People Power: Energy, Electricity and Climate Justice
Session Type(s): Panel
Starts: Thursday, Jul. 16 1:30 PM (Eastern)
Ends: Thursday, Jul. 16 2:45 PM (Eastern)
Dirty fossil fuel utilities are opposing progressive change, raising rates and killing the planet, but people across the country, led by youth and First Nations activism, are taking back power. Learn how climate hawks and economic justice activists are working together to make our power grid and politics cleaner, and fighting for more affordable and equitable energy costs. National leaders and Arizona activists will share their stories of how to build coalitions and create a greener, brighter future across political, class and racial boundaries.
Moderator
Brad Johnson
Brad Johnson is a climate strategist and communicator. He is the editor of Hill Heat, a climate politics and policy website. Previously Brad was the founding executive director of Climate Hawks Vote, a grassroots climate politics organization, campaign manager for Forecast the Facts, a grassroots climate advocacy organization, and editor for ThinkProgress Green at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Brad holds a bachelor’s degree in math and physics from Amherst College and master’s degree in geosciences from the Massachusetts Institute for Technology. He is the co-author of Technomanifestos and the founder of HillHeat.com.
Panelists
Sandy Bahr
Sandy Bahr is the Chapter Director for the Grand Canyon (Arizona) Chapter of the Sierra Club, where her responsibilities include advocating for environmental protection with various state and federal agencies, conducting research, developing and evaluating policies, conducting grassroots outreach and organizing, developing and implementing priority projects, fundraising and budget development, and supervising staff, among others. She has worked actively on environmental protection issues in Arizona for the past twenty-seven years, both as a volunteer and as staff for various organizations including Sierra Club, Arizona Audubon Council, Arizona Common Cause, and the McDowell Sonoran Land Trust. Recent campaigns have involved helping to stop future uranium mining in the greater Grand Canyon region, helping to promote a strong energy efficiency standard and its implementation at the Arizona Corporation Commission, and seeking to strengthen the proposed Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon emissions from Arizona’s power plants.
Lisa Hoyos
Lisa Hoyos is the Director and the Co-Founder of Climate Parents, a national organization focused on mobilizing parents and families for clean energy and climate solutions. She has been a campaigner in the labor, environmental and EJ movements in California for over twenty years, most recently serving as the CA Director of the BlueGreen Alliance and the former Apollo Alliance. Her labor movement experience also includes running legislative and electoral campaigns with the national AFL-CIO and and global justice campaigns with the Congress of South African Trade Unions in Johannesburg. Her environmental background includes working with Greenpeace to fight toxic facilities in low-income communities and serving as a committee staffer to CA Senate Natural Resources Committee under Senator Tom Hayden. Lisa is Latina and bilingual. She lives with her husband and two school age boys in San Francisco.
Elsa Johnson
Elsa Johnson, a Navajo tribal member, founded IINA Solutions, a 501 c 3 non-profit to improve the quality of life (iina) for marginalized rural Navajo residents challenged by lack of running water and electricity. In 2011, with solar project partner Mark Snyder Electric, she established Plateau Solar & Wind (PSW) the first alternative infrastructure program in Indian Country using clean energy. The team designed a robust 2 kW system to withstand the harsh elements and later added a 1 kW wind generator. As a result 40 remote Navajo elders have improved health due to solar electrification, clean drinking water, and sanitation through her projects. PSW also constructed the first Energy Efficient house on Navajo Nation, and successfully turned Star School into the first NetZero charter school in the US. Her project stories are featured in several Southwest publications, and world-wide web Solar Novus Magazine, North America Renewable Energy Magazine, and Home Power Magazine. Johnson advocates for the natural environment and Indian water rights. The Navajo reservation is surrounded by six coal-fired power plants, two operate on Navajo land and two mines extract coal. She joins several active Navajo grassroots groups without much help from national organizations conduct research, community education and outreach activities about environmental and social injustices brought on by fossil fuel industries, uranium, fracking, as well as the depletion and contamination of precious water by these industries.
Lauren Kuby
Kuby was recently elected to the Tempe City Council–her first elected office–on a sustainability platform. She is a long-time community leader who has served as an advocate for vulnerable populations and climate-change action. As manager of community engagement for Arizona State University’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, Kuby has championed urban sustainability practices and solutions and mentored student activists. Kuby is the former chair of the Tempe Democrats, a vice chairwoman of the Arizona Democratic Party. and first vice chair of the Maricopa County Democratic Party. In February 2007, she helped create the grassroots group, Arizonans for Obama and organized Women for Obama in Arizona. She volunteered for Obama 2008 in five states, including Iowa and Nevada. She is a tireless worker for environmental justice, sustainable communities, and renewable energy.