When it comes to climate change, a group of students is demanding legislation. But unlike the world leaders who convened in Copenhagen last December, these student leaders are staging “sleep-outs” on state commons and lobbying Massachusetts legislators to pass a clean energy bill.
The organization, Students for a Just and Stable Future (SJSF), is coordinated by Craig Altemose, a joint degree student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Law School. Last Thursday, Feb. 18, he came to Mount Holyoke to talk about climate change and how SJSF aims to lead Massachusetts in tackling the issue.
Altemose started by talking about the science that underlies climate change. He mentioned that the scientific consensus that validates anthropogenic climate change is facing an obstacle of about $300 million invested by corporate interests trying to cover up the evidence and create doubt about climate change.
Currently, the earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is measured at 390ppm. NASA’s James Hansen and other scientists say the safe upper limit of CO2 in the atmosphere is 350ppm, above which life on earth would not be sustainable.
According to Hansen, a prominent supporter of SJSF’s student-led Leadership Campaign, lowering carbon dioxide levels to 350ppm would require a switch to 100 percent clean energy within the next 10 to 20 years. The Leadership Campaign is pushing for this transition, as their slogan “Nothing less than 100 percent. Nothing more than 350” indicates. “If we want to be a leader on this, we have to push for 100 percent clean energy by 2020,” Altemose urged students.
The student group is pushing for this transition on the legislative level. “Last semester we introduced a bill co-sponsored by seventeen state legislators to create a Repower Massachusetts Emergency Task Force,” explained Leila Quinn ’12, the campaign’s Western MA Recruitment Coordinator. The Act to Create a Repower Massachusetts Emergency Task Force, if passed, would allow the creation of a 14-member task force to make recommendations on how to achieve 100 percent emissions reductions in the electricity sector, or the use of electricity without carbon dioxide emissions. This bill has yet to pass through the House Committee on Rules. According to Julia Herman ’13, the Mount Holyoke campus coordinator for SJSF, the group will continue to lobby local representatives, as well as Speaker of the House Robert A. DeLeo.
SJSF plans to expand its focus and reach beyond the state of Massachusetts and to involve other New England states in its advocacy. The group also plans to implement more direct actions in communities, such as barn-raising and weatherizing homes, as well as shutting down coal-fired plants.
“The great thing about this is that we’re actually doing something,” remarked Julia Herman ’13, the Mount Holyoke campus coordinator for SJSF.
Altemose summed up the purpose of SJSF’s mission in his address to students. “I think, in many ways, we are the most important generation in human history,” he said. “When Massachusetts leads, the country often follows, and the time to lead is now.”
What: An Act to Create a Repower Massachusetts Emergency Task Force was introduced on Dec. 7, 2009. The act calls for the creation of a 14-member task force to advise the state, within six months of the passage of the bill, on how to achieve 100 percent emissions reductions in the electricity sector.
Who: The task force would include, among other governmental and community representatives, current House and State leaders on climate change, representatives of the religious, student advocacy and environmental justice communities, electric utilities and local businesses.
How: The goal of 100 percent emissions reductions in the electricity sector will primarily be investigated through reduction in electricity demand through efficiency and economic incentives and by building new renewable energy generation. Upon completion of the task force’s recommendations, an Advisory Counsel will be formed to periodically review implementation and advise various parties.
Why: When a binding global treaty did not emerge from the climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009, and the passage of a climate bill was delayed in the U.S. Congress, SFJS concluded that Massachusetts must enact legislation to move the state towards 100 percent clean energy in ten years. Proponents of the bill argue that Massachusetts must lead by example with policies that minimize the harms of global climate change, and that, by doing so, the state will attract industrial investment in renewable energy and sustainable technology, as well as green jobs that will facilitate the transition of the rest of the nation and world to a sustainable economy.
Related posts:
- Students unite to combat climate change
- UN Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen addresses countries’ hopes to improve global climate
- Climate change: A rising issue
- Student activists attend Powershift 2011
- To Copenhagen for Climate Change
