Telling Winning Stories When the Opponents are Really Loud: The Fight for Clean Energy and the Clean Power Plan
Session Type(s): Panel
Starts: Friday, Jul. 15 10:00 AM (Eastern)
Ends: Friday, Jul. 15 11:15 AM (Eastern)
Despite the Supreme Court’s recent decision to put a temporary hold on the Clean Power Plan, climate and public health advocates and activists are still making one thing clear: it won’t revive the fortunes of the coal industry, slow the transition to clean energy or disrupt progress toward meeting the climate commitment the U.S. made in Paris last year. As the Supreme Court legal process unfolds, something else will continue unfolding as well—the steady progress of activists to retire dirty coal-fired power plants and replace them with clean, safe energy sources. Learn about the judicial process related to the Clean Power Plan and how to keep telling positive, progress stories that beat out the noise of opponents.
Moderator
Panelists
Mary Anne Hitt
Mary Anne Hitt is director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, which is working to eliminate the pollution caused by coal throughout its life cycle, and repower the nation with clean energy. The campaign has been widely heralded as one of the greatest recent success stories in the environmental movement. She previously served as executive director of Appalachian Voices, where she was one of the creators of iLoveMountains.org, an online campaign to end mountaintop removal coal mining that received national recognition for innovation and impact. She was also previously the executive director of the Ecology Center and the Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project. Mary Anne is a senior fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program. She grew up in east Tennessee and now lives in West Virginia with her family.
Michelle Romero
Michelle Romero is Deputy Director of Green For All, where she works to end environmental segregation in America by prioritizing communities of color in climate policy.
In March, Michelle coordinated a bus tour of Flint, MI with Van Jones, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Steyer, and Vien Truong, to expose the environmental racism that is the #FlintWaterCrisis and uplift community solutions to #FixFlint.
Michelle also coordinated national partners to co-create and publish a series of toolkits – the Clean Power for All Solutions Series – to give states needed policy guidance to ensure the Clean Power Plan’s benefits reach frontline communities.
Immediately prior, Michelle worked in issues management and policy analysis for the University of California system, and spent five years at Greenlining Institute, a California-based nonprofit, where she did extensive work to shape the state’s 2011 Citizen Redistricting Process and expand opportunities for people of color in the electoral process.
Other sessions: November 9, 2016: How to Translate Millennial GOTV to Millennial Power, Climate Justice Strategies: Exploring the Intersections of Climate Change