My Moving Planet Speech

I wrote this speech on the eve of Moving Planet in bed, and inside Anne's Kitchen over chocolate-chip pancakes on the morning of the big day. Somehow I mustered up a little bit of courage and delivered these words to the twenty or so students who showed up to the Sproul Steps before heading to the San Francisco event. 


By being here today, you are all part of something important. You will look back later and say- "I didn't just sit back and watch while other people fought for my future."

Two and a half years ago, I saw Bill McKibben speak for the first time. I stood in the convention center in DC, with ten thousand other young people at Powershift, the largest environmental conference in the country. As Bill spoke about 350.org, the global organization responsible for Moving Planet and the unity of the climate movement, I got this amazing sensation that made me feel like I personally knew all of the ten thousand Power-Shifters. It was adrenaline pumping. I felt invincible, I felt both tiny and gigantic,  I felt like I could run a marathon and then maybe another. I felt like we all came together as one big massive body - pulsing with energy, a force to be reckoned with. A tidal wave of change.

That's what Moving Planet is all about - tapping into the awesome energy that's created when we come together, the cleanest, most renewable energy available to us. As we join the thousands in San Francisco, and the hundreds of thousands across the world, we will be literally moving the planet one step, one pedal, at a time. Because we're all moving in the same direction - toward a brighter future, away from fossil fuels.

The number 350 comes directly from science. It's the parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere scientists say we should stabilize at to minimize the impacts of catastrophic climate change. We're at 393. From this scientific number has come a huge, creative, artistic, and culturally galvanizing movement. A movement that everyone has a place in. Check out the photos for yourself at 350.org, which are inspiring examples of the intersection between science and art. We find ourselves at that very intersection today.

Cal students: we are students at the best public school in the nation, with a network of 35,000 people who have skills, voices, and energy to share. Our challenge is to use this gift to continue moving the planet, to unite our sustainability efforts, to connect scientists to artists, economists to journalists, so that we become on big massive tangled body - a force to be reckoned with. A force to move the planet.

Let's go to San Francisco!