October 6, 2008
by Bobette Riner, Houston
If something has 78% of the nation's approval, it's not an act of rebellion.
More than three-fourths of the country has told pollsters they want clean, renewable sources of energy. Perhaps that has helped the Energy Action Coalition (EAC) use more mainstream organizing tactics, as it reflects that majority will.
When the group began, it sponsored public protests and Fossil Fuel awards on April Fools' Day. It now unites 48 organizations, more than 600 local groups, and tens of thousands of young people in the US and Canada .
Its youth voter campaign, Power Vote, has hit the campaign trail. The non-partisan organization set up 30 9-foot-tall windmills at the University of Mississippi campus where the first debate was held for 2008 presidential candidates.
Power Vote hopes to turn up the volume on the issue of the climate in this year’s campaign and attract and mobilize as many as a million young climate voters.
"Our landscape ought to be dotted with wind turbines and solar installations instead of coal and nuclear facilities," asserts Jessy Tolkan , director of the Energy Action Coalition's Power Vote campaign. "These windmills are a monument to the clean and just energy future that youth deserve and demand."
Between each debate, the Power Vote Presidential Tour Bus will stop at college campuses along the way to mobilize students to take the "Power Vote Pledge" to "vote for clean and just energy."
The Campus Climate Challenge was the first major program undertaken by EAC, and it's been wildly successful, spokeswoman Brianna Cayo Cotter said. Within three years we wanted youth to have demanded -- and gotten -- commitments from 1,000 schools to become climate neutral. Right now, we have over 550 schools signed on and counting."
Just before that Sep. 26 presidential debate, more than 144,000 young voters had taken the Power Vote Pledge.
"Young people are already successfully fighting for a clean energy future on their campuses and in their communities," said Reagan Richmond, a Power Vote student leader at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. "We need an economy that moves us beyond dirty energy, creates green jobs for all, and secures our climate. As we head to the polls in record numbers this November, that's what we'll be voting for."
Bobette Riner, Houston
