Sustainability News of the Week:
OCA at Power Shift ’09, Artists for the Climate and the Capitol Climate Action

Worldwide, industrial food production is responsible for 30% or more of the fossil fuel use and the greenhouse gas pollution that’s driving climate change. The Organic Consumers Association has joined the climate movement to bring the CO2 levels down below the dangerous tipping point of 350 ppm (we’re at 387 ppm right now). We support the movement’s goals to stop new coal plants, to shut down or phase out the pre-existing 600 U.S. coal plants, to create 5-10 million new green jobs in wind and solar sector, and to begin a deep retrofitting of the nation’s 130 million buildings to drastically cut (by 80–90%) energy consumption. In addition, we’re educating climate activists about the potential organic agriculture has to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by drastically cutting fossil fuel use and sequestering greenhouse gases in the soil. As the Rodale Institute has shown, transitioning the world’s agricultural lands to organic would allow the soil to absorb 40% of current greenhouse gas emissions.
On February 28, OCA’s DC intern Chantal Clement spoke at Power Shift ’09, a gathering of 12,000 young climate activists, on a panel about the film Food Inc. On March 1, OCA’s political director Alexis Baden-Mayer caught up with Wendell Berry at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network’s Artists for the Climate, and on March 2, she joined Berry and a few thousand others at the Capitol Climate Action to shut down the coal plant that powers the U.S. Capitol.
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