Word: globalization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...They planned to shut down the plant by peacefully blocking the entrances, a textbook act of civil disobedience for which many expected - perhaps eagerly - to be arrested. The message was simple: the burning of coal, which accounts for some 40% of U.S. carbon emissions, "is destroying the planet through global warming," as Kennedy put it. America needs to get off coal, which supplies nearly half the country's electricity, if it wants to have any hope of controlling its greenhouse gas emissions, and it should start with the Capitol plant. (See the top 10 green ideas...
...plant to switch from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas, a move long pushed for by environmentalists but blocked by representatives from coal-heavy states. Protesters claimed an early victory. "Getting the plant to switch shows the power of popular pressure," said Steven Biel, the director of Greenpeace's global-warming campaign. But there was no doubt that by responding before the protesters hit the streets of the capital, Congress was simply moving one set of goalposts off the field...
...then came the snow. As 2,000-plus young activists - according to the organizers - gathered in the Spirit of Justice Park near the Capitol, bystanders were greeted with the surreal sight of a global-warming protest occurring in the middle of a freak March snowstorm. They chanted slogans like "Who is hot in here / There's too much carbon in the air" while huddling against the windchill. The greatest risk to the protesters wasn't aggressive cops - the D.C. police, just as chilled as the activists, had little interest in confrontation - but frostbite from the hours of marching and standing...
Well, not exactly. Plans are for the plant to open on schedule tomorrow, still powered for the time being by coal. It would be heartbreakingly easy to mock a global-warming protest that was nearly snowed out, but what happened in Washington could be a significant step in the climate-change movement. For all the attention paid to it in the media, global warming remains an amorphous issue for many Americans, one with consequences that are far-off and unconnected to their daily lives. If that is ever going to change, warming advocates need to make climate change a matter...
...fully present, both at the Capitol plant march and over the weekend at the Power Shift conference, which brought together more 11,000 college-age activists from around the country to strategize and rally over climate change. For this generation - post-Cold War, post-9/11, perhaps post-prosperity - global warming is emerging as their issue. Averting dangerous climate change is going to take smart policy, vast technological change and brave entrepreneurs, but it will also require a popular social movement that can alter American values. Global warming is far from inspiring that kind of change - the Capitol plant protest...