This past weekend, 12,000 activists from across the nation and around the world came to Washington D.C. for the “largest youth summit on climate change in history.” From mountain-top removal to toxic waste dumps, from green building to bike shares, the participants at Power Shift ’09 taught each other about environmental injustice and the solutions they’re finding. Progressive leaders including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson and Green For All’s Van Jones rallied the students. On Monday, thousands of activists descended on the U.S. Capitol to demand Congress take action to fight climate change. While students from South Dakota to North Carolina lobbied their elected officials, others engaged in mass civil disobedience to protest the United States’ continued use of coal. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and even long-time coal advocate Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) had agreed last week to stop using coal at the Capitol Power Plant. However, conservatives led by Sen. James Inhofe’s (R-OK) environmental communications director Marc Morano mocked the students for protesting on the same day a snowstorm hit Washington, D.C. “Big DC Snowstorm to Greet ‘Largest public protest of global warming ever in U.S.!'” wrote Morano. After his message was copied on the Drudge Report, Fox News anchors ran with the story. “Now, maybe it’s just a coincidence that nearly every global warming protest occurs on the exact same day that we have a major snowstorm,” claimed Fox News’s Sean Hannity. Neil Cavuto asked, “As a massive snowstorm wreaks havoc up and down the East Coast, what better time to hold a global warming protest?”

From The Progress Report