Friday, 17 Nov 2000

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.

The adventures of Steve and Ulla — Part II. Last night, we made it halfway home from Philadelphia before running into unfriendly weather south of Roanoke, Vir. Single-engine prop planes don’t allow for a very wide margin of error, so when the snow and sleet started coming down, we opted for the safety of a hotel in Roanoke. The weather cleared up by morning and we had a beautiful flight home. We flew “scud” — below the clouds — through the valley between the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.

Our meetings went well yesterday. We gave presentations on all the state efforts on the power plant campaign to Pew and the Energy Foundation — we did our best to impress them and convince them to fund us again. It was relatively painless and we walked away pretty well off. Our campaigns will continue on much as they have through the next year. The following year will be sketchier. We’ll probably be seeing the regional coordination position of our organization take shape, so after our debrief call next week to sort out the details of funder accountability and finances, my life may change a bit … hopefully for the better.

So, it’s back to work today, if a little late. As usual, whenever I see my fellow state coordinators, I walked away with a full next day of calls. I’m talking today with the National Park campaign coordinator for the Shenandoahs to brainstorm ideas for convincing our very Republican senators to commit to clean air legislation. I’ve got to talk to the Georgia campaign about integrating their website completely with www.cleanairsouth.org. We’re also still working to finalize our op-ed to the Birmingham Editorial and send it out today. My next order of business is to write my monthly report to the current regional coordinators of the Southeast campaign. Then, I’ll need to write an update for the Tennessee Clean Air Task Force about all the exciting things that have happened in the last several months.

Here’s Steve in front of a Green Power Switch billboard in Knoxville.

We emailed an announcement about this diary to folks who receive our newsletters, and I’ve heard back that they have liked it, so that’s pretty cool. I thought it was a neat idea and it’s been fun for our staff to know what I do and think most days. In fact, the staff had some ideas they wanted me to include in today’s entry. In particular, they wanted to make sure that I mentio
ned some of our organizational development and outreach efforts. Our staff has been gathering materials for a mailing that will be sent to about 23,000 people in Tennessee. The mailing will go to people who have bought specialty license plates to support conservation groups in Tennessee. We will ask them to pay a little extra on their monthly electric bill to support Green Power Switch. We’ve been crafting an appeal letter that will inspire folks to act on this issue; this is an opportunity to make a simple choice to support clean energy.

We have to make sure that the printer has all the other components of the mailing from the graphic designer (a friend who does a lot of our layout work inexpensively) and make sure all the numbers are right, etc. This is much larger than our usual orders of 5,000 pieces. Sometimes we feel as if we are marketers rather than activists. Maybe if we’d majored in marketing in college, we’d be more successful in serving our causes — we’d be selling our ideas for a cleaner environment rather than fighting to preserve the pieces that people are trying to steal from us.

Solar panels in Nashville.

Our efforts to promote clean energy through this TVA program have been successful. In the last two days we’ve had a surge of sign-ups — 15 people signed up for more than 3,600 kilowatt hours of green power. This total purchase of green power is equivalent to one person not driving a car for four months; planting an acre of trees; or not burning 3,600 pounds of coal. In the Knoxville area, we’ve had 1,194 residential and 41 business customers sign up for green power. There are five locations where solar panels are generating clean electrons to contribute to TVA’s power mix. (If anyone would like to receive our Green Power updates, contact us at greenpower@tngreen.com).

We also received great news this week that one of our major funders agreed to give us a second year of funding for our green power program and the grant will be $10,000 more than last year’s grant.

Discussions are beginning in the Southeast about whether we should accept biomass into the green energy program. SACE and the Renewable Energy Policy Project hosted a summit in October for environmentalists across the region to discuss the pros and cons of biomass (or biopower), as well as the inherent difficulties. Biopower is often thought to be the most readily available and inexpensive form of renewable energy for TVA, thus environmentalists may eventually need to agree on what is kosher.

It’s been a pleasure to write for Grist. I hope everyone reading this has enjoyed learning about our organization and the plethora of issues and programs we’ve got going on. It’s pretty happenin’ down here in the South — we’ve got more environmental problems and hurdles than all of our hands put together.

Cheers and Happy Thanksgiving to all of us activists out there who need a break!

(Libby Hill, our associate director, contributed to this entry).