Youth Summit brings large next steps for NC

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This year’s conference included 2 and a half days of speakers, panels, and workshops that addressed the issues of energy, climate change, and environmental justice. Throughout the weekend all participants discussed topics or importance and attended hands on workshops that empowered and inspired them to return to their communities and campuses ready to implement the changes necessary to build a just and sustainable energy future. Conference speakers include inspiring leaders from throughout the southeast who’s work is making this future a reality.

Very Special Thanks goes to our Asheville conference sponsors:Buddha Bagels , Rosettas, Greenlife, The Hop ice cream parlor, Amazing Savings, Over Easy, and French Broad Food Co-op. Your donations of foods and goodies went a long way and everyone really apprecaited the donations. Thank you for supporting sustainability efforts and this generatiosn endeavors to create a just and sustained future!!

Thanks also to our on-site support team, AASHE students, UNC Asheville, HighSmith Student Union personnel.

South Carolina Youth Deflate Dreams of New Coal

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control doesn’t know how to handle all the young people coming out and speaking out against Santee Cooper’s proposed “Pee Dee Energy Campus,” a pretty euphamism to mask Santee Cooper’s dirty ambitions for a 600 MW pulverized coal plant on the banks of the Great Pee Dee River. Nor did the crowd of Santee Cooper subsidized supporters know how to handle us. Speaker after speaker tried to undermine the intentions of the twenty young people present by meanly accusing us of being there for school credit or by leveraging age as an indicator of intelligence.

However, the youth message was wildly different. Ten young people got up to speak last night and made public comments urging DHEC to deny Santee Cooper a 401 Water Quality permit that they need to build an intake and discharge structure on the Great Pee Dee River. Our message was one of unity, of shared hopes and common needs. In a community that desperately needs jobs, in a state with growing energy demands, young people challenged Santee Cooper, looking CEO Lonnie Carter right in the eye, to be a national leader and a real force of innovation for the state. Communities should not have to be sacrificed at the alter of energy demands, especially when there are healthy, clean alternatives.

Santee Cooper’s coal plant would: emit 93 lbs of mercury into an environment already overburdened by high mercury levels, destroy 92 acres of wetlands, create toxic ash dumps on the banks of a large fresh water source, employ 100 people and perpetuate the devastation of Appalachian communities. A 3% increase in statewide energy efficiency efforts would eliminate the “need” for the coal plant and serious investment in clean energy would create tens of thousands of jobs across the state. Santee Cooper has a choice to make and South Carolina’s youth will not settle!!

Huge Legal Ruling Blocks All US Coal Development

this is huge!  still trying to determine exactly what it means for the coal plants that we’re currently fighting, but hopefully it will help slow and eventually stop all of them!!

BREAKING NEWS: The Sierra Club just won a HUGE legal victory in a coal permitting case at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Appeals Board.

The ruling in the Bonanza coal plant permitting case (pdf) ruled with the Club’s lawyers that since the Mass. v EPA Supreme Court ruling said Carbon Dioxide is a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, new coal-fired power plants must implement “Best Available Control Technology” (BACT for short) for CO2.

While the Sierra Club’s legal team and other lawyers are still determining the full implications of the decision, it appears that this decision will essentially stop all new coal plant permitting dead in it’s tracks for at least a year as EPA decides what BACT means in the context of CO2.

http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2008/11/13/huge-legal-ruling-blocks-all-us-coal-development/

NC is getting out the Power Vote!

by Russell Anderson, NC Campus Organizer for Southern Energy Network

Despite the day’s light rains, thousands of people are standing patiently in line to vote around Chapel Hill and Raleigh, North Carolina. Last night in Chapel Hill, more than 1500 door hangers got distributed to students and community members reminding them to use their civil liberties today and Get Out the Power Vote. UNC Asheville continues to Get Out the Power Vote by flyering the dorms with hundreds of Power VOTE door hangers and by partnering with other campus groups to direct people to the polls.

At NC State University, Energy Action Coalition Staff and the BioTour.org crew are talking with students

about the importance of voting and offering free, waste vegetable oil powered bus rides to the polling stations around campus. At UNC Chapel Hill, get out the vote coordinators have hired bicycle rickshaws to offer students climate friendly rides. It’s a similar story across the state and around the country. So many people are helping because so many of us realize how important this election is, how important it is for our voices to be heard and that now is the time to deliver a strong message to our representative’s that we are the force that will usher in a better way of doing things. We will not be silenced.

The power that our vote will have this election is going to be monumental! Don’t let a little rain stop you! We all need to do our parts today and every day to hold decision makers accountable for making sure the world is a better place.

Remember, a little rain never hurt anybody! Get out there and Power Vote!

Power Vote Y’all

by Stephanie Powell, Southern Energy Network Field Director

Making History in the Dirty South

Across the South students have been gearing up for today! We know our region is a huge part of the climate problem and that’s why we’ve been working our tails off all fall to get voters to the polls.

In the past 15 days I’ve been on campuses in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina. I’ve ended the whirlwind tour at the University of Florida. On Saturday 47% of registered voters here in Alachua County had already voted. Since 7 this morning students have been filing to the polls by the hundreds. Campus is green with Power Vote “bike hangers.”