White House Meets with Youth Environmental Leaders
As the youth environmental movement gains momentum prior to COP15, The White House announced just the Wednesday before Thanksgiving that they would host a Youth and Clean Energy Forum with youth environmental leaders on Dec 2, 2009. The act in and of itself is a great victory for the youth environmental movement. Achieving such type of open dialogue was a heavier task during the Bush administration especially considering the fact that Bush did not acknowledge climate change until the last 2 years of his term. The fact that the Obama administration put this forum together is a great step forward.
100 youth leaders meet with White House Senior staff to discuss Climate Change
As a prominent youth environmental justice leader with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization in Chicago, I was one of 100 youth leaders invited to participate in the forum. At first, I thought the forum was just going to be a speil session with little time to ask questions. Well, the forum exceeded my expectations even though President Obama did not attend the forum. Those present at the forum included Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy; Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor; Lisa Jackson, Administrator of Environmental Protection Agency; Nancy Sutley ,Chair of Council on Environmental Quality; Jon Carson, Chief of Staff for Council on Environmental Quality; Carol Browner, Director of White House Office of Energy and Climate Change. The forum was broken down into two parts: 1) panel with Q&A session. 2) Working groups with senior level staff. (more…)
