By Patrick Mannhard
Last weekend, after the glorious College Ecology Club's protest, we were in no way satisfied. Ten UP students then went to Seattle for an environmental conference.
We charged into Washington and filled a Moreau Center van with hippies, cooked squash and creative minds. Why did we road trip to Seattle and sleep on hard floors all weekend?
It was the same reason that students from Lewis and Clark, Reed, PSU, Pacific University, Pacific Lutheran University, University of Oregon, Oregon State, Evergreen, Whitman, PCC and Western Washington congregated: to create "a sustainable just and prosperous future for all."
We know it's hypocritical that the College Ecology Club drove to the conference and polluted, but my tandem bike only fits two, so we settled for carpooling and pushed the car the entire 170 miles.
Freshman Kelsey Reavis states that the conference was "a great opportunity for students to join in on the grassroots efforts promoting the global climate-change movement and that people have not fully grasped the magnitude of what needs to happen in the short amount of time we have to get it done."
The two-day conference was organized by the Cascade Climate Network (CCN) to excite the students of the Pacific Northwest and decide how to best move society in a sustainable direction.
The CCN is a network of colleges from the Pacific Northwest that have bound themselves under the same cause to create "a sustainable, just and prosperous future for all." The CCN has members from more than 20 colleges and high schools throughout Oregon and Washington.
The benefit of being part of the CCN is that we can speak as a cohesive group representing most of the colleges in the NW.
We have an intelligent group that can speak in solidarity with clear direction. When the students of College Ecology Club speak on sustainability issues we speak in union with students from over 20 colleges in the Pacific Northwest.
What are we going to do with our unified voice? We are going to do more than just hug trees.
We are going to demand the change promised to us by politicians.
We planned Power Shift: a weekend of lobbying in Washington, D.C., this winter.
We planned a lobbying day for renewable energy legislation in Salem this January.
We will fight liquid natural gas as it passes through our forests, destroying the ecology of Oregon.
Further we are going to improve campus
We are going to change campus to a green, clean, pollutant free machine.
We are going to uphold the President's Climate Commitment the University signed in 2007.
We are going to install bike racks for the students to safely chain up their bikes.
We are going to recycle the fuel from the Commons and Cove and turn it into biodiesel.
We are going to reduce the water usage on campus.
We are going to plant trees throughout the Portland area.
We are going to grow a garden and feed hungry people.
After returning from the conference freshman Alissa White said, "The conference was an awesome opportunity to meet and create a network of like-minded environmentalists. I think the enthusiasm that was in the air got everyone excited to come back and take action, so let's get out there and fight global climate change."
