Decompressing and Uniting.

It is the end of first full day of workshops at Power Shift. With the spectrum of themes present in the workshops as well as the keynote speakers it has brought me to question the nature and unity of the solutions for which we are advocating. I have come to Power Shift with a more discerning eye of  what we are asking for as a movement. I question the true cohesion of the movement and hope to use this time as a place for discourse about the efficacy of the vision as well as the scope of the changes we desire.

Three very passionate and admirable people spoke as keynote speakers. They included Lisa Jackson, the current head of the EPA, Bill Mckibben, the founder of 350.org, and Tim DeChristopher, an activist who recently was convicted for disrupting a Bureau of Land Management drilling land auction by falsely procuring thousands of acres of land to save them from corporate energy interests.

Lisa Jackson gave an inspirational but limited speech emphasizing the accomplishments of the EPA and the support of the Obama administration. While emphasizing the EPA's responsiveness to the concerns of the public, her speech was interrupted by a number of Power Shift participants demanding an end to Hydrolic Natural Gas Fracturing. They began a chant "No Fracking Way!' which was picked up seemingly by the thousands of attendees in the audience. While Lisa Jackson acknowledged the protesters, she did not address their concerns or speak on the issue. Personally, while I acknowledge that her purpose for speaking at the conference was to promote the EPA as an ally, I did not feel that she did acknowledge the reciprocity of the relationship. While we should indeed celebrate the accomplishments of the EPA, they are also in a very precarious situation given the antagonism to the agency by the Congress. I felt it would have been helpful to acknowledge the current political climate and speak how a huge youth coalition can work alongside the EPA as an ally to their platform.

Bill McKibben spoke next and eloquently expressed the gravity of our situation and the necessity for a global commitment to reducing the carbon content of the atmosphere. He was the most well received of the three which was not surprising considering the creative and dynamic nature of the movement he created. he expressed frustration with the pace of our progress but remained largely positive. Overall, he promoted a solutions based approach that seemed to coincide with the wider continuum of environmentalism represented by the Power Shift participants,

The last speaker, Tim DeChristopher, was the most significant for me as well as the one that had the greatest disparity in reception of his remarks. He unequivocally called for a radical individual commitment to the cause. He said that in the current situation, the change required is not going to happen on a time frame that is convenient for us. It is not going to coincide with our plans for graduation or our internships. His actions demonstrated that a single committed individual has the ability to affect incredible change. His history was also significant because it created challenge to the current system rather than working within it, which was advocated for by the previous speakers.

To have all of these speakers in the same space, all with a common goal and widely differing opinions to the nature of advocacy defines the dilemma of the environmental movement.

Is the political system too broken to be a part of the solution?
What is our role as students? Is the consumption of resources and intake of knowledge a real contribution to finding  solution to climate change or are we called to more immediate and radical action?

I end this day in awe of the task of imagining this new reality. I currently believe the monumental nature of the task before us demands creativity and innovation beyond the limited scope of our legal system. Through challenging our current reality and deconstructing the systemic roots that created the climate crisis we can create solutions that are more fully representative of environmental justice. While sustainabilty has been the buzz word on university campuses around the nation we need to look past sustaining the status quo and reimagine a just future, viable for all of its living elements.