Hofstra's Homecoming

Hofstra's Homecoming was yesterday. The theme was "Myths and Legends." Now Homecoming is traditionally a fraternity-sorority event, and as such, I've never attended. But, this year our school decided to make this more "green." Intrigued, my campus clubs Students for a Greener Hofstra, Progressive Students Union and The Groove decided to get involved. Making the homecoming more green basically meant that they encouraged us to use recycled materials and that the first day of building we were told not to use electric tools. Whoop-de-doo. We knew we could do better. We used this opportunity to build a float that taught the real message of going green and illustrated why it is so important that we do this right. We build a float out of all recycled materials that we pulled from the trash, in our rooms, the student center, and dumps. Going with the theme, our float was titled "Myth" Global Warming. Whereas some groups spent upwards of $2000 on their floats (which wind right up in the trash), we spent $23 an organization on paint and twine. Bringing together education, activism and art, we won for the award for the Greenest Float. We built an educational art installation and spend some quality time with each other, learning about skills and talents that we didn't know we all had and we exposed greek-life to some new ideas and cost-saving measures for next year's homecoming. Just check out this picture.

Governor's Global Climate Summit

Last week I took a cross country flight to LA. Leading up to Copenhagen, tons of events are happening that are trying to capture the spotlight onto the climate fight that we are in the midst of. The Governors' Global Climate Summit aims to "deepen and broaden cooperative efforts by subnational governments to implement strategies that can immediately grow a green economy, increase the use of sustainable clean energy, reduce dependence on oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in advance of, and in support of, the next global agreement on climate change." Not too bad.

Fortunately there were some amazing youth activists involved in the planning of this summit that saw value in adding youth voices to the agenda. Young people are everywhere and are voices are getting louder, but we've left some gaps in the places we are spreading our message. Subnational governments and business are on the top of that list. I participated in the normal summit, raising questions, networking with business leaders, and listening to how successful subnational governments can be at lowering emissions. I'm going to go out there and say it, I think my cross country flight was worth its carbon emissions. These business leaders were exposed to a youth view and saw the interest we had in these topics and the knowledge and personal stories we brought to the table. I started thinking about the possibilities youth organizing has on a state level. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced during the conference that the EPA is going to start to limit emissions based on the Clean Air Act. Did you know that in the first year of the Kyoto Protocol 227 US cities signed on despite the failure of our federal government to do so?! We have open doors here. Our subnational governments, local communities, businesses, and government agencies are stepping up, and the youth climate movement has not even begun to show what it can do in those areas.

The Environment News Service has a great article talking more about the summit