Is the BP Oil Disaster the Breaking Point for Communicating about Clean Energy?
The greatest environmental disaster in the history of the US continues to unfold in the Gulf of Mexico and it is shifting the way the public thinks about the energy they use. Or is it? We'll discuss how the BP oil disaster is effecting public thinking, how the netroots is responding and what we can all do to move the conversation from worry and anger to hope of a clean energy future.
Kevin Grandia is the Director of Online Marketing for EnergyBoom.com and has been researching and writing on climate change and renewable energy issues for over four years.
He is also the Manager of the award-winning site, DeSmogBlog.com. Kevin is a regular contributor on Huffington Post and has written for many other outlets over the years, like the UK's Guardian.
Kevin is also the co-founder of VoteForEnvironment.com, which was nominated for a Global Summit Award an international recognition of the world's best e-Content and innovative ICT applications.
Kevin works as Director of Social Media at the Vancouver Public Relations firm, Hoggan & Associates.
You can find Kevin on Twitter here and Facebook here.
Jason Miner is a Managing Director at The Glover Park Group where he leads GPG’s quickly growing Energy and Sustainability practice area. Miner focuses on large, integrated campaigns that often include public opinion research, advertising and government relations in addition to messaging and earned media strategies.
At GPG, Miner serves as a lead strategist for Vice President Gore’s non-profit organization, The Alliance for Climate Protection. In this role he is responsible for planning and implementing messaging and earned media strategies for the organization’s unprecedented multi-million dollar, multi-year campaign to raise the urgency of enacting solutions to the climate crisis.
Miner’s issue expertise and client work includes a broad range of energy and environmental topics including policies and politics related to climate change, renewable energy deployment, electricity transmission, energy efficiency, sustainable development and electricity market structure.
Miner’s expertise in understanding and advocating for complex public policies in a competitive environment is rooted in his experience on the front lines of national-level electoral politics.
Prior to joining The Glover Park Group, Miner was Research Director for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), overseeing the national issues and opposition research effort for the party. He helped create and run on-site response during the Republican and Democratic Conventions and the presidential and vice presidential debates. He was responsible for creating and implementing a media strategy for moving message and research materials and hundreds of stories to television, print and radio reporters.
During the 2000 Presidential campaign, Miner also served at the DNC, directing opposition research and coordinating the rapid response operation at the 2000 Republican Convention. Prior to joining the DNC, Miner worked on a number of statewide campaigns, conducting issue and opposition research. Miner attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY.
Steve Kretzmann has worked on energy issues and the global oil industry for the last twenty years. After eight years with Greenpeace USA, he served as the environmental advisor to Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People in Nigeria and was a co-founder of the human rights and environmental organization Project Underground. In 1997, he conducted the first independent soil and water samples in Ogoni, Nigeria which quantified the Ogoni claim of Shell’s pollution and double standards on their land. He has also campaigned to keep Florida’s coast free from oil & gas drilling and represented various organizations at UN environmental negotiations.
Steve has authored numerous articles and reports and is a regular commentator on issues of corporate accountability, transparency, the global oil industry, environmental and human rights. He founded Oil Change International in 2005 in order to carry out strategic, systemic campaigns focused on the oil industry. He lives outside of Washington DC.
As the Executive Director of Greenpeace, Phil Radford is at the helm of one of the largest and most influential environmental organizations in the country. Radford leads a national team of 500 highly-skilled environmental leaders working in 23 cities across the U.S. on national and global campaigns to protect our planet’s oceans, forests, and climate.
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.
