Collegiate Times

From Nov. 2 to Nov. 5, over 100 Virginia Tech students attended the Power Shift conference, the first-ever national youth summit on global warming.

The conference, which was held at the University of Maryland in College Park, had more than 5,000 students in attendance, representing all 50 states and Canada.

Power Shift included powerful speakers, a D.C. march, a nationally broadcasted Live Earth concert and over 190 workshops.

"Many people like to put a label on environmentalists as 'tree-huggers' or 'hippies' or whatever they want to call people who are concerned about the environment," said Angie De Soto, entertainment committee co-chair for Power Shift. "But if they do not know the seven big environmental issues going on in this planet, then they have no grounds to debate us and what we stand for."

The march on Washington, D.C. took place on Monday, Nov. 5 when the students converged on Capitol Hill to lobby elected representatives on bold and comprehensive climate change legislation. The Power Shift reason for the lobbying is "to solve the climate crisis and put America back on the path to a clean and just energy future," De Soto said.

"The environmental movement is the social movement of our generation, and climate change is the defining challenge to our generation," De Soto said. "If we can't rise up and resolve this issue and really cut our carbon emissions, then pretty much our children are going to see a much different planet than we see right now. We really have to be conscious in the way we use energy, resources, water, everything."

The lobby was the largest-ever day of lobbying on climate change and reached offices of the Senate and House of Representatives to deliver a concrete and action-orientated proposal. Lobby training workshops were also available at Power Shift.

"This event is going to be life-altering for a lot of people," said Bryce Carter, networking committee chair for Environmental Coalition at Virginia Tech (ECVT). "Thousands of students will actually lobby Congress and rally in Washington, D.C., which will just be incredible."

The 190 workshops included subjects such as anti-oppression and diversity, campus organizing, education, environmental justice/energy issues and skills training.

The career fair connected the attendees to the country's best 'green' companies, such as the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club and the Rainforest Action Network. There were chances to submit resumes and learn about internships and volunteer opportunities.

Also during the conference, Carter presented a speech during the state breakouts, that was geared specifically toward Virginia attendees.

"Together we help represent an entire state of the most influential country in the world," Carter said. "It doesn't matter if you're a native, or what school you go to, or what county you're from: here and now, we're all Virginians."  

ECVT is open to all student organizations and currently has weekly meetings to discuss the environmental issues going on around campus. ECVT has worked to recruit people and get the word out about the conference.

"I have e-mailed tons of listservs, spoken at meetings, spoken at classes, and just tried to contact as much of the Tech campus as I could," said Julie Chop, recruitment coordinator for Power Shift. "We tried to get the word out as much as we could and get a good representation of Hokies at the conference."

Attendees of the event from Tech have said that Tech was the biggest, most-represented school at Power Shift, and that people who attended this past weekend will come back educated and ready to start making changes for the better.

"You have to educate yourselves," De Soto said. "We are the only ones out there who can fight for our children."