Climate Change and Its Economic Consequences

Today I attended a forum on Climate Change at the College Democrats Convention. The Panel consisted of Majora Carter, an environmental activist known for the Green Collar Movement in Brooklyn, Jessy Tolkan, an organizer for powervote.org, Billy Parrish, a co-founder of the Energy Action Coalition and Clean Energy Corp, and Kal Penn, actor and activist on environmental issues working the Barrack Obama. This forum was very interesting in the fact that they seemed to go beyond the normal back and forth of the climate change issue.
The forum began by saying that we should get beyond the common debate, for today it is no longer a debate that climate change is happening and will cause harm within our own lifetime without action. I found that Majora Carter was the most profound of the panelists. She focuses on using the growing need for green solutions to slow climate change to also find a way to surge the economy and economic opportunities of the poor. The Green Collar movement feels that while we bring a new green industry into the market the government should provide training to those in need so that they can capitalize on this economic opportunity. This would allow for many more people to find a way to move out of poverty throughout the country as well as move the entire country out of this spiraling recession.
Jessy Tolkan was an extremely energized activist that is out to grow the numbers of active college students with a view towards the future of their environment. She and her cause looks to get one million college kids to get active on the cause so that the leaders of the country cannot overlook the views of this age group. She said she saw how there are many great and motivated core of college kids but the numbers lack, and that ultimately it takes large numbers for the older and more powerful leadership of the country to take their concerns seriously.
Billy Parrish is the college dropout’s dream. He dropped out of Yale to pursue environmental action full time and now is known as one of the most influential environmental activists of any age. He spoke how it is not the changing of the views and the changing of the lives of people that is most important, but rather it is the need for institutional change towards taking care of the world that the future generations will inherit. He recently began his dream of the Clean Energy Corp, which looks to create 5 million more jobs through instituting energy conservation and new energy sources.
Finally, Kal Penn, known as Kumar from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, was able to give insight of how climate change is a threat to national security. The fact that changes in the world tend to often turn to unrest and possible instability. This can be a part of the argument that can reach to bipartisan lines.
I hope that information like this can allow for more people to understand the urgency and the helpfulness of taking action against climate change.

As far as the rest of my day, I began by having breakfast with the entire Kentucky delegation. They showed great support for us, and called for more young people to get involved as we have. It was very interesting how the group talked of the State Senate races that are in contention and need to be won in order to re-take control of the Kentucky Senate in order to get things done in Frankfort. The keynote speaker was Congressman John Yarmuth. I have loved Yarmuth since before he burst onto the national scene through defeating Anne Northrup in 2006, going back to when he was the editor of the Louisville Eccentric Observer. The breakfast is meant to be a warm-up for each day to get enthusiasm for the party leaders to look towards their goal of “putting the blue back in the Bluegrass state.”
After the environmental forum, I caught the end of the Unconventional Woman speaking. I missed Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but was able to see Donna Brazile, Clair McCaskill (Sen. MO), Amy Klobuchar (Sen. MN), and Barbra Boxer (Sen. CA) just to name a few.
It has been a great day and there is only more to come as I prepare for the convention to really begin.

TM