Planning the Power Dialog: State-Level Climate Engagement (half-day workshop)
Type of Session
Workshop
Abstract
During the fourth week of March 2016, the Power Dialog will support hundreds of college and university faculty members in all fifty states to take their classes— numbering more than ten thousands students-- on a field trip to their state capitol. There they will meet as groups with their state’s officials in charge of implementation planning for the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. The Dialog will result in ten thousand plus young people weighing-in live on proposed carbon regulations, state policy-makers across the country hearing from a major constituency that would otherwise be silent, and widespread media coverage of the carbon regulation process.
The Center for Environmental Policy (CEP) at Bard College will organize the Power Dialog. Resources for the Future (RFF) will provide educational opportunities to prepare students for the Dialog. This workshop will engage participants in state level planning for the dialog, and develop recommendations for the types of curricula that will be most useful to participating faculty. The Clean Power Plan process presents students with a unique and critically important learning and civic engagement opportunity. Student voices can impact the scope and direction of global warming pollution reductions in their states.