I have had the opportunity to attend the first two days of the "Change It" conference in Boston which is being sponsored by Greenpeace and Seventh Generation.  There are more than fifty young people present. Each of them has a passion for the environment, but they are all very different. Students have come from the South, like Florida, from New England, from places like Vermont and from the Mid-West and each of them had so much energy and excitement.  I actually ran into a YP4 fellow at the conference, Betsy Ott from Northern Michigan University. Everyone is at the conference with the hope that when they go back to their campuses they can change it.

 The best part of the conference so far are the speakers.  They radiate the passion of the environmental movement. I got to hear Bill McKibben, John Passacantando and Judy Bonds among others. Bonds’ family has been rooted in West Virginia and the Appalachian region for ten generations. Judy Bonds’ presentation via video was a story of how far some people sacrifice themselves for the environmental movement. She has received death threats for her activism and doesn’t leave her family alone for more than twenty-four hours at a time. Bonds keeps a gun with her even when she is sitting on her porch. It is amazing that women like her live this way in West Virginia today. Rolf Skar talked about how the world is losing its forests. Some of the deforestation images shown in his presentation are really stunning.

 The conference itself has two main focuses: global warming and the problems facing ancient forests. Greenpeace has a campaign called "Project Hot Seat" to help light a fire under Congress and force them to combat global warming. The other program to protect ancient forests and prevent deforestation is called "Kleercut", which focuses on corporations like Kimberly-Clark’s failure to use recycled fiber content in their products like Kleenex, which contributes to the destruction of ancient forests.

 While writing this blog tonight I heard that former Vice-President Al Gore has challenged the nation to take major steps to make the energy used in the United States’ power system carbon-free within the next ten years, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/washington/18gore.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin much like President Kennedy successfully challenged and inspired the country in another generation to the task “of landing a man on the Moon” before the decade of the 60’s ended. Al Gore wants us to “change it” with a challenge with a deadline and measurable goals.  In the conference I also heard about “Greenwashing”, "a term that is used to describe the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwash.

After listening to the challenge of Gore, it made me think that if the next administration adopts the challenge it will be more difficult for companies to “Greenwash” their actions.

Attending a conference like “Change it”, listening to a figure like Al Gore propose the adoption of a major change in public policy, and focusing on the many mainstream companies that are greenwashing to appeal to consumers, made me realize how mainstream the environmental movement has become.  Although I am not sure if the mainstreaming of the environmental movement is ultimately for good or bad,“Change It” has certainly been a great experience.