Word: capitols
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Environmental groups, led by Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network, had enlisted eco-celebrities such as Robert Kennedy Jr. and Bill McKibben and registered more than 2,000 youth protesters from around the country for a march on the coal-fired Capitol Power Plant, which supplies steam and cooled water to Congress. They planned to shut down the plant by peacefully blocking the entrances, a textbook act of civil disobedience for which many expected - perhaps eagerly - to be arrested. The message was simple: the burning of coal, which accounts for some 40% of U.S. carbon emissions, "is destroying the planet...
...then came the snow. As 2,000-plus young activists - according to the organizers - gathered in the Spirit of Justice Park near the Capitol, bystanders were greeted with the surreal sight of a global-warming protest occurring in the middle of a freak March snowstorm. They chanted slogans like "Who is hot in here / There's too much carbon in the air" while huddling against the windchill. The greatest risk to the protesters wasn't aggressive cops - the D.C. police, just as chilled as the activists, had little interest in confrontation - but frostbite from the hours of marching and standing...
...joke was not lost on the media: FoxNews.com noted that it was "snowing irony in Washington." Nor did the protest end quite as expected. After the high-spirited and very well organized marchers left the park and encircled the nearby Capitol plant, groups locked arms in front of the three entrances to the facility, fully expecting to be arrested by the dozens of police monitoring the event. But the arrests never came: the police simply waited and watched as speakers and musicians climbed a mobile soundstage and addressed the increasingly frigid crowd. After nearly three hours, with activists beginning...
...young people were fully present, both at the Capitol plant march and over the weekend at the Power Shift conference, which brought together more 11,000 college-age activists from around the country to strategize and rally over climate change. For this generation - post-Cold War, post-9/11, perhaps post-prosperity - global warming is emerging as their issue. Averting dangerous climate change is going to take smart policy, vast technological change and brave entrepreneurs, but it will also require a popular social movement that can alter American values. Global warming is far from inspiring that kind of change...
...original version of this story misstated that the Capitol Power Plant supplied electricity, rather than steam and cooled water, to Congress...