Young People Power Ahead on Climate Policy Change

Posted on December 13, 2014 by Katy Pye

iMatter Movement

MONDAY 12/15/14 4 p.m. PST — HBO iMatter Movement video—“Saving My Tomorrow,” features youth involved in the fight for climate change. Here’s the Trailer.

My May 2012 post on the iMatter Movement shared about kids (and adults), first marching to protest climate change, then relying on the public trust doctrine to sue the federal and states governments. The public trust is “a legal doctrine that imposes a fundamental, fiduciary obligation on all governments to protect our shared natural resources.” The goal of the suits is to force governments to create the recovery plans necessary to turn around or weaken the direction of global climate change.

Government isn’t the only focus. The Movement’s Youth Council, 3 Step “Revolution” for Change asks us all to change the way we Think, Live, and Act. The Movement’s website lets the children tell their stories in video. Stunningly beautiful and moving.

COP 20 Lima, Peru

Opening ceremony COP20
Wikipedia image

“I believe in order to get change we need to have massive mobilization. …governments are not going to move by themselves, they’re not going to choose to place people over profit. They’re not going to choose to align their policies with humanity, unless they are pushed to do so.” Emily Williams, California Student Sustainability Coalition * Interview “What Now for Climate Change? Youth Movements from Lima to Paris”

A broad coalition of California students are challenging public and private university fossil fuel-related investment practices. Radio KGNU interviews Emily Williams, Campaign Director of the California Student Sustainability Coalition about the nature of campaigns for change, particularly divestiture and sustainability. Just this week, California’s Chico State University became the first public university to commit to fully divesting all investments in fossil fuels within four years.

The 2005 United Nations (UN) Climate Change Convention (COP 11 or COP/MOP 1) spawned the concept of an International Youth Climate Movement(Wiki). Every year, the number of youth organizations attending the conference and working for climate change back home grows. Here are a few: Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Indian Youth Climate Network, UK Youth Climate Coalition, Kenya Youth Climate Network, Climate Youth Japan, China Youth Action Network.

I want to grow in a world where all these young people, and many more like them, are in charge.

If you are an environmental youth group working on climate change, add your website and mission in the comments. And tell us how it’s going.

“Live as if our future matters.” Alex Loorz, founder iMatter

Praise for novel, Elizabeth’s Landing

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Katy Pye

This was too long for FB, but I HAD to share.

I just received this endorsement from Diane Wilson, the most compassionate, courageous, and powerful woman I have the privilege to know. After being blown away by her book, I drove to a 1 day writer’s conference in Santa Barbara several years ago just to see her talk. I’d written the first “solid” draft of all the shrimping sections, having spent hours and days reading about the issues, the history of conflict over the turtles, and regulations shrimpers are under. I’d watched many YouTube videos to see how the fishing is done and described what I saw.

I cornered Diane on a break and told her about the book and asked if she knew a shrimper I could talk to, who might help me make sure I’d gotten it right. After hesitantly saying she’d be glad to help, the first thing she asked was, “Is Grandpa a Gulf shrimper or a bay shrimper.” Uhhh, embarrassing. I had no clue; didn’t know there was a difference. I’m surprised she didn’t walk out right then.

Shrimping rewrite support-2-rs-1_edited-1

My desk during the rewrites. Diane’s book for courage, her photos for inspiration, and the sweetpeas as a reminder there is a garden and world beyond my computer screen.

But she stuck with me, read, corrected, re-read my fixes, and when she said Grandpa was real, I knew I could relax. Some of my favorite parts of Elizabeth’s Landing are there thanks to Diane’s own doggedness. Thank you, Diane. Your praise, and all you do and stand for, touch my heart. And give me strength!

If you haven’t read her books on her own environmental and social justice work, please do. Amazing stuff, read like novels, but all true.

“I can vouch for Ms. Pye’s dedication to the truth and her compassion for sea turtles. I’m a shrimper from the Gulf Coast of Texas, and when Katy Pye asked me to make sure her depictions of shrimpers and shrimp boats in her book was accurate, I was a bit hesitant. I am a fifth generation shrimper and despite our faults, funny and hard nosed ways, these are my people. I love them. I think many people don’t understand them so I’m a bit protective. But Katy was dogged about seeking me out! Wow, Katy! You are as bull-headed as any shrimper I know. So Katy’s narrator, Elizabeth, is pretty close to Katy. Same stubbornness. Same feistiness. I admire Katy for tackling this difficult subject and taking such care and thoughtfulness in her characters. Katy is as much the heroine of her life as her character Elizabeth is of this book. A wonderful read!”

Find Diane’s first book here at Chelsea Green or the usual online stores.

A photo Diane shared with me, which inspired an image in the book. These are wires connecting the boat to the net during a shrimp drag.

Elizabeth’s Landing-Nook e-book!

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Katy Pye

FOR AGES 11 TO THE AGELESS

It’s true! It’s a miracle! Okay, that’s overstating it, but how it feels after six years. An e-book version of Elizabeth’s story is available through Barnes and Noble’s Nook site. If you don’t have a Nook device, don’t worry, you can download the app for free and read on your computer or other mobile devices. Go to B&N’s Mobile Apps webpage to sign in, sign up, and connect to the right download.

If you’re the something soft and flexible, tree-based-book type person, the Print-on-Demand version will be out by June through Amazon. A Kindle version will go up about the same time, maybe sooner if I’m successful formatting it myself, as I did the Nook. Watch my Facebook Author site, Follow me here, or leave your e-mail on the Contact Me page above for updates.

PLEASE, once you’ve finished the book, leave feedback and ratings at these sites, Goodreads, Facebook it, blog it, etc., because…

A portion of all my book sale profits support worldwide sea turtle conservation and education programs. B&N has e-book gift cards. Bookstores do, too. I’m just sayin’ . . .

MENDO LAUNCH

Flags are flying–get out your calendar. The revised book launch date at Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino, CA. is June 30th, 6:30 p.m. Tux, tails, and formals optional, but my tiara’s getting steam-blasted and the side seams of my Senior Prom dress are sprung WAY out for the event.

I’m working on Grandma Linnie to do some of the catering.

Deepest thanks to everyone who has given writing help, an ear to moments of pain and joy, celebrations at key steps, and for believing all these years I really was writing a novel.

Indie publishers and indie bookstores are trying hard to work together so each can survive and grow. I’m publishing with the “big houses” (interpret at will) because it is the most direct, profitable way for me to get books into readers’ hands. Please support your local, or any independent bookstore, and encourage them to carry books you want to read. I’m working to collaborate with them, too.

Book Blurb

Port Winston—home to sun, sand, and shopping. What’s not to like? Everything, to 14 year-old Elizabeth Barker, uprooted mid-school year to the Texas coast. When Grandpa, with more judgments than the Old Testament, pronounces her 10¢ shy of worthless and headed for trouble, Elizabeth bolts for Wayward Landing beach—the county’s last wild haven.

A chance encounter with an endangered, nesting sea turtle ignites new purpose, friendships, and trouble even Grandpa couldn’t predict. Her fight to save the Landing unearths complex family ties to the powerful developer and catapults her against those she loves. When the Deepwater Horizon oil slick threatens the turtles’ Louisiana feeding grounds, Elizabeth’s journalist mom hits the front lines. And Elizabeth’s fears and plans hit overdrive.

Elizabeth’s Landing, a compelling environmental and family saga, bridges risk and loss to hope and hearts —human to human, human to animal, human to world.

Ages 10 and up.

P.S. Turtle nesting season has begun along the Gulf coast. Info under Elizabeth’s Sea Turtles tells you the best places to visit to see turtles or hatchling releases. Donations are always welcome.

Kids Fight for Atmosphere as a “Public Trust”

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Katy Pye

“THE STATE HAS A SOVEREIGN OBLIGATION OVER ALL EARTH AND AIR WITHIN ITS DOMAIN.” U.S. Supreme Court 1907

In 1962, when Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published, I was eleven, the same age as Jamie-Lynn Butler now. I was thirteen, like Glori Die Filippone, when Ms. Carson lost her fight with cancer. As a kid, the “environment” was school, summer camp, or my room. The only battle lines I drew were those separating my parents from me. It took more than a decade before I got that “the environment” wasn’t about my tiny world view. But recalling my youthful ignorance or feeling badly when I slack off recycling are empty gestures.

CC Scales_of_justice

Seventeen year-old iMatter Movement founder, Alec Loorz, and the other young people at the core of the Our Children’s Trust lawsuit against the federal government and 49 states, have taken charge and inspire awe. They’re not phrase-makers.

Trust litigant Nelson Kanuk watches winter come later every year, threatening his family’s subsistence-based life in Alaska. Twenty-three year-old Montana farmer, John Thiebes, risks his economic future, making his farm a climate-friendly guinea pig. “Climate change,” he says, “is the defining issue of my generation and the generations to follow.”

Alec created the iMatter Movement because he saw what we are doing to counteract climate change isn’t big enough or fast enough. What’s needed is a politically and legally solid engine to drive change. Through the “Trust” lawsuit these powerful young souls face a fight for the environment much bigger than the earlier ones of my generation. I’m ashamed, after such a good start in the 1970s with the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and other regulations, we let so much progress on the side of the environment slide under the corporate and individual “can’t live without it” bus. As 65 year-old Huffington Post energy and climate policy contributor, William S. Becker, (“Children v. Dirty Business,”) put it:

I must admit some embarrassment that our children now feel obligated to face off against the giants of industry and government and all their lawyers. These kids are stepping in where their elders in Washington and the international community have feared to tread.

Global fossil carbon emissions 1800–2007

The aim of the lawsuit is simple — our federal and state governments have a mandated responsibility to protect the environment. The suit asks for a comprehensive plan to tackle climate change. Planning. We do it all the time. The atmosphere, the kids claim, like the water we drink and air we breathe, is a “public trust” that belongs to everyone. What a thought.

What’s Next? Who’s Playing?

In March this year, under District Court approval, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM, “one of the largest fossil fuel lobbying groups in the country”) and five other industry groups joined federal lawyers, asking the kid’s case be thrown out. Most states are following that lead. NAM’s lawyers argue industry has a legal interest (translate, a right) to “freely emit CO2” and that limiting greenhouse gasses would “limit or eliminate their businesses.” May 11th, 2012 a judge will side one way or the other. The efforts of these brave young people will either suffocate in a Washington, D.C. courtroom or breathe the fresh air of hope.

We can’t vote. We can’t afford lobbyists. We can only trust that our leaders will make good decisions on our behalf. But when they make decisions like favoring oil company profits over our safety, then we need to hold them accountable. — Alec Loorz