12,000 students lobby for change

Author: Jaime Fuller

From Feb. 28-March 2, nearly 12,000 college students converged on the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., for Power Shift 2009. The national youth climate change summit offered a chance for student leaders to exchange ideas on how to prevent global warming on both a national and local scale, and offered a plethora of panels, workshops and speakers with experts sharing their knowledge on the issues. The event culminated on Monday with a lobby day at the Capitol, the largest in our nation's history relating to climate and energy policy.

Middlebury demonstrated its fidelity to the environmental cause with a delegation of 194 students, bested by a narrow margin by the University of Vermont's group of 198 students. Middlebury was not only well represented by its youth - several faculty members made an appearance at the weekend's events including Scholar-in-Residence Bill McKibben and Luce Professor of International Environmental Economics Jon Isham.

Isham expressed his enthusiasm for the energy and scope of the conference while moderating a panel titled, "Cap Carbon & Trade? Invest? Auction? Dividend?: A Conversation that Explores all the Options!"

"This is a moment to celebrate," he said. "A pinch-me moment for many of us."

McKibben felt he had to counter some of the overpowering optimism at Power Shift with a dose of urgency and a quick reality check

"I feel like I am being Captain Downer, but it's been my job for a long time," said McKibben, during a panel titled, "The Road to Copenhagen: The Future of International Climate Change Legislation." "The window is starting to close, not just on our species, but on a lot of other species too."

However, McKibben's realism does not stop him from being an outspoken environmental activist. He is one of the creators of the www.350.org movement and he helped organize the mass civil disobedience march at the Capitol Power Plant on March 2, where activists occupied all gates to the government-owned coal-fired power plant.

The panels and workshops catered to people interested in the many facets of the climate change movement, and even offered options that focused on broader social justice issues. Session tracks included campus organizing, skills training, new media, international, green jobs and the economy dismantling oppression, faith and spirituality, as well as many others.

Prominent speakers such as Van Jones, Adam Gardner and Majora Carter were featured in the nighttime program, and were often met with standing ovations and thunderous applause. President Barack Obama's role in the quest for climate change policy was an unmistakable theme of the conference, and many of the speakers and panels focused, or at least mentioned, the new administration.

"We are in the Obama era," said Carter in her keynote address on Friday night. "I have to tell you its not only Obama the president, but Obama the acronym. Obama is an acronym for 'Officially Behaving as Magnificent Americans.'"

The high level of organizing and thought put into the Power Shift national summit can be seen on a local level in the amount of planning required to transport and house 194 Middlebury students 500 miles from campus. Two buses, powered by biodiesel, transported most of the students to and from the conference, and housing was mostly decentralized, with native students offering their homes to friends and others crashing with friends of the family or anybody willing to offer a floor to a Middlebury student.

The aura of youth and change pervaded Power Shift this year, and was especially apparent in the event's reliance on new media and technology to communicate with participants and to share what was occurring at the conference with the rest of the world. In order to know where panels and workshops were being held and to receive updates on changes to the schedule, participants sent text messages frequently throughout the weekend. Speakers, like Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and former mayor of Salt Lake City Rocky Anderson, even called for students to text during their speeches, and the organizers of Power Shift told participants to tag their photos and videos on YouTube and Flickr so they could use participant-generated content for a slide show. Middlebury students also were involved in documenting the conference; Mori Rothman '11 filmed much of the weekend, and plans on posting his video on YouTube sometime next week.

All of the activity on Saturday and Sunday was in preparation for Lobby Day on Monday, where around 5,000 activists overtook the Capitol and pushed their representatives to move quickly to pass climate change legislation. However, the blizzard that struck D.C. on Monday, while not daunting for the energized youth, did prevent several well-known speakers in national government, such as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Markey, from attending. According to Sarah Simonds '11, this did not stop the visit to the Capitol from being an inspiring event.

"We managed to visit representatives from all 50 states, and there were 12 to 50 people at each meeting," she said. "You couldn't walk down the hallways without seeing groups of young people in green hard hats."

An oft-repeated theme at the conference was that the majority of the action taken to prevent global warming would take place not at the conference center or lobby day, but at a local level when participants returned back to their respective campuses. The Middlebury attendees who are also active members of the Sunday Night Group (SNG), the largest environmental group on campus, were positive that they would be able to transform the energy and ideas at the conference into tangible change back on campus.

It's awesome to see so many inspired young leaders in the same place for the same reason," said Nathan Blumenshine '09.5. "Knowing we have 10 percent of the student body that is willing to travel, listen and change their habits for the weekend gives me hope that we can reach the whole campus instead of just SNG."

Many of the Power Shift participants who have never been involved with SNG have already expressed interest to use what they learned in D.C. to help accomplish things in Vermont.

"I always have been interested in the environment