Activists push for clean energy pledge

Activists will target students throughout the next few months as part of a national nonpartisan movement to make clean energy the biggest priority of the youth vote on Election Day.

Groups such as Clean Energy for UMD and Maryland Student Climate Coalition have joined up with the Energy Action Coalition's Power Vote campaign, which is aiming for one million youths nationwide to pledge to vote for solutions to the climate crisis and hold leaders accountable, with a goal of more than 7,000 signatures from this university.

Activists have been asking students to sign the pledge this week on the campus as well as at Towson University, St. Mary's College of Maryland and other schools across the state, hoping to add 40,000 signatures from the state to cement its reputation as a progressive state committed to energy reform.

Clean Energy for UMD tried to get 900 signatures on the first day of the campaign, roughly 20 signatures per volunteer each hour. Communications Director Mark Conway, a junior government and politics major, estimated that a few hundred signed up.

Campaign director for MSCC, junior government and politics major Andrew Nazdin, said as of yesterday 102,412 young Americans had signed the pledge.

Power Vote asks students to research the candidates' positions on energy and get to the polls on Nov. 4. After signers provide their contact information, the EAC sends weekly e-mails with updates on energy reform, EAC Communications Director Brianna Cayo Cotter said.

"We have national calls where everyone checks in with how many pledges they've signed, and University of Maryland is an all-star," Cotter said.

On the campus, students have shown their support for energy reform in the past, most notably in April 2007, when 91 percent of the student body voted to increase their fees to fund clean energy. EAC has also partnered with university student activists to launch the Campus Climate Challenge that led university President Dan Mote to sign the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment in May 2007 to move toward carbon neutrality. The university also hosted EAC's Power Shift 2007, a 4-day grassroots campaign attended by more than 5,000 youths.

Cotter said young voters are part of the first American generation to face a lower standard of living than their parents and that investing in a clean energy economy would create millions of green jobs.

"Clean energy is tied to the issues that young people care about, whether it's health care, gas prices, the war in Iraq, the tanking economy - every single one is intimately connected with clean energy," Cotter said.

If Power Vote succeeds in its one million goal, Nazdin predicted the group's Power Shift in February 2009 will have twice the attendance, or more.

"We'll go to Capitol Hill and be the barbarians at the gate, demanding energy reform," he said.

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