Green Jobs Drive Younger Voters...And Older Voters Too?

Obviously jobs drive voters of all demographics in this era, but 10K young voters, who supported Obama, gathered at Powershift 2011. They are determined to hold him and the country accountable on the climate and green jobs campaign pledges. Older age groups, who, 20 million strong, began Earth Day, are advised to get organized around Green for 2012 as well.
---

Repost and image source: National
Journal.com
"Green Jobs Will Trump Climate Change for Young Voters
By Olga Belogolova | Monday, April 18, 2011 | 6:04 pm.
In November 2008, an estimated 22 million young people came out to vote for President Obama.
Believing in hope, change and a variety of progressive policies, these young people not only made history by electing Obama, but also as the third-highest showing of young voters, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
Nearly 40 years earlier, Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Gaylord Nelson chose April 22 as the first Earth Day. The specific day, first dubbed “National Teach-In on the Crisis of the Environment,” was selected to ensure maximum possible participation from college students, as it would not overlap with exams or holidays.
Young people today are saying they plan to hold President Obama responsible for his energy and environment record in 2012.
But with gas prices around $4 per gallon, a fragile labor market and a federal budget deficit that should weigh on their shoulders, many other factors may motiviate young voters.
And climate policy might be one of the last things on that voting agenda.
Nevertheless, in recent days, over 10,000 young people gathered in Washington to train leaders in community organizing and to challenge the administration on energy policy as part of Power Shift 2011.
The young climate activists, describing themselves as the “forgotten Obama voters,” heard from former Vice President Al Gore, former green jobs czar Van Jones and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and others over the weekend.
And on Monday, over 5,000 of them gathered for a rally in front of the White House and marched toward Capitol Hill, calling on Obama and Congress to protect the Clean Air Act, reject “dirty energy” sources, and build a clean energy economy.
Organizers of the four-day event said young people are disillusioned with Obama’s slow movement on energy and environment issues.
Following the demise of cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate and this year's push from a Republican-controlled House to upend the EPA's climate rules, young voters were especially disenchanted with Obama’s energy security plan and speech at Georgetown University last month.
“It sounded like something that industry would have written,” said Maura Cowley, co-director of Power Shift, arguing that the Obama’s support of nuclear energy, natural gas, and offshore drilling disappointed many young voters.
The speech prompted an e-mail flurry and “a couple young people said – ‘I just took my `Hope' poster off the wall,’” Cowley said.
Her counterpart, Courtney Hight, co-director of Energy Action Coalition and former Obama campaign staffer, said those disillusioned voters might not show up for the president in 2012.
“We have the votes that brought him in,” she said.
But experts say that Obama’s record on energy issues is neither as bleak as portrayed nor potentially harmful for 2012.
“I don’t know why they should be disillusioned with the guy. He’s doing what he can,” Republican energy strategist Mike McKenna told National Journal.
“The guys blown $100 billion on wind and solar….more than [everybody] else has blown on it combined”
“I think part of being a young activist is that you’re impatient and you should be impatient and we all should be impatient for progress,” added David Axelrod, Obama’s 2012 strategist, saying that progress has been made.
“And there’s no doubt in my mind that whoever is on the other side of the ballet will be much less robust in that regard than us,” Axelrod told National Journal.
“There will be a choice… [and] that will motivate people.”
But the motivation will not necessarily be about climate policy in 2012.
Rock the Vote President Heather Smith said that while candidates shouldn't ignore the concerns of young people, doing so doesn’t mean the youth vote won't show up.
“It’s not ‘We won’t vote for you;’ it’s more ‘We voted for you, so pay attention,’” Smith said.
Though, as the President of Earth Day Network, Kathleen Rogers surely embraces the concept of young people engaged in moving energy and environment policy, she argued that it is a “gigantic mistake” to generalize about young voters.
With young people as the most unemployed age group today, climate change will no longer be the right message on energy issues in 2012, Smith added.
Young voters will be “looking at everything through a jobs lens,” she said. To that end, jump-starting a clean energy economy that creates jobs for these young people will be the most effective way of garnering support for an election campaign.
Jason Skovgard, a senior studying Chemical and Environmental Engineering at UC Riverside, who recently competed with a team for a $75,000 EPA grant, as part of the agency’s People, Prosperity and the Planet Competition, said he “absolutely” wants channel his engineering skills toward developing renewable energy technology.
“I really want to help solve this problem. It’s going to just get bigger,” he said.
Skovgard and teammates Christian Contreras, Marcus Chiu, Steven Chavez, Gregory Hammar, Joon Bok Lee and Trevor Vandergrift created a fuel cell that could generate electricity through a combination of solar power and hydrogen fuel. The University of California Riverside seniors said that they hope to join the clean tech industry when they enter the workforce.
The economic implications of energy policies would resonate most among young people in today’s fiscally focused environment, explained Matt Segal, a young entrepreneur who recently launched Our Time, a membership organization for young Americans.
“It is the most successful argument,” Segal said, adding that the environmental movement would “definitely gain much more momentum when it is tied to an economic argument.”



- Kathleen Connell, M.A.

I am Quoted in Grist: Why Are Gays Green

It bears repeating, or Grist and Unte Reader thought so, I just discovered. In Homo
And Garden (clever) at Grist:
"Kathleen Connell writes in San Diego Gay & Lesbian News, "Our own hampered civil and personal lives mirrors [sic] a disregard for our home planet, which is in crisis from a century of abuse. The mentality that allows desecration of the ecosystem is the same mindset that continues to allow the second-class citizenship of LGBT people everywhere."
Well, that is what I said. Read on for the Grist cross-post. Now why are we Greener?
----
Photo: Jason Pier
A recent poll says gays and lesbians are more likely to support the environment, especially when voting or shopping, and a bigger percentage say they care about sustainability. Here's the breakdown:

55 percent of LGBT adults vs. 33 percent of straight adults say they care a lot about green issues
48 vs. 25 percent consider the environment when shopping
45 vs. 27 percent highly value a political candidate's stance on green issues
25 vs. 17 percent use the environment as a factor when considering a potential employer
Echelon Magazine reported similar findings in 2009: 33 percent of LGBT adults had seen or read An Inconvenient Truth, compared to 20 percent of heterosexuals, and 75 percent of gays believe global warming is happening right now (versus 53 percent of straight adults).

So why are the gays greener? For starters, gay rights and climate change are both human rights issues. Kathleen Connell writes in San Diego Gay & Lesbian News, "Our own hampered civil and personal lives mirrors [sic] a disregard for our home planet, which is in crisis from a century of abuse. The mentality that allows desecration of the ecosystem is the same mindset that continues to allow the second-class citizenship of LGBT people everywhere."

Grist asked those at the helm of several LGBT sites what they thought might be going on:

They're progressive voters in cities. The Advocate Senior Editor Neal Broverman says, "Gay and lesbian people vote progressively, so it seems natural that they would live progressively -- like being 'green,' for example. Also, many LGBT people live in urban areas, which are hotbeds for environmentally conscious ideas and lifestyles."

They're already advocates for social change. Kristin Russo of Everyone Is Gay told Grist, "Despite the fact that 'going green' may not be directly related to issues of sexuality, advocating for change is something with which many in the LGBTQ community have experience." Her partner and site co-founder Dannielle Owens-Reid quips, "It's like, maybe if we focus on going green you won't notice that I'm holding hands with a girl."

They're conscientious. Michael Jensen, editor of After Elton, says, "Growing up gay causes folks to look at the world from the perspective of ... being an outsider. I think that makes people much more aware of how actions ... can affect both other people and, by extension, the environment. We realize how thoughtless actions -- like dropping a homophobic remark without thinking about it -- can hurt a person. So it doesn't seem a leap to be able to know how our actions driving cars and consuming resources can impact the environment."

They're open-minded. Gerod Rody of Out for Sustainability says, "This planet is our home and caring about it is not just a straight-hippie thing anymore ... When I came out, it opened my perspective on the world. I realized how connected we are, whether we like it or not. Once you wake up to your own sexuality there is no going back. The same is true for understanding we can make real progress in the environmental challenges of our time. It may be tough, but together we can see the next generations of kids, whether queer or straight, do more than survive. I know we can see them thrive."

Want more? Here are some resources on same-sex sustainability:

Out of the Closet Queer Sustainability Society, a Victoria, B.C.-based not-for-profit
Green and Gay, a brand-new site highlighting green products from companies supporting LGBT rights
The Advocate on how one biker "aims to spawn a bevy of eco queers"
----


- Kathleen Connell, M.A.

Go Japan!

Maddowblog.com says the loose translation in the cartoon above is "Do Your Best, Japan". In other words, "Go, Girl!".

We need to take this moment and do our best to kick nuclear and dirty energy to the curb.
Please install solar and energy efficiency, and reject nuclear, coal and oil. Let your friends know where you stand! Go Green, Girl!


- Kathleen Connell, M.A.

Scott Walker Shuts Down Clean Energy Jobs In Wisconsin

Cross-post from CAP and Climate Progress.

"Newly elected Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker held an event called “Wisconsin is Open for Business” the day he was inaugurated. But every move the governor makes shows him to be an antibusiness, anti-innovation politician intent on running the state into the ground.

Let’s take clean energy. Clean energy industries offered a glimmer of hope during the past two years in the midst of a national recession that has hit the Midwest particularly hard. In Michigan, for example, total private employment dropped 5.4 percent from 2005-2008, while during the same period employment increased by 7.7 percent among the state’s 358 “green” firms. Michigan’s new governor, Rick Snyder, recognized the growth potential of these industries when he ran on a 10-point plan that emphasized the need to invest in clean energy sectors such as advanced batteries.

In Ohio, too, the green writing is on the wall. New Gov. John Kasich initially sounded off against clean energy, running on a platform that included rolling back the state’s renewable energy standard. But he reversed this position soon after his election when multiple business leaders told him how important green industries were in the Toledo area in particular. The city, which ranked in the bottom 10 by per capita income in 2000, has seen a renaissance as a hub for solar innovation and production. Over 6,000 individuals are employed in these industries in Toledo today, and the city is home to several major solar panel exporters including First Solar and Xunlight.

Gov. Walker, however, has apparently decided that Wisconsin should take a back seat to the Midwest’s green renaissance. The state has enormous potential to generate homegrown energy from renewable resources. Wisconsin has enough wind, solar, and biomass energy resources to produce power equivalent to the entire state’s electricity needs according to Environment America. But the new governor recently proposed a wind turbine siting law that would effectively shut down most wind power production. The new law, if put into effect, would require wind turbines to be set back at least 1,800 feet from any nearby property unless all affected property owners agree to the turbine in writing.

Only one-fourth of Wisconsin’s current wind turbines would ever have been built if this rule had been in place in the past. In other words, 2,250 fewer people would have construction or maintenance jobs, over a million fewer dollars would be flowing to rural communities in the form of land leases, and the 21 manufacturing plants in the state that supply the wind industry would have far fewer orders and would likely be closing their doors.

Gov. Walker is also taking aim at another potential growth sector: high-speed rail. Right now no passenger rail exists between Madison and Milwaukee, which between them house over 75 percent of Wisconsin’s entire population. A high-speed train running between the cities would serve commuters and business travelers, and it would provide a critical influx of visitors to both downtowns. It would also connect Madison to the existing Milwaukee-Chicago train route. Perhaps most important, studies have shown that the line would create over 13,000 jobs, eliminate 780,000 car trips annually, and save Wisconsin residents 2.76 million gallons of gas each year.

Investing in high-speed rail makes sense in Wisconsin. The state’s major university and state capitol are in one major city, but the majority of industry and commerce is in another. Connecting the two would be a major investment in Wisconsin’s future growth.

But Gov. Walker doesn’t see it that way. One of his first acts once in office was to defund the proposed rail line, turning down over $800 million in federal funds to support the project. That’s a lot of lost jobs today and lost revenue tomorrow.

Gov. Walker clearly wants to cut off Wisconsin from the clean tech revolution. But his job-killing, anti-innovation strategies don’t stop at clean energy. Over the past two weeks it has become clear that the governor wants to cut off the state’s entire public-sector workforce at the knees by using a budget battle as an excuse to take away these workers’ basic right to band together and bargain for better working conditions and fair wages.

This isn’t about the state budget. In fact, Wisconsin’s public-sector workers make about 8 percent less in wages than do workers in the private sector who have similar education and experience. And the state’s pension fund has an actuarial funding ratio—the ratio of actuarial assets as compared to liabilities—of nearly 100 percent. That means that the contributions to the state’s pension fund are sufficient to meet the needs of its retirees—in other words, Gov. Walker’s attempt to make this into a budget issue is a red herring.

Gov. Walker’s proposed state budget cuts are instead a transparent attack on public-sector unions, which are a major reason anyone even takes public-sector jobs anymore. Why work a job for less pay than you’d make in the private sector—an extremely demanding job like teaching in public schools or plowing two-foot drifts of snow in minus-20 degree weather—if that job doesn’t provide the stability, health and safety regulations, health and retirement benefits, and basic equality that come with being part of a union?

Gov. Walker undermines the state itself when he undermines public-sector workers. These workers provide essential services that are the backbone of the state’s economy. They educate children. They keep streets clear of snow and garbage. They process permits, cut through red tape, and keep essential city and state services moving.

Take away the benefits these workers have today—benefits that they have bargained for in exchange for lower pay than they might get elsewhere—and the quality of all these services goes way down. The result is a state with worse schools, worse public services, and an educated workforce fleeing to find a better deal elsewhere. In short, a state where no one wants to invest, start a new business, or make a new start."


- Kathleen Connell, M.A.

Vegan...Ellen is on to something

Recently for health benefits our house went vegan, or on a plant based diet. The benefits are enormous and fairly immediate from weight loss to artery self healing and much much more.
Check out "The China Study" for details on benefits. Power vegans from CEO's, to Hollywood. including Ellen, and Bill Clinton are on this diet for a very good reason.

It was only a bit into this that I began to realize after my research just how enormous the impact of plant based diet shifts would have on massive reduction of GHG output. Per the UN and Scientific American...more than transportation or industry! This could be something that is very affordable and has immediate personal and community benefits, with huge impacts but we never talk about it the Green sector as a major thrust. Time to go heat up the vegan chilie which tastes just fine... Friday thoughs...Kathleen
" the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), our diets and, specifically, the meat in them cause more greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and the like to spew into the atmosphere than eithertransportation or industry."
- Kathleen Connell, M.A.

Clean Energy "Party"-- Are We Invited?

An idea is gaining traction. Move from Green education to getting folks involved in electing Green Candidates in 2012. I started trying this out with the SASC and CCSE Green Candidates Forum here in San Diego last fall. Will supporting Green candidates who
are "moderate" (see below) include support for LGBT issues? Is Green enough? Not really, IMHO. But we must do something serious on climate, as Washington is failing us and the planet. No planet, no equality.
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-01-03-new-year-new-idea-for-climate-the-american-clean-energy-party


- Kathleen Connell

Brown Appoints Gay Green As Natural Resources Head

Great news!

Source bar.com
"This week Governor Jerry Brown confirmed reports he would name John Laird, one of the first openly gay men to serve in the state Legislature, as his secretary of the Natural Resources Agency.
It was the first in what is expected to be several high profile LGBT appointments by Brown, who took his third oath of office as the state's top official Monday, January 3.
Laird, 60, represented Santa Cruz in the Assembly for six years before being termed out of office. He lost a bid last summer for a coastal state Senate seat.
Should he be confirmed by the state Senate to the position, Laird will oversee policies that cover everything from logging and water to state parks and farming issues. A longtime environmental activist, Laird is expected to be a vocal opponent of offshore oil drilling, which he fought against when he served as a city councilman and mayor of his hometown.
In Sacramento, Laird helped push through the state's cutting edge climate change law known as AB 32, which regulates greenhouse gas emissions and has been fiercely opposed by oil companies. He was also a main voice for protecting Sierra forests, water conservation and renewable energy while in the statehouse.
Laird is the fifth out person to be appointed to a state position in recent weeks. Prior to his leaving office, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he had selected four openly gay or lesbian people for state boards and commissions."


- Kathleen Connell, M.A.