Building the Clean Energy Economy

Yesterday was a historic day for the City of Ithaca, NY. 24-year-old Svante Myrick was elected mayor, becoming the youngest mayor in Ithaca’s history and the city’s first African American mayor.

As a youth climate activist at Cornell with KyotoNOW, I was immediately impressed by Svante’s commitment to preventing hydrofracking in New York and his vision for a more sustainable Ithaca. He is dedicated to creating a more walkable, bikeable community, promoting clean energy, supporting local businesses, and developing green jobs. I knocked on hundreds of doors, with many other volunteers, to spread the word about Svante’s campaign because he is exactly the type of leader my generation has been hoping for.

I worked incredibly hard today to raise awareness about my Beyond Coal campaign on campus at the University of Iowa. I gave a quick pitch to a couple classes about it, and stood in an outdoor walkway with buckets of the very coal and oat hulls burned on campus - all the while, collecting student names in support of urging the University to extend their efforts just a little and commit to stop burning coal on campus completely.