Lobbying

By Marianne Lavelle
and M.B. Pell
Center for Public Integrity

The next round of the battle over climate change policy on Capitol Hill will involve more than the usual suspects. Way more. Watch soup makers face off against steel companies. Witness the folks who pump gas from the ground fight back against those who dig up rock. And watch the venture capitalists who have money riding on new technology try to gain advantage in a game that so far has been deftly controlled by the old machine.

In short, even though President Obama pledged to the world at Copenhagen that the United States is committed to action on global warming, the domestic politics are only growing “curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice might say from Wonderland.

Months of planning, negotiating, strategizing and training set the stage for the best orchestrated mass-lobby day in climate and youth activism history.

After 350 meetings between student activists and congressional representatives or their aides drew to a close last week, many of us within the movement began to wonder – what exactly did we accomplish?

Did our reps “get it?” What’s going to be the fallout for national climate policy, for the road to Copenhagen, for the role of youth in national energy justice issues?

In a few Capitol Hill offices, we were disappointed to discover, lawmakers and their aides seemed to know very little about even the basic facts of climate change.

There’s an electric current rushing through our nation’s capital today, and it’s not from the future stimulus-funded smart grid.

Right now, more than 11,000 young people from all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and 16 other nations are barnstorming Washington, D.C., for Power Shift 2009 – the largest youth summit on climate and energy policy in history.

In the massive D.C. Convention Center, student organizers are partaking in an extended weekend of workshops, training sessions, speeches, concerts, rallies and even a huge direct action slated for Monday. With big shots showing up like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Congressman Ed Markey, activists Majora Carter, Van Jones and Billy Parish, and musicians like Adam Gardener of Guster and the hip-hop group The Roots, Power Shift feels like a mix between Kyoto and Woodstock.

Students are here, in essence, to take the message of bold, comprehensive and immediate federal climate action directly to Capitol Hill. 

They are leveraging the momentum the youth movement has built locally through the Campus Climate Challenge, their first national mobilization, Power Shift 07, and their recent electoral engagement campaign Power Vote to pressure political leaders to take the action their generation's demands.

“It’s our future,” they proclaim – and they’re going to fight for it.