clean energy

Any of you who heard anything about Midwest Power Shift know that the Midwest is a hotbed of youth clilmate activism. The Will Steger Foundation was an enthusiastic participant and supporter of MWPS and has been a key ally in building the youth climate moment across the Midwest. Since 2007 WSF has been actively working with partner organizations across the generational spectrum to support youth climate leadership across the region.

Yesterday was a historic day for the City of Ithaca, NY. 24-year-old Svante Myrick was elected mayor, becoming the youngest mayor in Ithaca’s history and the city’s first African American mayor.

As a youth climate activist at Cornell with KyotoNOW, I was immediately impressed by Svante’s commitment to preventing hydrofracking in New York and his vision for a more sustainable Ithaca. He is dedicated to creating a more walkable, bikeable community, promoting clean energy, supporting local businesses, and developing green jobs. I knocked on hundreds of doors, with many other volunteers, to spread the word about Svante’s campaign because he is exactly the type of leader my generation has been hoping for.

This entry was originally posted at Community Cucina, the local food blog that I write (and reference in this post).

I just got off an amazing phone call. It was an environmental organizing phone call about the tar sands and how to stop the Keystone XL pipeline from growing any further. I heard from Kandi Mossett of the Indigenous Environmental Action Network, several members of the Energy Action Coalition, students taking time off from school to organize the climate movement, and Bill McKibben who is one of my long-time heroes and founder of 350.org. I'd forgotten how much hope and energy a single phone call, one in which you're one of 145 and don't say a single word, can bring. I used to get on these calls a lot as an organizer in college, but I'd taken a step back for awhile to work on my writing and pursue different things. I took my first step back into the fray tonight and it was awesome.

And horrifying. Just as I forgot how much hope we can generate, I'd forgotten a little about the despair. It's easy to overlook if your life is pretty comfortable, as mine is. I'd forgotten just how much work there is to do and how quickly we need to do it.

But what does that have to do with a cooking blog?

Well, the roots of this blog are in sustainability. I look to local farmers, foragers, and cheesemakers as much as I can as a way to celebrate the bounty of where I live and as a way to feed myself and those I care about clean, healthy food. Food that is essential to life, the food that nourishes us, makes us strong, helps us heal when we're sick, food whose origins I can trace, food that is safe. But we can't have safe, clean food without safe, clean water, which leads back to clean energy, with the tar sands and fracking foremost on my mind tonight.

In between bites of pizza and homemade peach and blackberry pie, the members of the Maryland Student Climate Coalition (MSCC) spent the bulk of last Saturday planning our campaign for offshore wind. Clean, job-creating, renewable energy like offshore wind is exactly the kind of resource we want to use to power our homes and our schools.