Tom Carlson, Maryland Campaign Director
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Tom Carlson is the Maryland Campaign Director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. An experienced grassroots organizer and manager, Tom develops and implements campaigns to mobilize Marylanders in support of climate action on the local, state, national and international levels. He works to build upon CCAN’s Maryland victories and expand the state's role as an exemplary leader in the movement for clean energy jobs and a healthy climate.
Tom grew up in Rockville, Maryland, where he began his career as a grassroots organizer for Clean Water Action when he was only 16 years old. He worked there for five years, managing and training field staff as the group secured numerous victories protecting the Chesapeake Bay and helping to elect strong environmental leaders for Maryland. Later, he spent four years as a teacher in inner-city Washington, D.C., preparing the next generation for civic engagement. Tom holds a bachelor's degree in media studies from Macalester College and a master's degree in education from American University.
Blog Posts by Tom Carlson, Maryland Campaign Director
In less than one week on Wednesday, January 11th, the Maryland General Assembly will begin its 2012 session. If reducing childhood asthma attacks, bringing back Maryland manufacturing, and solving our climate crisis are important to you, there will be one issue you’ll be watching above all others: offshore wind power.
And if offshore wind power is important to you, please join Marylanders from across the state at 10:30am next Wednesday to rally in front of the State House as legislators enter for the first time this year. Let’s show our leaders that we are expecting leadership on Maryland’s clean energy future. They’ve passed laws to develop renewable energy and reduce global warming pollution. Now it’s time to fulfill the promise of those laws and we’ll need offshore wind power to do it.
What do Jason Alexander who played George on Seinfeld, Bill McKibben who founded 350.org, and Evanna Lynch who stars as Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter films all have in common?
They are all members of the real-world Order of the Phoenix for the non-profit Harry Potter Alliance's Climate Change campaign!
If you are like me, then the biggest event of your weekend was the last Harry Potter film: "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2." And with the highest opening day in U.S. history, I know there are a lot of you like me out there.
Walking home from the movie, which was a cathartic experience for a reader who grew up as the books came out and who has read each one about three times, I found myself thinking as I often have about how we need a real-life Dumbledore's Army to confront the evil villains of our time and their many horcruxes.
And that's why I was so excited to uncover this morning: The Harry Potter Alliance (HPA). According to it's mission statement, HPA "is a 501c3 nonprofit that takes an outside-of-the-box approach to civic engagement by using parallels from the Harry Potter books to educate and mobilize young people across the world toward issues of literacy, equality, and human rights."
When it comes to mobilizing for human rights, it just so happens that for the HPA, the climate crisis is "our real world Voldemort's most prized horcrux."
To mobilize around climate change, HPA is asking people to get creative and encourage their friends to do the same. They call it "The Imagine Better Contest," and they'll be taking creative entries until this Wednesday, July 20th at 11:59pm ET (just 3 more days)! In addition to the page on the HPA site, the campaign also has its own website: imaginebetter.org.
So check out this very cool campaign (no pun intended) and take part! Voting on entries will begin after Wednesday and last till the end of the month.
One of the ways they're encouraging people to take part is to submit a plan for inspiring people to participate in 350.org's world-wide Moving Planet event on September 24th. The Chesapeake Climate Action Network has Moving Planet events planned in Maryland and Virginia and we'd love to hear your ideas as well!
Just like the Harry Potter books, this is a contest for all ages. Maybe I'll submit a song. :)
Recently, a few individuals have published questions about offshore wind power. Some of their main concerns were:
1) Does it really reduce emissions?
2) Will it help us achieve a future zero-carbon grid?
3) Will it be affordable for ratepayers?
Thankfully, ample scientific evidence and real-world experience provide answers to these questions. Indeed, wind power can and will continue to reduce emissions by displacing fossil fuels, wind power can be part of a future zero-carbon grid, and other states have found long-term offshore wind power contracts to be affordable for their rate payers. Offshore wind power in particular is one of the greatest answers for Maryland and the world's energy future.
The following post provides answers to these questions based on reliable data and studies. More information about offshore wind can be found on the Marylanders for Offshore Wind website.
Here is my suggestion:
As the Maryland campaign director at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, I work with a coalition of climate hawks poised to move strongly forward at the state level as we determine the best next steps nationally.
Since this year's failure to pass comprehensive climate legislation in the senate, a number of groups and individuals have discussed the need for state level action. At the state level, we can make real gains in renewable energy and emissions reductions, while tangibly showing that climate solutions work. Thank God California's AB 32 law will continue.
In Maryland, we also have strong climate laws on the books, including a 20% RPS by 2022 and an emissions reduction goal of 25% below 2006 levels by 2020.
To meet these goals, action is still needed.
As an ocean state, offshore wind power currently has the highest potential for us to generate clean, renewable energy. That's why we're part of a strong coalition calling on the Maryland General Assembly to pass legislation that will bring us offshore wind parks as early as 2015.
Offshore wind will bring Maryland reliable jobs (thousands in construction, operations, and maintenance), reliable energy (Europe's had offshore wind working since 1991 and we could get a third of our power in the region from the resource), reliable prices (we can lock in the price over 25 years as unlike fossil fuels, the wind is free), and a more reliable climate (reducing heat-trapping energy generation). It's understandable why the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, the National Wildlife Federation, Environment Maryland, The Sierra Club, the Maryland LCV, AND the United Steelworkers in Maryland are calling together for offshore wind power!
If you live in Maryland or in the area, here are a few ways you can help us win:
- Attend Wind Vision 2010 in Annapolis on December 4th: the first Maryland citizens' conference on offshore wind. We'll hear from inspiring leaders (like Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, John Passacantando, former director of Greenpeace USA, and CCAN's inspiring leader, Mike Tidwell), and discuss how we can all help make it happen for Maryland in 2011. RSVP today at http://www.MarylandOffshoreWind.org!
- Take a photo for our "Maryland: Got Wind?" Photo Mission! We'll be sharing them with your state representatives. Find out how to submit a photo at our website and check out Maryland's own superhero, Wonder Wind, fighting for wind all over the state!
- Share the conference and the photo petition links with all your friends on facebook and twitter!
On the national level, while things look bleak, we must find a way forward. There is a glimmer of hope for compromise that must at least be explored. Tom Daschle talks about the need for congressional compromise in a Washington Post op-ed today and mentions climate change as one of the national challenges we must address. We must also look to innovative solutions. CCAN has endorsed the cap and dividend model, which has bipartisan support. We must continue to develop innovative policy solutions that can garner bipartisan support: cap and dividend could be part of a new solution.
Finally, it is clear that we must do more on the grassroots. We clearly cannot rely on our elected leaders or media to carry the entire load in terms of creating a national debate on climate. Climate hawk groups and individuals must put in the grassroots organizing that is necessary.
[caption id="attachment_3747" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Offshore windmills off the coast of England. Photo cc by Phault (http://www.flickr.com/photos/pjh/185488397/)"]
[/caption]With extreme weather events, tragic disasters from the extraction of fossil fuels, and beautiful coral reefs losing their color due to extreme heat, there is no doubt that we must transition now to clean energy like offshore wind!
Last Thursday was a prime example of how Maryland is poised to continue leading on clean energy and climate solutions by pursuing offshore wind power.
On the evening of September 23rd, close to 100 citizens gathered for a town hall meeting in Ocean City to learn more about the amazing benefits offshore wind will bring Marylanders.
Citizens got to hear from three experts about how this resource could work for Maryland and to have their questions answered.
Let's make history again
By Mike TidwellJuly 23, 2008
Baltimore Sun
I recently stood on the windy coast of North Carolina where Orville and Wilbur Wright made their maiden flight in 1903. That motorized glider, constructed with bicycle parts, lifted off and flew nearly 900 feet in 59 seconds. Americans, astonishingly, were walking on the moon 66 years later.
The miracle of U.S. air and space travel, achieved in an eye blink, is something we should keep in mind as we once again turn to our coastlines for answers. The same windy Atlantic shore that gave rise to human flight now offers a new fork in the road with two profoundly different technological and moral visions awaiting our national decision.
One vision involves turning thousands of miles of our shoreline - on both coasts - into new havens for oil drilling. Never mind rapid global warming. Never mind our reckless addiction to oil. Never mind federal government data showing it would do little for gas prices. The new drumbeat, even among many Democrats, is, "We gotta get more - offshore, onshore, wherever."
That's certainly one vision for our coastlines for the 21st century.
Thankfully, there's another, entirely different, vision out there. It embraces the pioneering spirit of the Wright brothers. It promises positive, transformative, sky's-the-limit change. It's a vision that says: Let's build along our coastlines, but instead of oil platforms, let's put up wind farms. And let's tap the power of ocean waves and ocean tides for energy, rather than climate-wrecking crude oil. In the process, let's make history so that schoolchildren remember 2008 they way they now remember 1903.