Welcome to the new school week! After a long weekend of working, partying, sleeping or whatever it is you pass the hours doing, I think a Monday metaphor is in line to get our brains back on the path to scholarship. So here goes.
In a representative political system, government should serve as the vehicle by which the people get to where they need to go (policy-wise). Congresspeople, then, can be considered the bus drivers who navigate their constituents safely through the tenebrous and avarice-driven freeways of the bureaucracy and drop them off in a timely manner at their desired destination. All is right and well, and the path to prolonged prosperity is secured. In a perfect world, that is. But we don’t live in a perfect world.
Rather, the bus is broken-down in the middle of the freeway, the driver doesn’t know what to do, and the Hummers and Mercedes driven by the big businessmen are cruising right by without bothering to stop and see if anyone needs help. Meanwhile, people are getting off the bus, figuring they’ll be doing better if they just walk. Oh, and Obama is in a hot air balloon waving down at everyone, smiling and shouting, “Help is on the way!”
Well folks, it looks like some of the young, able-bodied passengers have decided to get off the bus and start pushing. And that is the Power Shift movement in a nutshell.
Actually, in car-speak a “power shift” is a method of shifting a manual vehicle that helps reduce the amount of time the driving wheels are not powered. So, it’s basically the idea of high-powered action to keep the wheels of change moving. Very clever.
The Power Shift campaign’s roots trace back to November 2007 in Washington, D.C., where the Energy Action Coalition sponsored the first national youth summit held “to help solve the global energy challenge.” The movement has since matured geographically into 11 regional summits, including PowerShift West, to be held here at our very own beloved campus Nov. 6 through Nov. 8.
The conference is being organized by a team of mostly student volunteers from various local environmental action groups, such as the Cascade Climate Network, the Sierra Student Coalition and OSPIRG, and will be funded by local donors and sponsors.
So what, say you? Well, let’s have a brief look at the gathering’s objectives and then you can feel free to bestow on it your various judgments of its importance.
There are four specific concerns of PowerShift West ’09, and each comes with an accompanying goal to be achieved by the end of the three-day affair. They are (in no particular order) as follows:

• Climate Bill Promotion — to encourage the swift passage of the Senate climate bill before world leaders convene in Copenhagen to negotiate a worldwide climate treaty to replace the lapsing Kyoto Protocol.

Goal of PS West: Get at least 80 percent of conference attendees to call their elected officials in support for the bill.

• High-speed rail/mass transit — Give support to the movement for the construction of a high-speed rail that would run from Eugene to Vancouver, B.C.

Goal of PS West: Create a unified high-speed rail campaign including individual campus coordinators at all interested Northwest universities.
Note: Obama reportedly has set aside an $8 billion budget for the construction of high-speed rails, and Gov. Ted Kulongoski has already put in a petition for one from Eugene to Vancouver.

• Clean energy solutions — promote renewable energy projects and advocate for increased energy efficiency standards.

Goal of PS West: Have at least five community energy project campaigns clearly defined and ready to be enacted in their locales after the conference.

• No more coal — the Sierra Student Coalition, one of the conference organizers, has just launched its ‘Beyond Coal’ campaign and will seek to gather support for its work to discontinue the building of new coal plants across the country and begin to close already existent ones.

Goal of PS West: Discourage the construction of any new coal plants in the West. 
There you have it folks, a few short days to be jam-packed with some hardcore pushing to get this broken-down bus of a political system rolling again. But there’s one more thing.
The conference, the goals it’s aiming to achieve and the planet need your help. One of the conference organizers, OSPIRG’s Ben Ramsden-Stein, says that now is the time, if ever, to get involved. “It is daunting, what we’re up against, but the only way we’re going to have these changes implemented through federal legislation is if a whole lot of people speak up and take action.”
If you’ve been wondering how you can get involved and be a part of the movement to save the future, I’d venture to say this could be a good place to get going on that. For more information and to register for PowerShift West, go to http://west.powershift09.org/.
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