Hello everyone and welcome to the first post covering our Global Warming and Energy community meetings. But more importantly, welcome to my first post! Hi, I’m Sean Sarah the field associate here at VPIRG and I will be hopping on the blog from time to time to give you some updates on the events and programs we’re doing around the state.
This past week we had 2 great meetings, in Middlebury and in Montpelier. These are the first of 7 meeting intended to get people active and engaged on the energy and global warming issue. In both cases we saw much success. Middlebury had 15 attendees and Montpelier had more than 20. For the first two events of the year this is excellent and I’d like to thank every person who came out. You all make a difference in every action you do.
In Middlebury we were joined by Wayne Michaud from Idle Free Vermont, a group of citizens concerned with global warming and other pollution pumped into the atmosphere by idling cars and trucks. He gave a great presentation on the groups’ aims and goals, if you want more information on Wayne’s movement go to http://www.idlefreevt.org/. Yours truly stepped up and gave the VPIRG presentation and afterwards we had a lively discussion on global warming. But more importantly we took action. We broke into two groups, one for letter writing and one for calling legislators, and got to work. By the end of the night we had commitments from most of the attendees to follow up on what they had learned.
In Montpelier, Drew Hudson, VPIRG’s Field and Communications Director, took the reins of the meeting. We were lucky to have several attendees from the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance. Already a group of highly motivated individuals, they were a joy to have at the meeting. Once again we gave the pitch that the most important thing to come out of the meetings is action. Dialogue is all well and good, and our elected leaders sure know how to talk. But it’s action from the people that makes a difference in the long run. In that spirit, after the presentation we called Washington County legislators and wrote letters to the editor in support of H. 127, a bill to ensure 40% of Vermont’s power comes from local renewable sources by 2018.
Great turn out, great dialogue, great action. That’s what makes a great meeting. Thanks again to everyone who came to both Middlebury and Montpelier. And I hope to see you all in Rutland on February 1st at the Dana Recreation Center at 6pm in room 22 for our next shindig. And don’t forget to sign up for
Citizen Action Day
http://www.vtactionday.org/
where YOU get to lobby your legislators, on February 15th at 9am at the State House.
Labels: activism, global warming
