Wednesday, February 22, 2012

February Conference Call #2

Attendees - Lam, Kathryn, D.C., Holly, Meggie

Jennifer Sellers - Coastal Carolina ECO REPS
Jennifer - CofC ECO REPS aware of PEAC
trying to get things moving, will connect with Meggie, etc. soon.
Possible speakers:
D.C. will make an effort to connect with Anne Hutto from the Lowlands
Kathryn will make an effort to connect with someone from Coastal Conservation League
Lam will connect with Dana Bruce from JDRF– food politics, justice
Our OFFICIAL meeting with the State House Environmental Committee (Co-Chair, Representative David Hiott, at least,) on February 28 at 2:30pm.

Blatt Building
1105 Pendleton Street, Room 418
Columbia SC 29201-3732

Meggie offers her place as a space for us to develop game plan before meeting with Hiott. Will connect with others from SAGE to come as well. Focusing on 1-2 specific asks since time is limited.

D.C.Taking care of Google document to begin sparking up ideas.
Holly - important that we get policymakers etc to acknowledge that climate change does indeed exist and action is urgent, etc.

Kathryn – our goals can be big! Small goals with our local government! Think big, start small. achieving small goals is empowering and helps build skills to achieve bigger ones.
D.C.- small goals – city councils, mayors, correspondence and asks supporting retrofitting energy efficiency or commitment to clean energy, recognition that climate change exists, etc.

Kathryn - Local allies will help our state wide cause.
Check city council elections, etc.

holly – transition towns. Peak oil and climate change. Tri-county transitions. Outreach. Community resiliency, etc. SC has no transition towns

Meggie – facebook too easy to ignore. The only people who will work is us and we must make a bigger effort to connect.
Everyone agrees that it is important to reconnect with Southern Energy Network. Our long term goals are too important!!

Holly and/or Meggie will connect with Reagan from SEN.

Kathryn will set up gmail listserv

Kathryn and Lam will report back on the events of the SC Clean Energy and Jobs Forum on the next call.

Next call is February 26, 2012 @ 2pm

Call-in: 218-632-0550
Pass: 1066925#

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

February Conference Call - Feb. 15th, 2012

On call : DC (Greenville), Holly (Anderson/Clemson), Lam (Columbia), Meggie (Columbia)


I. Summit planning

Kathryn and DC have tried to reach out to Coastal students with little luck.

Meggie recently had the eco-reps state retreat and has contacts:
She will reach out to.....
Jennifer Sellers - Coastal Carolina
Brian Fisher - USC
We will follow up next week on any progress contacting Coastal

Shooting for Coastal, since they've never hosted a summit before.
Also, shooting for late March, early April.....any later and we risk losing momentum over the summer.

Summit Agenda : Let's focus on coastal and marine issues since we will be near the coast, in addition to the more usual teambuilding exercises and skill building workshops.
Some topics to consider:
-Marine environment
-Food justice and food politics
-Nuclear waste

Who to focus on to invite/bring into the summit :
-Let's reach out to the Occupy movement folks (especially in Charleston and Columbia, which are strong) to build some intergenerational dialogue.
-SC Progressive Network
-Agricultural stakeholders : current farmers, young and old, rural and urban farmers, budding farmers
-Food justice speaker, Deana Bruce
-Inviting a legislator to come
-Riverkeepers from around the state
-Effected community members from the surrounding areas (are there any neighborhood groups who would like to come talk? Conway, if we do it at Coastal Carolina)
-visual displays...in order to educate and convey extra information that we don't have time to cover....trifold science fair board style

Cost : how to make it as low cost as possible
-Residence Hall association helped out in the past at USC
-Beginning to think about food and getting donations...going out to eat at least once to offset costs
-Finding a place to stay on campus/off campus with Coastal students

II. Updates on meeting with legislators and the governor

DC and Holly have been calling Gov. Haley's secretary to set up a meeting with Nikki Haley. We have yet to hear back from them, though the secretary said her staff would call us back.

DC has been in touch with Jean Hogan, the assistant to the chair of the Agricultural and Natural Resources committee

Topics to consider:
-Funding of school nutrition programs......lots of legislations seems to get in the way of capitalizing on bringing healthy food to schools (this fits in nicely with the issue of food justice we were talking about earlier) Meggie has contacts and is doing research in the School of Public Health on this issue.

Holly and DC had a call a few weeks back and brainstormed some ideas to take to Columbia:
-Increasing of kilowatt capacity for renewable energy projects....via Rory McIlmoil in Kentucky
-Retrofitting or making LEED certified any new buildings built by the state
-Re: Haley's state of the state address.....she says we are open for business!!...so lets bring in more green jobs...
-Moratorium on coal and nuclear plants...we already produce more energy than we need, so no reason to continue building more dirty energy here.
-Putting the Environmental Control (aspect of DHEC), the Dept of Natural Resources, and the Dept. of Agriculture together for more efficient government, which Nikki Haley would be a fan of.



Upcoming Event : In Columbia, on Feb. 23rd at Convention Center, SC Clean Energy and Jobs Forum
Its FREE! It starts at 1230pm...Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, speaking at 4:15pm on a panel.
http://sccleanenergyandjobs.eventbrite.com/

Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center
1101 Lincoln St.
Columbia, SC 29201

Thursday, February 23, 2012 from 12:30 PM to 6:00 PM (ET)


Next Call : NEXT WEEK : We are rolling, so at least check in with each other on our tasks, which are:

Lam - get Google Doc together for summit planning
Holly - Will continue to call Haley's secretary
Meggie - will make contact with the eco-rep folks at Coastal to see about the summit there
DC - will continue to make contact with Jean Hogan about meeting

Next calls agenda :
-Check in about summit planning
-Check in about legislative meetings
-Talk about the Clean Energy and Jobs forum, which we are going to the next day
-Start talking about the newsletter for the spring

NEXT CALL : Wednesday, Feb. 22 at 9pm EST
call info Call-in: 218-632-0550
Pass: 1066925#

PEACe!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

January Call Notes

Who was on that sucker?
Kathryn - Aiken
Jennifer - USC
Samantha - USC
Holly - Anderson/Clemson
Lam - Columbia
Kelley - Charleston (Rock Hill?)
D.C. - Greenville

I. Summit
D.C. - We hope to hold the summit at USC Beaufort or Coastal, USC as back-up
Holly - Having a summit elsewhere helps students fell more a part of the group
Kathryn - We need to strengthen our ties with students/community on the coast, Coastal Carolina
Lam - Coastal can be our preliminary backup to Beaufort
Samantha/Jennifer - USC would get a strong group to go to summit if held on the coast

II. Governor Haley/Environmental Committee Meeting
D.C. - Contact Leigh LeMoine, Secretary for Haley at 803-734-5151 to request meeting; USC kids could reach out to State Senate environmental committee?
Kathryn - Send out listserv e-mail regarding meeting(s), issues we'd present; list of members of each committee

III. DHEC Meetings
D.C. - Encourages students to attend meetings this year; make us known
Kathryn - Stay informed by going, try to get ourselves out there even as an unofficial group; we need a starting line

IV. Revisiting Our Statewide Campaigns
Lam/Sam/Kelley: There's an appeal to #Occupy, such as not having one specific point, but we should locate an item/project to focus on
Holly/Jen - Curious about Port of Charleston vs. Port of Savannah issue
Kathryn - Coastal Conversation League would have more knowledge
Holly - Unite with like-minded organizations in SC

V. PEAC Events
Holly - Monthly calls, keep in touch; have local-level projects (listening to communities at churches, community centers, etc.); continue holding calls and summits; We will need more people power to obtain these goals...6 or 7 of us will not cut it..."I don't want to graduate from PEAC and go to Sierra Club" :-)
Lam - We have a problem with aging out, must recruit and maintain

VI. PEAC Newsletter
Lam - Let's connect with Palmetto Public Record (a blog)
Holly - Listserv should be moved off of Clemson server at some point
D.C. - Use the newsletter to keep important information out there
Kelley - Great to have e-Newsletter, too much stuff on Facebook, and information would get lost
Lam - Let's find more writers for the letter, as well as PEAC blog (peacchange.blogspot.com)
Samantha - Newsletter should be monthly; calls should be every 2nd Wednesday of the month
Holly - Post minutes of calls in the newsletter

Next Call: Wednesday, February 15, 9pm
Thank you to D.C. For taking notes and promptly posting them to the Facebook group! If you haven't joined us on Facebook yet, please do to stay up to date on our latest news!

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

January Call : Wednesday, Jan. 18th at 9pm

Hey yall,
We will be having our first PEAC call of the year on Wednesday, January 18th at 9pm EST. The call in number is:

218-632-0550 and the passcode is 1066925#

We had a lot of great energy and momentum from the Southeast Student Renewable Energy Conference in Ashville last November, and so we are going to build off that for the new year! Dante and I have come up with some topics for the call, and they are :

1) Spring Summit....discuss location
2) Setting up meeting with Governor Haley and the Environmental Committee (legislature)
3) DHEC (Department of Health and Environmental Control) meetings
4) Revisit our conversations about a state wide campaign
5) Events throughout the year, in our local cities (listening project, church outreach)
6) An E-newletter to stay in touch, promote state wide call-in days, etc....

These are just a brainstorm we had, and certainly can prioritize them, since the call will be kept to one hour. We will have a monthly call starting with the January call, so if you can't make this one, no problem!

Please share the call info with others at your school or in your community. We'd love to have fifteen people on the call.

Call in : 218-632-0550 Passcode: 1066925#

Wednesday, January 18th at 9pm