This is a guest blog from the students of a January-term Middlebury class devoted to 1Sky research.  It was compiled by Bonnie on 16 January 2008:

Global warming may be everyone’s problem, but everyone can get in on the solution, too. In the spirit of the "silver buckshot," 10 students at Middlebury College in Vermont are interning with 1Sky this January to explore carbon reduction from a range of perspectives. And we want your help.

Religious Messaging
The climate movement needs more than another issue-advocacy group for global warming, we need an inspiring vision of the future that unifies all Americans. The 1Sky coalition is working to develop this vision and to coordinate the movement around it. Religious institutions contribute substantially to both our national identity and our politics at all levels. Robert McKay is exploring the landscape of American religion to produce a list of organizations that 1Sky might seek to bring into the coalition, as well as a set of recommendations for how to create deep and mutual dialog with people and institutions of faith. He is looking for the input of religious leaders on this project, in order to communicate the value of their expertise to 1Sky. Please contact Robert at rjmckayiv  if you are a religious person working to spread the word about climate change in faith circles, or if you have ideas about religious organizations working on other social and political issues that might be interested in 1Sky.

Clean-Energy Investment for Jobs and GDP
"We’ve gotta cut carbon" is reminiscent of slogans five years ago. Looking for new excitement? Try "How do we best evolve our economy from a gas-engorged fossil into a green, lean, and clean prosperity machine?" There are hundreds of professional studies out there that propose such policies and predict their macroeconomic effects on our gross domestic product and employment rates. But which research do we turn into national legislation? Pier LaFarge, Chester Harvey, and Bonnie Frye Hemphill are distilling such studies into a white paper that identifies major trends in policy proposals and macroeconomic predictions. We hope our research helps 1Sky determine–and recommend to policymakers–the blueprint our nation needs for effective carbon reduction and economic stimulation. We would greatly appreciate your insight, and can be reached at <bhemphil>.

Mapping Coal Communities with Green-job Potential
As our country invests in clean energy and transitions to a carbon-free economy, a national global warming policy must ensure that all Americans benefit. Though it is our dirtiest and most carbon-intensive source of energy, some claim that jobs in the coal industry are at stake as the US moves beyond coal. The coal industry, however, provides relatively little employment, even fewer opportunities for "good" jobs worthy of America’s traditional standards of living, and fail to give back substantially to state and local governments. Julie Erickson (<jerickso>) is gathering the details on what’s at stake for coal in the face of a clean-energy revolution, focusing on the demographics of Americans affiliated with its company towns. What are the employment statistics of coal?  The Wages?  Working conditions? Community benefits? Tax revenues? Furthermore, Julie is compiling case studies and models of job growth and clean-energy deployment. She hopes to paint a picture of the future for those communities dependent on the coal industry, and to show that climate-change policies can be winning propositions for everyone. Mitigating warming can benefit the global population while developing our economy can ensure that even the smallest coal-based communities share in the prosperity of a clean-energy future. Weaning ourselves from coal will be easier–and more politically appealing–when we see the process as a win-win proposition.

Primary Visibility for Mountaintop Removal
Marty Schnure and Emily Adler are jointly interning with 1Sky and Appalachian Voices this January. They traveled to the NH primaries to bring mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR) into the energy debate, and ensuring that NH voters knew where their candidates stood on coal issues. They were able to talk to many candidate staffers and members of the press, and were even able to get flyers into the hands of both front-running candidates: Barack Obama and John McCain. Highlights included debating MTR with over 700 Obama ralliers, and McCain hugging Marty to thank her for "working for a cause greater than herself" while promising to end to MTR.  Now Marty and Emily are lobbying VT Representative Peter Welch to co-sponsor the Clean Water Protection Act, the only current bill that can substantially curb MTR. They will also hold a letter-writing party alongside a gallery opening to display stunning large-format photographs of West Virginian MTR sites. Contact them at <mschnure> with ideas for more actions on mountaintop removal.

Cap-and-Rebate by Region
Brian Schwartz and Jamie Hand are studying the distributional effects of Peter Barnes’ SkyTrust model (a cap-and-rebate carbon market) across different regions of the US. The SkyTrust proposal caps total US carbon and auctions all permits to emit it. The revenue from selling such permits (to coal-fired power plants, etc.) is then distributed evenly to every American. At the same time that the SkyTrust would significantly cut carbon, it would be progressive across national spending patterns and allow some 60% of the population to benefit financially. But such gains may not hold true for each region of the US because of variations in regional infrastructure like electricity sources. The system will remain progressive in each region, but may not provide a net benefit to as many segments of society. For example, since the Midwest uses coal for most of its electricity and because rural lifestyles require more gasoline, the poorest 30% may benefit from SkyTrust implementation while the richest 70% of family budgets are hurt. We hope to identify these differences across America, and perhaps draw comparisons between rural and urban results. Quantifying these differences may indicate how the overall SkyTrust plan can be tweaked for politically palatable across the US. Brian and Jamie would appreciate your input and can be reached at <jrhand>.

We hope you’ve got ideas to help us out on these moral, ecological, political, and economic understandings of global warming. Maybe you’ve even got some of your own; we’re all part of the problem, and now everyone has the chance to be part of the solution.