Friends and family,
I just wrote the first personal blog in a few months. It's about my trip in the Philippines. It's here if you want to read...
http://walkslow.wordpress.com/
Since I haven't written in a while, I thought I'd add more of a comprehensive update as well:
The Philippines and Mustaches for Kids
After spending most of October and the beginning of November staying with John in Washington, DC working for Energy Action, doing outreach, volunteer recruitment, and other preparation for Power Shift 2007, the first national youth summit on global warming, I've hopped a jet for
the Philippines for two weeks. Power Shift was the finale of my work at Energy Action as Partnerships Director and the Philippines is simply a bit of vacation and exploration in a part of the world I've never been. In the middle of my trip, the start of
Mustaches for Kids 2007 arrived on Tuesday. I've got one month to grow the meanest 'stache I can muster to help the kids of San Francisco. Like a marathon or something, it only works if I get people to sponsor me and my mustache. Here's how:
Donate online via Breakthrough's JustGive.org page. When you arrive, make sure you note that it's a donation via "Mustaches for Kids:Josh Lynch" in the "As A Gift In Someone's Name" field. Make sure to email me to let me know you donated so I can put you in the 'Stache Hall of Fame! If you need some background, check out a
blog entry I wrote last year on the subject.
Power Shift
Power Shift was literally a life-changing experience for me. I don't think I'll ever think about the people that I've been working with or the community that we've built in the same way again. It has certainly changed my perspective on how much power we really have right now to influence the national debate. We (leaders in the youth climate change movement) had begun thinking up the idea of doing a big national conference about five years ago. Maybe we could have predicted the size (5500 students and youth at University of Maryland packed into a basketball stadium and dozens of classrooms and hallways), but there's no way we could have predicted the impact of what happened or the energy it brought not just to our community of activists but to the entire U.S. global warming movement. There was a major focus on diversity and social justice at Power Shift, which made everything feel that much more powerful. There were fiery keynote speakers, badass musical performers, enlightening panels and workshops, a packed career fair, and the largest lobby day on global warming that Congress has ever seen (with about 3000 young people rallying outside the Capitol and then going into their representatives' offices in groups of all sizes from their district to deliver the message that young people want immediate action on global warming and are united for the 1 Sky priorities: green jobs for those most in need, 80% cuts in carbon by 2050, and no new coal-fired power plants.
Check out some incredible video clips and an article on
nytimes.com from the three days of Power Shift:
Jessy Tolkan, EAC co-director lays into Pat Buchanon on HardballCheryl Lockwood, a native Alaskan youth, gives emotional testimony to Congress
Van Jones fires up the crowd at Power ShiftMTV News: The Revolution Starts Right NowNYTimes.com - Whose climate is it anyway?
Discovery: Young People Bring Green Demands to DC
More Power Shift media...
What's Next
So, after being a student activist for three years in college, spending two years organizing with
SEAC in Philadelphia and Burlington after that, working as national student organizer for
Greenpeace in San Francisco for two years, and taking on the role of Partnerships Director for
Energy Action Coalition during the past year, I'm now moving on from the world of student environmental activism at age 27. It's been real. No, seriously, I consider myself incredibly lucky to have worked with the people whom I did and with the organizations I've been a part of. I never would have stayed involved for as long as I did in the "youth movement" if I wasn't constantly inspired and supported by truly visionary, intelligent, and passionate people who treat the work for a clean, just, and sustainable future like their lifeblood. I owe everything to these people. I am also proud the role I've played in all of it and have no regrets. For me, this next step is about finding something I can make a career out of, making room for new leaders, and most importantly, living it large in the Philippines and San Francisco as carefree and unemployed as the day I was born. That's a joke.
I've been talking to some people about getting into energy policy work and finding a way to gain expertise and experience in that vein. I don't know exactly what my next gig will be yet. That'll happen when I get back to my old time zone. What I do know is that I'm interested in moving visionary and solutions-focused energy and climate policies and continuing to work and live in the Bay Area. In my spare time, I have been particularly interested in decentralized energy, Woking, the electranet, and other frameworks for making distributed generation energy more viable on a large scale.
Well shucks. Internet cafe is closing.
all the best,
Josh