Environmental Conflict and Climate Change: The Grassroots vs Big Green
Can a major policy shift be driven by insiders or must real change emerge as a result of a mass-based movement of outsiders willing to challenge the status quo? Nowhere are the stakes of this discussion higher than in the environmental movement. Forty years ago an oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara helped launch the modern environmental movement which organized the first Earth Day and changed the course of history by passing the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act and helping found the EPA. Today, as we face another crisis and an organizing moment of epic proportions--a front page stunning oil spill and an imminent climate crisis—many of the legacy organizations of the environmental movement have a very different strategy for creating change. Multi-million dollar budgets, career lobbyists and ties to Democratic politicians heavily influence their agenda. Despite money and connections, Big Green is struggling to wrest even modest concessions from their allies in Congress as the biggest polluters exercise veto power over any significant piece of legislation. What can the netroots do to have a bigger impact on the environmental movement? And what theory of change will move the U.S. toward policies that begin to address what scientists say is necessary to fight climate change?
Michael Brune, 38, holds degrees in Economics and Finance from West Chester University in Pennsylvania and comes to the Sierra Club from the Rainforest Action Network, where he served seven years as executive director. Under Brune's leadership, Rainforest Action Network won more than a dozen key environmental commitments from America's largest corporations, including Home Depot, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Kinko's, Boise, and Lowe's.
Brune's critically acclaimed book, Coming Clean -- Breaking America's Addiction to Oil and Coal, published by Sierra Club Books in 2008, details a plan for a new green economy that will create well-paying jobs, promote environmental justice, and bolster national security. He and his wife, Mary, attribute their ongoing passion for environmental activism in part to concern that their outdoors-loving children, Olivia, 5, and Sebastian, 1, inherit a healthy world. He is particularly interested in promoting programs that link the Sierra Club's traditional protection of wild places, including National Parks, to urgently needed climate change solutions.
Amanda Terkel is Deputy Research Director at the Center for American Progress and serves the Managing Editor for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org, the award-winning top political blog. Amanda has also served as the Center’s Special Assistant for Strategic Planning and has experience on various national and state-level political campaigns and in government offices.
While at ThinkProgress, Amanda has helped guide the site from a start-up nonprofit blog to an award-winning progressive site that drives the debates of the day, focusing on rapid-response research, reporting, and analysis. According to Politico, ThinkProgress has been on "a steady upward climb since launching in January 2005" and is now making its mark on the national political scene.
Amanda's writings have been published by The New York Times, Politico, Salon, The Daily Beast, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Guardian, The American Prospect, and In These Times. She has appeared as a guest on various television and radio networks, including MSNBC, Fox News, and BBC. She was named a New Leaders Council 40 Under 40 Award winner in 2010. She graduated from Colgate University magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in political science. She originally hails from Western New York.
While the term “green-collar jobs” gains more press and pundits daily, very few people have actually marshaled the resources to get unemployed Americans trained and placed on pathways out of poverty in this growing economic sector. Majora Carter has. Born, raised, and continuing to live in the South Bronx, her work takes her around the world in pursuit of resources and ideas to improve the quality of life in environmentally challenged communities. She founded Sustainable South Bronx in 2001 and by 2003 had implemented the highly successful Bronx Environmental Stewardship Training (BEST) program— a pioneering green-collar job training and placement system — seeding communities with a skilled workforce that has both a personal & economic stake in their urban environment. She is currently president of the green-collar economic consulting firm the Majora Carter Group, LLC.She is probably the only person to have received an award from John Podesta's Center For American Progress; AND a Liberty Medal from Rupert Murdoch's: New York Post.
Most recently, she was named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company Magazine, and of them, one of the 10 Best Small Businesses in the US.
Her vision, drive, and tenacity earned a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship. Newsweek named her one of “25 To Watch” in 2007, and one of the “century’s most important environmentalists” in 2008. She a board member of the Wilderness Society, SJF, and CERES. She host a special national public radio series called “The Promised Land” , and “Eco-Heroes” on the Sundance Channel.
Follow her on twitter at @majoracarter and on facebook.com/majoracarter
