Power Shift ’07 was a momentous gathering of 6,000 students and activists from all across the country who came together at the University of Maryland Campus to address climate change. We arrived on Saturday morning, groggy after driving straight down I-95 through the night, but nothing brightens a November day like a crowd of excited people out to save the world.

Over the weekend there were strategy and information workshops, speakers such Ralph Nader, Nancy Poloisi, and Van Jones, and plenty of opportunities to make connections with folks from around the country.On Monday, those of us not called back by obligations for school united at the capitol to present the 1sky Campaign, which calls for 5 million green jobs, 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, and no new coal plants.

We swung the bus by K-Street to pick up the folks at ACORE (The American Council on Renewable Energy our fiscal sponsors) and wearing suits and carrying drums we joined over a thousand “Powershifters” for a lively rally on the lawn of the capitol. One thousand people together shouted demands, waved flags and signs, cheered and danced and beat drums, not yet powerful enough to shake the windows of congress but committed and growing.

Following the rally we walked into the senate building in small groups and navigated our way through the maze of staircases and corridors to find our representatives. Upon entry we received a stern look from security, concerned about the drums but confused by the suits, “You’re not going to bang those drums, right?” We said no and they cracked a smile and waved us through the metal detectors.

About twenty of us crowded into Senator Ted Kennedy’s office to speak to his energy advisor. We presented the 1sky platform and several people told personal stories while the staffer nodded and assured us that Senator Kennedy was with us all the way. That is until we asked about something specific. “Why does the senator oppose Cape Wind?” Alan asked. Despite support from over 80% of the citizens of Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy opposes the plan to build the nation’s first off shore wind farm in Nantucket Sound. The offshore turbines could supply 100% of the electricity to Cape Cod which is currently generated by burning dirty bunker fuel. ( Learn more about Cape Wind (add link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Wind)).

After listening to Kennedy’s staffer make excuses about legislative loopholes and “doughnut holes??”, we left the office and followed a group of Dartmouth students into the office of Senator Sununu—Republican of New Hampshire, another visionary who as late as 2005 “wanted to see more research before concluding that humans were affecting global warming”(Concord Monitor 4/17/07) and has consistently voted in favor of oil subsidies over renewable energy. His adviser greeted our demands with polite platitudes. “Ok, so this is your top priority, not the war, not the farm bill, but the energy bill,” she said, missing the point that those issues are all interconnected, and that the order of these bills on the Senator’s desk, matters less than the principles by which he approaches this legislation.

Our last stop was at the office of Senator Mary Landrieu—Louisiana Democrat. The young aide was at least honest about the Louisiana’s current dependency on the oil and gas industries. She earned our respect for giving us frank answers about the Senator’s positions of supporting the oil and gas industries, not just rhetoric she knew we wanted to hear. We listened as frustrated students from Grambling State pointed to the office walls of that had a series of photographs of devastation from Hurricane Katrina. They pleaded for the aid to take their message back to Senator Landrieu.

The responses from rep,s and the reps of reps, ranged from rhetorical platitudes to honest disagreements over whether or not the goals of the One Sky Campaign are “politically realistic”. The majority of the population supporting a policy does not prevent it from being “politically unrealistic” in our current state of affairs. Change will happen when we organize, reach out to our leaders to take the right actions, and let them know that their jobs depend on it.

The energy at Power Shift, the thousands of vocal, excited young people discussing, organizing, lobbying, shouting and dancing invigorated the BioTour crew. But this is only a stepping stone and success will require further efforts. This is the movement of our generation and it’s growing. Check out Power Shift ’07. But, if you want to feel the excitement of thousands of young people standing together for change, redefining our culture to one of community and involvement, make sure you attend the next one, because it is gonna rock the nation.

From Minneapolis we traveled north to St. John’s/St. Benedict’s College. Our host Danielle and the Campus Greens led us around the sister colleges speaking to classes of students, the transportation department, and high school students at St. John’s Preparatory School. Before leaving a couple of
students led us on a walk around the lake and arboretum through a forest of brilliant ashes, sugar maples, oaks and evergreens trees.

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We drove through the night to University of Wisconsin at Stephens Point and spent the next day parked in the center of the campus talking to droves of enthusiastic students. At night we cruised around the mall town getting to know our hosts from WisPIRG and a fun crew of UWSP students.

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Our next stop in Wisconsin was the Holstein Breeder’s Breakfast where there was plenty of cheese, beer and Amish made ice cream. We witnessed a dairy cow contest (the winning cow “held her udder well above the hocks” and was “more correct in the teats”), and saw canola seeds pressed into oil for fuel that powered two tractors and a Mack truck with straight vegetable oil. The engines were converted to run on SVO by our sponsor PrairieFire BioFuels and vegetable oil mechanic Luke Mathews.

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We spent much of next week in Madison doing bus maintenance, putting in long hours in front of our laptops, and making time to visit friends and swim in Lake Mendota. We made a couple of excursions
into the country to interview and spend time with the president of the Family Farm Defenders, John Kinsman, on his organic dairy farm. Ethan, Jenny and I sat listening to this elder share his knowledge and wisdom of decades of farming and local and global activism. We followed John around his yard like as he picked us handfuls of the vegetables and grapes and helped him chase his cows home from the pasture. Pulling carrots from the ground, grapes from the vine, and climbing into apple trees to find fruit restores a feeling of gratitude to the earth and to plants for transforming the energy of sun into food that will become my body; that feeling of gratitude is easily forgotten when our food feeding on things that are distinguishable only by brand names rather than species.

We traveled on to Blair, WI, to visit our friends Marv and Janis (a couple of back-to-landers from the 60’s) on their farm. I strolled through the fields, sat on the porch swing petting their smelly old dogs, and felt feeling at peace on the farm (despite contrating lymne disease the last time I was there).

Before leaving Madison we saw Michael Franti and Spearhead perform at the Orpheum, rode out to the country with our friend Taavi McMahon (grease entrepreneur and public defender) and rode back into town, sharing the bed of his truck with a few bales of hay and a goat. On our last day in town we got in touch with our inner primates exercising at Monkey Bar Gymnasium and that evening interviewed our friend Hanah John Taylor. We listened as the jazz musician, and former black panther passed on the lessons he has learned in his 59 years of life, and his thoughts about what is next for humanity (stressing the urgent need to “get them [our leaders] away from the button!”)

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We drove through the night to reach Elgin Community College in Illinois, where we presented to a constant stream of classes that left us hoarse. We left for Chicago that night to visit our friend Jill and see some live music. Living on a traveling land ship can be surreal, I remember listening to bluegrass in Chicago and waking up at an Indiana mini-mall to explain to hefty fellows in overalls why we were sucking grease from the dumpster of the Chinese Buffet. That afternoon we landed at Goshen College, and spent the evening sharing knowledge and ideas with the community at the small Mennonite school. I explained the bus and our project to an old couple who said that they would pray for me, explaining that they had connections. Later Jenny and I chilled with a girl from Oregon who explained to us that she was not religious but that she liked Goshen because at the parties everyone dances. Goshen has one of the only Community Supported Farmer’s markets in the country, and the College has signed the President’s Climate Commitment, pledging to work toward carbon neutrality.

Before we left Indiana we stopped at the Merry Lea Nature Preserve where Goshen College has built an eco-village and research facility. After seeing mile after mile of landscapes dominated by corn and dotted with mini-malls, it was rejuvenating to walk through the wild prairie, around the swamps and through the forests bustling with birds, bugs, and thousands of other living creatures.

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Our next stop was Ohio State University in Columbus, for the Scarlet, Gray, and Green Energy Fair. There were about 70 different booths and tables of activist groups and “green” products. We powered the sound system with energy generated from our solar panels and vegetable oil, and listened to interesting speakers and a couple of great local bands. (Notably the creative funk of Bum Wealthy because playing music with friends in wrinkled clothes is more valuable than wearing the finest suit inside a corporate prison)).

We left Columbus around 3 am after a little urban exploration and some interesting conversations. Driving straight through the night, we arrived at Dysart Woods at dawn and walked into the last remaining patch of old growth forest in Ohio. As the sun filtered down through the emerald canopy, we sat beneath huge elms and oaks listening to the forests listening to the living forest—the whispered splash of an acorn on dry leaves, the scurry of curious chipmunks, the crash of a white tailed dear through undergrowth. Tragically there is a vein of coal running beneath the Dysart Woods, and the Ohio Valley Coal Company has a pending permit to mine beneath the forest. Coal companies have more money and therefore more legal rights than the forest or the people of Ohio (including people from Buckeye Forest Council who we met at OSU) ho have been fighting to save the forest. It is not tragic that human beings mine of burn coal, the tragedy is that we do so without restraint. Dysart woods is .004 % of the ancient forest of Ohio. Europe’s forests were destroyed centuries ago, and today the forests of Asia are rapidly disappearing. These trees have been breathing in Co2 from (and storing it in their bodies) and breathing out oxygen for centuries, literally breathing life into us animals; they convert sunlight into forms useful to us—food, fiber, and renewable fuel—more efficiently than any solar panel, and provide the foundation for entire ecosystems of species, each one a thread of the fabric of life of the planet, of which human beings are also a part.

We’ve met so many different places and faces in the first month of the tour. The task of catalyzing a cultural shift toward a society that will sustain is daunting, but people everywhere are taking action in their lives and communities and continuously reminding us that it is possible, and the magical places hiding down dirt roads remind us that is it worth it.