Energy Action Youth Leadership Summit
Energy Action Youth Leadership Summit
Rating: *****
A whirlwind of activity. 12 hour days. Packed agendas. (Com)passionate people. 80+ amazing young activists- surpassing my every expectation of the ability of youth.
General Information about Energy Action
Energy Action is a coalition of 17 organisations from across North America – all either youth-led or with an active youth engagement within the organisation – focussing on climate change and related issues such as renewable energy and environmental justice. The specific areas people focus on in the work of their individual organisations varies widely from university student organisers – demanding clean renewable energy on their campus – to indigenous youth activists fighting dirty energy projects in their communities, and youth working on the Jumpstart Ford campaign, pressuring the USA’s biggest auto manufacturer into improving fuel efficiency (which with bigger and bigger SUV’s instead of small efficient cars, is now no better than it was in the 1930s). Work on the coalition began about a year ago, and it was officially launched in June 2004. It has been gathering momentum since then, and the conference this week – setting the direction for the work of the coalition – attracted over 80 youth from across the USA and Canada. Together we defined the major campaigns that energy action will be undertaking throughout the course of the next few months, we agreed upon the general structure of the organization and elected a council and steering committee.
Climate Justice
In the words of Clayton Thomas-Muller, Oil and Gas campaigner for the Indigenous Environmental Network, “climate change is the civil rights issue of our generation”. Across North America, communities of colour, indigenous and low-income communities are being directly and disproportionately affected by the pollution from dirty energy generation such as coal-fired and nuclear power plants. Around the world, it is the communities who have already been so horrifically affected by the environmental and social consequences of fossil-fuel extraction to feed the addiction of the over-developed countries, that will bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change. In recent years, many governments, and some mainstream environmental organisations have failed to take into account the social injustices associated with climate change – this has even led to the promotion of scientifically dubious ‘solutions’ to climate change that . Recognising this organisers and participants at the summit worked hard to push Environmental Justice to the fore- front of the participants minds. Environmental Justice was a theme at the EA summit. We adopted The Climate Justice Declaration. The document was created in a workshop at the Environmental Justice Conference, it is a compilation of 3 other documents. There are 14 principles that EA will form the core values of the network.
Structure
The network is considered to have an organic, continually developing operational structure. There are 7 major players, they operate via consensus. The council,consisting of the membership, defines the goals, priorities and direction for Energy Action. The steering committee makes with day-to-day decisions to do with the operation of the network, they are mandated to carry out the decisions defined at the summit. As for staff, not enough funding has materialized to hire any staff members- so we haven’t specifically defined their roles yet. Regional networks are based upon the needs of the region. There are 4 campaign committees; political, campus, corporate and community.
Campaigns
I focused on the campus campaign committee, so my knowledge of the other proposed campaigns isn’t deep. The major campus campaign is the “challenge”. The purpose of the challenge is to collectively achieve an emissions reductions goal. Campus groups will be encouraged to share experiences and reward actions with regards to emissions reductions. Actions such as completing a retrofit and buying green energy will count as an emission reduction. Education and audits will be tallied in some other way. Our first step is to decide on an emissions reduction goal. The corporate committee is pushing for lower emissions vehicles. It is involved with the Ford Campaign. Campus and Corporate campaigns will coordinate efforts in general and especially on Fossil Fools day. The Political committee is primarily concerned with organizing around Kyoto coming into force on February 16th and the US Energy Bill.
Next Steps for Elissa
-Set up a conference call for Canadian delegates to debrief.
Attend campus committe conference calls
Talk to Laura about YENs participation on the council.
- Report back to YEN/YRTE/SYC
- Write something on co2zilla about the conference- as a story.
- Do workshops on EA for OPIRG-Guelph and Guelph Renewable Energy Group.
- Help Alysia plan for YC3. Do a workshop about EA.
- Keep up involvement with Renewable Energy Group of Guelph Students for Environmental Change. Prepare for Board of Governors meeting in March, propose 11 million $ retrofit. Work on student Levy for green energy at university.
- Work on Campus Challenge.
- Help Jessica work on the structure of the Artic Youth Council
- Strengthen my position at CSD 13 re: links between future human settlements and climate change.