I’m creating an Urban Agriculture Study Group at the City University of New York (where I’m on the staff of a green building program) with a couple of crazy-passionate, very inspiring students.  One of them went off to Power Shift 2009 and came back excited to change the word through urban farming.  But he hadn’t even read Michael Pollan yet, so I set him to work.  Lesson One: Omnivore’s Dilemna.  (Eventually I hope to go on field trips with the group — maybe to visit my friends at the Queens County Farm Museum!).

I just emailed this HuffPo post to my students…

Resolarizing the food economy can support diversified farming and shorten the distance from farm to fork, shrinking the amount of fossil fuel in the American diet. A decentralized food system offers many other significant benefits: Food eaten closer to where it is grown is fresher and requires less processing, making it more nutritious, and whatever may be lost in efficiency by localizing food production is gained in resilience; regional food systems can better withstand all kinds of shocks.

Here are few examples of how we could start:

• Provide grants to towns and cities to build year-round indoor farmers’ markets.
• Make food-safety regulations sensitive to scale and marketplace, so that small producers selling direct off the farm or at a farmers’ market are not regulated as onerously as a multinational food manufacturer.
• Urge The U.S.D.A. to establish a Local Meat-Inspectors Corps to serve and support the local food processors that remain.
• Establish a Strategic Grain Reserve to prevent huge swings in commodity prices.
• Create incentives for hospitals and universities receiving federal funds to buy fresh local produce which would vastly expand regional agriculture and improve the diet of the millions of people these institutions feed.

Link via Ms. Cathy.

Over 12,000 young adults attended the recent Power Shift 2009 summit in Washington, DC. Their goal? Building the largest youth movement in decades to save the world from global warming.

Largely missing from Power Shift, however, was a critical group: young scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. Maybe it was mid-terms. Perhaps the event seemed too political. Or maybe the summit recruited too many traditionally-defined “activists.”

Whatever the cause, we have very little chance of overcoming climate change without enlisting young innovators at a drastically greater scale. Simply put, they represent one of the most important catalysts for creating a clean energy economy and achieving long-term prosperity.

The reason is this: at its core, climate change is a challenge of technology innovation. Over the next four decades, global energy demand will approximately double. Most of this growth will happen in developing nations as they continue lifting their citizens out of poverty and building modern societies. But over the same period, global greenhouse gas emissions must fall dramatically to avert the worst consequences of climate change.

Go, green jobs, go!

Environmental Victory: Blue Collar Jobs Become Green Opportunities

In an election year that saw unprecedented numbers of new voters and activists, the campaign for green collar jobs became much more than just a well-intentioned campaign promise. The goal of the green collar job movement is to train traditionally blue collar workers in renewable energy skills such as home weatherization and solar panel installation. Activists argue that making an investment in green jobs can help solve two of America’s biggest problems: poverty and global warming. Traditional blue-collar labor is disappearing and, according to the National Poverty Center, 12.5 percent of US citizens live in poverty. Green for All has helped turn the idea of green collar jobs into a national priority that would equip young workers with the skills to work in renewable energy industries.

In San Francisco, young artists and activist staged Grind for the Green, the first solar-powered hip hop show. Across the bay, the city of Oakland launched its inaugural Green Jobs Corps. On September 27th, more than 50,000 people across the nation participated in a national day of action, calling on politicians to invest in green jobs. Adding to the green momentum, Energy Action Coalition’s youth-led Power Shift initiative (including nearly 50 environmental groups) led a national campaign calling for collective action on energy efficiency. Power Shift was active on over 300 campuses, with some 300,000 young people participating across the country.