Spring Break
Climate change summit draws 6,000 students
Issue date: 11/8/07
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Power Shift also included a networking session in which college groups met with similar groups from the various colleges in their state. Hopkins joined with MICA, Towson, Goucher and other schools in order to brainstorm ways of working together.
"Because we're all working toward the same goals, we need to organize, share ideas, form a state coalition," Blocher said.
The Conference was strategically timed to take place just months before the national primaries in order to galvanize student action for the upcoming presidential election.
"What Power Shift 2007 is really meant first and foremost to do is take the movement against global warming to new levels," said Teryn Norris, another Power Shift participant and president of HEAT.
"That means educating students about the crisis so that when the national elections roll around, they have the tools to make choices."
Not all felt that the Power Shift Conference was as effective as it could have been, however.
"Unfortunately the Conference came across as a partisan event," College Republicans Vice President Evan Lazerowitz said.
"The Republican Party, to a large extent, is concerned with the issue of global warming. Perhaps we don't take as quite as an alarmist philosophy, but we agree on the problem, the fundamental issue. Unfortunately there was little Republican representation at a Conference that was supposed to unite the entire country on the issue. What about McCain, who is lead author of an environmental bill in Congress? Or Newt Gingrich to discuss his book?" (Gingrich's A Contract with the Earth, which came out in October, discusses among other things ways market forces can be brought to bear on affecting change in environmental reform.) "We agree on the problem - we just have different methods for solving it," he said.
Granted, in the competitive bipolar political process, differences between parties tend to become amplified.
Consensus can be reached easily enough on one thing, however.
Discussion on climate change and sources for alternative energies is destined to play a significant role in the next year's hunt for the new U.S. president.
"Because we're all working toward the same goals, we need to organize, share ideas, form a state coalition," Blocher said.
The Conference was strategically timed to take place just months before the national primaries in order to galvanize student action for the upcoming presidential election.
"What Power Shift 2007 is really meant first and foremost to do is take the movement against global warming to new levels," said Teryn Norris, another Power Shift participant and president of HEAT.
"That means educating students about the crisis so that when the national elections roll around, they have the tools to make choices."
Not all felt that the Power Shift Conference was as effective as it could have been, however.
"Unfortunately the Conference came across as a partisan event," College Republicans Vice President Evan Lazerowitz said.
"The Republican Party, to a large extent, is concerned with the issue of global warming. Perhaps we don't take as quite as an alarmist philosophy, but we agree on the problem, the fundamental issue. Unfortunately there was little Republican representation at a Conference that was supposed to unite the entire country on the issue. What about McCain, who is lead author of an environmental bill in Congress? Or Newt Gingrich to discuss his book?" (Gingrich's A Contract with the Earth, which came out in October, discusses among other things ways market forces can be brought to bear on affecting change in environmental reform.) "We agree on the problem - we just have different methods for solving it," he said.
Granted, in the competitive bipolar political process, differences between parties tend to become amplified.
Consensus can be reached easily enough on one thing, however.
Discussion on climate change and sources for alternative energies is destined to play a significant role in the next year's hunt for the new U.S. president.
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