emPOWER Brown

Hey emPOWER!  I made this video about the science behind global warming.  I thought you might find it interesting and perhaps want to share it with friends who may not fully understand the science that the activism is based on.  May knowledge shine like an LED light through the darkness of fossil fuel smoke.

Hey all!

In case you haven’t noticed, emPOWER’s rocking a new website and logo these days. Major kudos to Matt Garza ’11 for his hard work over Winter Break. We still have some kinks to work out, but overall, we’re very pleased with the results! Please feel free to browse our various pages… more content will be coming in the next few weeks!

Today returned home the eight Brown students who attended the Pricing Carbon Conference held at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.  Our members included three Brown-RISCC students, three other students from emPOWER, and two more climate conscious Brown students.  I know I can speak for us all when I say that the conference was extremely inspiring and we are now eager to work with the broader RISCC, Brown and Rhode Island community to intensify the movement against climate disruption!

Hosted by the Wesleyan College of the Environment and the Pricing Carbon Campaign, the conference was attended by a number of climate activists and experts from different fields, including two key note speakers, 350.org founder Bill McKibben and leading climatologist James Hansen.   The Massachusetts-based, student-run organization Students for a Just and Stable Future (SJSF) also had a huge role in organizing the conference and about one hundred seventy SJSF students were present.  We helped SJSF revise a declaration that they are writing to send to the UN conference at Cancun and to circulate among student groups across the country.  Once we receive a copy of this declaration, the Brown and Rhode Island community can support the document by becoming signatories.  The declaration lays out what we face from climate disruption, how we as students intend to make a difference, and what we expect from our legislatures (primarily, a national phasing out of all fossil fuels by 2030 and the pursuit of a 350 parts per million carbon dioxide level).

The conference focused on the necessity of putting a price on carbon, particularly through a carbon tax.  A carbon tax would require carbon emitters (such as coal plants) to pay a tax on every ton of carbon dioxide they produce.  These taxes would be collected by the government and then redistributed to the people using “green checks” deposited directly in people’s banking accounts.  These green checks would help to protect working class people from the rising cost of electricity and gas.  The carbon tax itself, however, would work to make renewable clean energies finally more affordable than dirty fuels. I was particularly inspired by sociologist professor Julia Schor, who explained that a carbon tax would not only combat climate disruption but would encourage Americans to adopt lifestyle changes such as working less hours, consuming less, using more public transportation, and refocusing on community.  Other speakers reminded us that carbon taxing alone cannot solve climate disruption.  We will need to provide incentives for innovation, efficiency projects, the development of a green job market AND adjustment programs that will support workers who loose their jobs as the fossil fuel industry collapses.

The conference also emphasized the importance of immediately getting to work building a climate movement with the intensity of the Civil Rights Movement.  Some encouraged us to partake in acts of Civil Disobedience as part of campaigns against fossil fuels – something Students for a Just and Stable Future have already begun to do.  Other speakers pointed out that the issue of climate disruption has become a bipartisan issue in the last decade, and that in order to create a successful movement, we must aim for bipartisan and cross-sector collaboration and see beyond divisions within the environmental movement.

On our car-ride home from the conference we discussed our shared desire to come way from this conference with a plan for action.  Perhaps next semester emPOWER and RISCC could take on an awareness campaign to convey the severity of the climate crisis and to increase support for carbon taxing. For example, we’ve talked about holding a Brown-wide debate through the Janus form to debate a price on carbon.  W.  (What if we tried to get Brown to include an environmental orientation as part of the Freshman orientation lecture serious?) We also discussed working to increase climate-disruption education in Rhode Island public schools.  Through these awareness events we could encourage our communities to take part in day of action, such as a day on which, joining the “Million Letters March,” we write handwritten letters to President Obama in support of a carbon tax.  In addition, we wonder if RISCC would like to get on board with SJSF’s campaign to phase out coal in Massachusetts by 2015 and collaborate with SJSF to organize rallies against the coal plants on the Rhode Island-Massachusetts border.

I found it propped up

against an echo from

when long ago plates

converged and buckled

leaving a sheer face, miniature Appalachians

across the sidewalk. It leaned at an angle, like a cowboy

with his back pressed against the shady wall of a wooden stable

leaving a patch of perspiration. I knelt down and held it between my

thumb and index finger. It revolved back and forth between the two arching

fingers, and the smooth hardness reminded me of those perfect red marbles nestled

and ready between my fingers. Mostly they were just mementos, little globes of nostalgia

that had been passed on to me. But, one time I actually played with my grandfather and found

myself surprised how deeply satisfying it is to feel the release and watch a simple path with breathless

anticipation and the moment of glory when glass strikes glass. Last time my grandfather visited, his mind

could no longer shape ideas into compact spheres. We squeeze mysteries into tiny capsules,

everything from tree to universe. Graceful shape, at its bottom it curved like the

bow of a ship, wooden planks curved into a point to slide through rough water.

I once was told how it could be made into flour. Chop. Drop into boiling water.

Grind.  There is an unspoken gracefulness in the idea that a fallen trinket could

be made into sustenance, that bounty surrounds and all we have to do is open a

small door in the great walls that we have built to close ourselves off, and walk

wherever our feet take us.  Not all who wander are lost: a worn phrase I put on

daydreaming feet and walk through phantasmal trees that talk about when there

were humans who traveled with the earth, they were the first to fall to the axe,

wisdom without pages, knowledge of the living trees. I grab its feathered cap

between thumb and forefinger and give it a twist so I can see what’s inside.

The flesh has rotten away, leaving behind a pockmarked and hollow ideal,

an empty shell.  I wasn’t sure whether etiquette was to hide the fact or

to tell the acorn that even the squirrels have made the switch from

the natural to the trash bin. I’m quite sure that it had tried

its best to turn into a tree lying on the impenetrable

sidewalk.  Dreams need soil to grown, but

that’s something I can’t give.

The best I can do was

whisper a quiet

apology.