Big Green (9/28/11)

Published: Sept. 29, 2011, 12:29 a.m.

b'Big Green Michael Brune, Executive Director, Sierra Club Felicia Marcus, Western Director, Natural Resources Defense Council Karen Topakian, Board Chair, Greenpeace USA It would not seem a fruitful time to be on the frontlines in the fight to protect the environment in the United States, with the EPA under daily attack and climate legislation stalled. But the three environmental leaders participating in this Climate One panel note that many fronts exist outside of Washington, with at least one formidable adversary, utilities operating coal fired-power plants, forced to play defense. Until recently, says Michael Brune, Executive Director, Sierra Club, \\u201cevery single conversation was about, Will we get 60 senators to pass comprehensive climate legislation \\u2013 when that really represented just the tip of the iceberg, part of the conversation about climate change.\\u201d Brune and fellow panelists Felicia Marcus, Western Director, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Karen Topakian, Board Chair, Greenpeace USA, agree that D.C. politics will force environmental groups to play defense in the near term. They also stress that building grassroots support and presenting a positive vision of the future will be critical. \\u201cWe\\u2019re trying to create a future in which we have clean energy, clean communities, and clean food. We have to deal not just with playing defense; we have to create a vision of the future that people are for,\\u201d says Marcus. Over the next three to five years, the Sierra Club will, as Brune puts it, focus on getting real and getting local. \\u201cIt\\u2019s hard to motivate people around an issue where they get the moral imperative, but they don\\u2019t really understand what it is that you\\u2019re trying to do, and how your solutions will address the problems you\\u2019re identifying,\\u201d he says. For the Sierra Club, this means a return to its roots, a focus on the grassroots, says Brune, with the most visible manifestation of that effort its Beyond Coal campaign. Recently buttressed by a $50 million donation from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the campaign aims to force the retirement of one-third of the nation\\u2019s 600 coal-fired power plants over the next five years. Greenpeace likewise aims to retire old, dirty coal plants, says Karen Topakian. Its goal is 150 plants taken offline by 2015. \\u201cWe\\u2019re making it tangible to people,\\u201d she says. \\u201cIf you start talking about fuel in a way that\\u2019s abstract, people don\\u2019t get it.\\u201d \\u201cWe are in alignment in fighting dirty fuels, and then creating an opening for clean fuels,\\u201d adds Felicia Marcus. \\u201cWe\\u2019re at a place where we can use [clean energy] as a way to create and talk about a future that is at some level complex but at another much more clear to the average person.\\u201d For example, she says, NRDC is \\u201cdoubling down\\u201d on an issue it has focused on for 30 years: \\u201cthe very low-glamour, high-value issue of energy efficiency.\\u201d This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on September 28, 2011\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices'