Back from DC

I am officially back from DC! Actually, I have been back from DC for several days now, but I had to make a running start on the week. It's astonishingly difficult to start in the middle of the week.

The conference was absolutely amazing. There were about 12,000 young people there, and they were expecting there to be about 5,000 people there for the lobby day. This is huge - a conference that scale is amazing. And it was really good. It was quite difficult for me to decide which workshops and panels to go to. I ended up going to two really great workshops on climate justice and indigenous rights, and then I went to a really great panel that was basically a Lay of the Land of energy issues in the US.

This December, there's an international meeting in Copenhagen (this is kind of like Kyoto), and so there's a huge push for the US to pass climate legislation before Copenhagen. There will be a Midwest delegation to Copenhagen. I doubt that there's any chance I could get to go, but it can't hurt to apply, right? This is very, very exciting, and especially with Obama announcing that he wants to pass aggressive policies to cut down on the US's additions to climate change, this is looking more and more possible.

It's just certain people in Congress and the Senate that we'll have to convince.

The point is, right now is a really exciting time for legislation.

Other exciting things? Summer of Solutions. This is really awesome. A bunch of friends from SPROG, and new friends from Powershift are getting together this summer to work on environmental issues. Right now, it looks like the twin cities summer of solutions will focus a lot on energy. I've changed my summer research proposal accrodingly, and am really excited about my project.

This is the project: I want to make a documentary on energy justice and indigenous groups. This is really timely, as reservations like White Earth are beginning to look at developing energy initiatives on their land. There are also serious justice issues, like detrimental development on lands. The rates of cancer on reservations have skyrocketed due to the mining of uranium, shale sand, and coal on or near the lands. These are really strange cancers too - like brain cancer. Things that don't develop elsewhere.

There's also stuff like this, which Tiki pointed me to. Yes, Tiki, you sent that link to exactly the right person to get fired up and do something about it.

So yes. This is my life for the past week. This weekend I'd been planning on going home, but due to the change in my research plans, I've got to stick around and figure stuff out. Not to mention the fact that I'm behind in homework, and may have contracted mono. Someone that I rode out on the bus with was developing mono, and I sat right behind her. Not so good.

Life has been entirely overwhelming post-powershift. It's always a strange adjustment, coming back from a very activist-centered thing. I have to readjust to the rhythms and excitements of the real world.

Am going to crash sometime soon. Seriously. Will probably update again later this weekend - my life has been a whirlwind of ideas this week, and I'm struggling to gain some sort of equilibrium with it right now.