Power Shift 2011, the biennial national summit of the youth climate movement, begins this Friday in Washington, DC. The challenges facing the Millennial generation posed by the dirty energy economy is seemingly insurmountable: the destruction of our planet’s atmosphere, the poisoning of our political discourse, the dissolution of the American Dream. Armed with the vision of a cleaner, greener, future, the participants in Power Shift are choosing not just to fight back, but to organize and realize their collective potential.

This year, the conference is focused on movement building, with the intent of being the largest organizer training session in history. As many as 10,000 youth activists will be trained in community organizing, facilitation, and campaign leadership, led by professionals from the New Organizing Institute, founded by Judith Freeman and Zach Exley, using the knowledge built by the likes of Marshall Ganz. The conference is departing from the earlier Power Shifts in 2007 and 2009 with the recognition that the youth climate movement can’t simply be part of the “chorus of advocates simply calling for change,” but must emerge “into a position of leadership“:

As the largest generation in American history, we are ready to build the green economy city by city, to transform higher education, to join forces on the ground with our religious and local community leaders so together we can build the future we know is essential for our long term success as a nation.

Over the course of Power Shift, participants will work through a series of sessions to learn powerful skills to share their own stories, create powerful strategies to motivate others in collective action, and lay the groundwork to launch grassroots campaigns across the country. The organizing trainings will condense what is usually a week-long course in progressive leadership methods into two four-hour sessions, Saturday and Sunday morning.

Sunday afternoon will be spent on action-oriented training on lobbying and nonviolent direct action, preparing participants for protests and lobbying Congress on Monday, April 18.

This ambitious schedule means that participants will have to choose just three from among over 100 panels taking place Saturday afternoon, ranging from panels on the Koch brothers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to workshops on sustainable agriculture and weatherization training. Or participants can instead join the Clean Economy Canvass, hitting the streets of Washington DC with Weatherize DC to teach homeowners about how they can participate in the green economy.

Keynotes will be delivered by climate leaders like Al Gore, Van Jones, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Bill McKibben. However, this year the real leadership will come from the Millennial generation, who are preparing for the awesome challenge of inheriting this earth.

Our guest blogger is Nick Sundt, Director of Climate Change Communications at the World Wildlife Fund, and a longtime forest firefighter.

Last Thursday, all but one of the Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas voted for H.R. 910 to reverse the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding that greenhouse gas pollution threatens the health and welfare of Americans with a wide range of impacts, including more frequent and severe droughts and wildfires. One Texas Republican (Rep. Michael Burgess) abstained and one Texas Democrat (Rep. Henry Cuellar) also supported the measure. The measure passed the House (255 Ayes, 172 Nays), with no Republicans voting against it. 19 Democrats also voted in favor of the legislation.

The vote came immediately after Texas experienced its driest March on record, and as nearly 98 percent of the state is experiencing drought conditions. This includes 60 percent that is experiencing “severe” drought and 5 percent experiencing “exceptional” drought, the most extreme category. The National Drought Summary from the National Drought Mitigation Center on April 5th reports:

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Surface temperature anomalies relative to 1951-1980 mean.

Last month I reported on a new paper by NASA’s James Hansen and Makiko Sato (see Hansen: “One sure bet is that this decade will be the warmest” on record).  Kate at ClimateSight sighted a new color in the chart, “pink, which is even warmer than dark red.”

For those wondering why the x-axis jumps to 11.1°C, I emailed Hansen that very question, and he explains, “the numbers on the far right and far left of the color scale give the most extreme value that occurs in that particular (set of) map(s).”

It’s no surprise that new colors and extended ranges are need, given the accelerated Arctic warming we’ve been seeing.  As I reported in January, Canada sees staggering mildness as planet’s high-pressure record is “obliterated”:

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Although it didn’t get a lot of attention last week, an NBC/WSJ poll of 1000 adults did have some interesting findings for climate change.

The pollsters had asked respondents “if you think Barack Obama is giving too much attention to this issue, too little attention to this issue, or the right amount of attention to this issue.”

Back in January 2010, it was 27% “too little” and 29% “too much” and 37% “right amount.”

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In February, ThinkProgress broke a story revealing that attorneys for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had communicated with a set of military contractors “” HBGary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies “” to develop tactics for sabotaging and spying on the Chamber’s progressive critics. The Chamber attorneys and the security firms discussed targeting ChamberWatch, the SEIU, MoveOn, ThinkProgress, and other groups. The proposals details efforts to steal private computer information, spy on the families of the Chamber’s critics, and plant false documents within organizations opposed to the Chamber’s agenda.

ThinkProgress has uncovered yet another presentation from one of the private security firms describing plans for the Chamber. Lee Fang has the story.

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Our guest blogger is Nick Sundt, Director of Climate Change Communications at the World Wildlife Fund, and a longtime forest firefighter.

Last Thursday, all but one of the Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas voted for H.R. 910 to reverse the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding that greenhouse gas pollution threatens the health and welfare of Americans with a wide range of impacts, including more frequent and severe droughts and wildfires. One Texas Republican (Rep. Michael Burgess) abstained and one Texas Democrat (Rep. Henry Cuellar) also supported the measure. The measure passed the House (255 Ayes, 172 Nays), with no Republicans voting against it. 19 Democrats also voted in favor of the legislation.

The vote came immediately after Texas experienced its driest March on record, and as nearly 98 percent of the state is experiencing drought conditions. This includes 60 percent that is experiencing “severe” drought and 5 percent experiencing “exceptional” drought, the most extreme category. The National Drought Summary from the National Drought Mitigation Center on April 5th reports:

The first USDA soil moisture reports are out and they don’t paint a pretty picture, with 86% of Oklahoma showing short or very short topsoil moisture conditions. Texas is reporting 90% short/very short as well. Other statistics provided by the National Weather Service (Austin/San Antonio WFO) show that Del Rio has reported only 0.31 inches of precipitation for October-March, the 2nd driest since 1906. Austin reported its 5th driest October-March since 1856 and San Antonio came in as the 12th driest October-March since 1871.

Conditions are likely to deteriorate further. The U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook issued on April 7th and valid through June 2011 indicates that drought is likely to persist or intensify in Texas.

By Friday, the Texas Forest Service warned that “critical drought conditions, high temperatures and high winds are combining to create a perfect storm for wildfire.” On Saturday, the Texas Forest Service responded to 16 fires that burned 65,181 acres, and it said in a press release that wildfire weather conditions “could shape up to be among the worst in Texas history“:

Key weather factors include pervasive drought conditions, sustained winds of 30 – 35 mph – gusting up to 50 mph, high temperatures and low relative humidity. These weather conditions along with record-dry vegetation increase the potential for wildfires not only starting but also spreading quickly.

After wildfires in late February burned over 88,000 acres and destroyed 58 homes in Western Texas, Texas Forest Service spokesman Lewis Kearney said, “With the drought pattern Texas has had, fire season now is almost running 12 months out of the year. I mean that’s not normal.”

Unfortunately, it is the new normal. As Forrest Wilder said in February in the Texas Observer:

While Republicans in Congress, led by members of the Texas GOP delegation, work to defund and defang the EPA, climate change – and the science of climate – marches on. The GOP’s willful suspension of trust in what ever-mounting evidence – and dare I say, common sense? – tells us is happening to the planet is not just short-sighted. It’s reckless.

Clean-Tech investing jumps 115%

Clean-technology ventures in North America raised $2.2 billion over the first quarter, up 115% from the previous quarter and 43% from a year ago, driving the second-highest quarter in global clean-tech investing, an industry research firm reported this week.

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The editor/headline-writer at the Washington Post messed up an otherwise solid piece of reporting on one aspect of global warming, earlier plant blooms.

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” according to the most comprehensive literature review by climate scientists, a finding signed off on in 2007 by all of the member governments of the IPCC, including ours (the Bush Administration at the time).  Last year, a major report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences stated that the conclusion that “the Earth system is warming” is one of the “settled facts” about climate science.

So it is time for the Washington Post and other major media outlets to stop using such wishy-washy phrases as “some believe.”  This story demonstrates once again that the reporters are doing a better job than the editors on climate change (see Silence of the Lambs: Media herd’s coverage of climate change “fell off the map” in 2010).

The key part of the story itself is solid:

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This reposted video is part of CAP’s Ask the Expert Series.
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Last week I reported, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell fails to get majority in vote to deny climate science and block EPA Clean Air rules.  The media mavens at the Politico took the story a little further in today’s Morning Energy.

UPDATE:  Politico has now posted a full story, “Did Senate GOP doom EPA riders?” which I’ll excerpt at the end.

Since progressives have so little to celebrate these days on the climate front, here’s the ME story:

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On Thursday, Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) took to the floor of the House of Representatives to mock those who are outraged about the protection of subsidies for Big Oil, while services for Main Street Americans are slashed.  Think Progress has the story.

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