groups from colleges and youth groups all over the country until just before the session opened. The event is being cited as the largest gathering on climate change and clean energy in the history of the US; more people are in attendance here than were at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali in December 2007.

For a group that considers itself the most tolerant and most diverse environmental movement in the nation, it was no surprise that opening speakers didn't restrict their remarks to increasing atmospheric CO2 or ocean acidification. Instead, Lisa Jackson of the EPA, Ken Salazar of the Department of the Interior, Majora Carter, Mayor Rocky Anderson, Van Jones, Clayton Thomas-Muller and others elaborated on the idea that environmental work cannot be delegated to any one group, nationality or ethnicity.

Majora Carter, an environmental activist from the South Bronx who has spent years on a "Greening the Ghetto' campaign, told stories of the pollution in the neighborhoods where she grew up, and the diabetes, asthma, and other health problems caused by manufacturing and energy plants in the Bronx. "Our pollution-based economy is built on the subsidies on the health of poor people," she said. She urged the audience to put a stop to mountaintop coal removal and other community-harming sources of fuel, to meet opponents with love and companionship, and find safe, fair work for those currently employed in coal or other industries. "Environmental justice," she said, "is civil rights for the 21st century."

Overwhelmingly, the crowd signaled their commitment to working with government and other organizations to find solutions to climate problems. One of the loudest cheers of the night went to Ken Salazar, who promised that the Department of the Interior would "appoint thousands of young people to restore America. We'll have the best youth conservation corp the world has ever seen!"

Van Jones also noted the importance of "adding to the world" rather than taking things out of it. "If all we do is take away the dirty powers in the system and stick a solar panel on it, but don't deal with our water, or the way we treat each other, we'll have biofueled bombers, and be fighting over lithium for the batteries," he said. "We can be locusts or we can be honeybees," he finished. "Will our work be a scourge on this planet or a blessing on this generation?"

I'm counting the days until the end of February – and not just because it'll be closer to spring. In a few weeks, I'll be joining 10,000 of my peers at Power Shift 2009 in Washington, DC. -- to talk climate and lobby Congress members to enact the clean energy policies our country needs now.

Environmental conferences take place all the time, but what sets this one apart for me is the chance to see all types of young people with separate interests but a common goal: to take our country's energy economy in a new direction. This year, you'll see high school kids on their gap years and graduate students wrapping up their theses; students from abroad and students who never left the US. They may have different environmental interests, but they all know what's at stake: their futures.



When students gather to discuss global warming at this year's conference on Feb. 27th- March 2, they'll also get a crash course in conservation. They'll discuss how and why some parts of their states are drying, wetlands are shrinking and wildlife species are approaching extinction. They'll strategize on restoring our natural resources for themselves and their children.

Most importantly, they'll be able to pass that knowledge onto their elected officials, urging Congress to make a way for a clean energy economy that they will soon lead – one that will preserve our land and its inhabitants for the future.

Check out the Power Shift blog to hear more about why others are planning on attending --- and keep the momentum going by registering yourself. More students and young people have already committed to attend than Power Shift 2007, and I hope to see you there!