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.

 

Chances are, if you're reading this, you were also on the Mall on Saturday, or maybe watching it on TV. Having organized rallies in DC, I was blown away by the turnout. With all the climate-denying happening these days, it was inspiring to see so many people travel from all over the country in the name of sanity. It felt good to be among fellow sane people.

If you organize around political issues long enough, it's easy to get cynical. I fight that urge all the time. Rallies and protests are practically a monthly occurrence and it's often hard to see how they move the ball forward. But, we justify the hard work it takes to organize those kinds of events because they also serve other purposes. Good rallies can inspire people, indirectly leading to future action. And, having a drumbeat of rallies and protests on any one issue might finally get through to our lawmakers and/or the media.

I left the Stewart/Colbert rallies trying to make those same justifications, but have come up short. Did you leave inspired? I left lukewarm, at best. Did you get a sense of what's next? I didn't.

I went to the rally to restore sanity on Saturday. As pointed out by many who attended- the rally was somewhat ironically- insane. I went with Energy Action Coalition all-star Anjali Helferty to bring a little Power Vote magic to the proceedings! The crowds were overwhelming- it was difficult to make our way anywhere near the stage or jumbo screens. Instead we walked around the outskirts of the huge crowd in our Power Vote capes urging young people to get out and vote on Tuesday! Turns out this was a message missing from the rest of the rally- no mention of voting was made. So here it is- be sane on Tuesday and VOTE! And tell everyone you know to do the same!

On the 3 month anniversary of the catastrophic explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, an explosion that ended the lives of 11 workers and irreparably damaged the livelihoods of countless others, I was at a rally held across the street from the U.S. Capitol building.

Over a hundred students gathered at the University of Maryland, College Park over the weekend for the first ever Maryland Power Shift. The participants, from over fifteen different Maryland and D.C. schools, gathered on Saturday to participate in the 350.org International Day of Action in D.C. and on Sunday for a conference on grassroots organizing around environmental issues.

On Saturday students stood out in the crowd with green Power Shift t-shirts and led the 350.org march in DC with enthusiastic cheering: keeping everyone's energy high. Sunday was also a big success. Students had a chance to meet fellow activists from other schools to share ideas, tips, and excitement!

If you're still looking for a good reason to come out and join our big International Day of Climate Action rally and march in DC on Saturday try this on for size: the day of action won't simply be the biggest day in the history of the global climate movement; it could very well be one of the biggest days in human history. And that's not an exaggeration.

The truly wonderful thing about Saturday's action is that it will be much bigger than just a single rally, or a single march on a single location in a single city in the world. It will be a truly global event. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it will be the first truly "global event" in history. For while there have been global days of action for this and other causes before, as far as I know none of them have ever included more than 4000 actions taking place in almost every single country on the planet. And while any given world cup final or Olympic opening ceremony may draw a global viewing audience of hundreds of millions, the ultimate measure of any "global" event lies not in its scale but in its spirit. And in terms of its global spirit I'd say our Day of Action on Saturday will beat even the Olympics hands down.

As the first truly global-scale crisis humanity has ever faced, the climate crisis is forcing us for the very first time to start perceiving ourselves as a true global community, facing a common threat as a species, as a global civilization. It's forcing us to act globally, and seek solutions globally, as a true global community rather than as a collection of competing nations negotiating our way towards compromises that preserve our individual interests. By its very nature the global climate movement is leading us all through a door to a new era of global consciousness, to a transformation not just of the way that we consume energy, but of the way that we perceive ourselves, and our relations and responsibilities to each other.

So, considering that the Day of Action on Saturday will be the first truly global-scale expression of the movement that is driving us toward that new era of global consciousness and solidarity, I think it's safe to say that it will be the first truly global event in human history. And those of us who participate in it won't just be helping to usher in a new stage in the global climate movement; we'll helping to usher in a new era of human history, a new era of global community.

And come snow or rain or heat or gloom, I'd say that's definitely something to show up for. Go to www.350.org/dc today to RSVP today and claim your place in the vanguard of our global future.

This past week, on the heels of "Climate Week" and attendant Copenhagen preliminaries in New York, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a nice article in the New Yorker in which she mused over what it would actually take for the US to show real leadership on climate change.

None of the suggestions Kolbert offered at all resembled the Senate climate bill Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry unveiled Wednesday. While an improvement over the Waxman Markey bill, overall the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act falls far short of the high bar of climate leadership the US needs to clear and reminds us that the question we should be asking right now is not what US leadership should really look like. I think we already know the answer to that. No, the question we really have to address is, what is holding US leadership back, and how do we overcome it.

In a word, I think the answer is capital. Oil and coal have deep pockets and they use them well to finance the crippling of federal climate efforts. They've been outspending us in the climate fight. And the truth is the only way we're going to win is by beating them at their own game. Simply put, if we want a stronger climate bill, we've got to "buy" it.

A few years back climate activists in the US organized hundreds of simultaneous events in cities all across the country for the Step it Up days of action. In so doing they took the US political dialogue about climate change the next level.

Now the same minds behind the Step it Up actions

On November 18th, nearly 300 concerned citizens joined Bill McKibben and Congressman Van Hollen in front of the US Capitol to welcome the new Congress and encourage them to make climate action a priority. Our message: Re-Engage with the international community, Re-Power America with clean energy, and Re-Build our economy by creating millions of new green jobs.

Tag your photos "Nov18" in flickr and your photos will automatically be added to this slideshow!