Wednesday, 29 Mar 2000
ST. PAUL, Minn.
There are thousands of organizations affiliated with Earth Day 2000 around the world, but I dare any one of them to say that they had more fun today than ME3. Along with our allies, we had 12 hours today with the chair of Earth Day 2000, Denis Hayes. (If you don't know him, learn a little about him here.)
Several folks pitched in to make a very smooth and high-powered schedule for Denis's visit, but Minnesota Project's Lola Schoenrich, the lead organizer on the Sustainable Energy for Economic Development (SEED) Campaign, put it all together.
Denis on the House floor (with me applauding in the background).
After making a flurry of media calls to kick off our Earth Day Countdown, our first appointment was with the politician in America with the most sizzle, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura. Without giving a blow by blow, I'll just say that Jesse and Denis clicked, and some good things could come of it.
Denis was introduced on the floor of the Minnesota House of Representatives by House Environment Committee Chair Dennis Ozment, and I got to accompany Denis there. In 12 years of advocacy in Minnesota, I had never before been on the House floor. At noon, the Senate majority leader hosted a reception and Denis spoke for half an hour, then fielded the questions of at least 15 key state senators from both parties.
Diana McKeown and Denis.
A public television interview, editorial board visits, and an address to county commissioners on electricity deregulation and the environment rounded out his nine-to-five schedule. For public TV and the editorial board, we teamed him up with Clean Water Action's Energy Program Director Diana McKeown, the Earth Day 2000 chair in Minnesota.
Tomorrow we start at 7 a.m. After a breakfast briefing with eight politicians from three parties who want to be elected U.S. senator in November, we will do a photo shoot and a talk at a solar-powered school in downtown Minneapolis (the other twin). Then we'll look under the hood of a Honda Insight for the TV cameras, meet another big editorial board, and do a keynote talk at the Second Bi-annual Energy Summit for organizers and grassroots groups.
A rapt crowd at Hamline.
For me, the highlight of a whole day that was high was a very thoughtful and detailed speech Denis gave tonight on campus at St. Paul's Hamline Universtiy. Talking to a mix of true believers, new faces, and students, Denis spoke with a compelling grace and an encyclopedic knowledge of the issues.
Denis was eloquently introduced before his speech by Tom Griffin, a 60-year-old clean-energy entrepreneur and founder of two key Twin Cities environmental NGOs with 20-year track records. A (paraphrased) excerpt from Griffin's intro:
I hope that in this meeting tonight sits the next Rachel Carson [author of Silent Spring, the early 1960s book that resulted in the banning of DDT and helped save the bald eagle from extinction] or Theo Colburn [the pharmacist-turned-zoologist who put together the scary pieces of a puzzle of mutation and endocrine disruption in her late 1990s book Our Stolen Future]. No one is standing around ready to pass you a torch. Like in 1970 when Denis made a habit of seizing and occupying college buildings, young people must seize the torch (and the microphone!), and lead.
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