The Green Kids

“We are the largest youth coalition working on climate and energy issues in North America.  But if you visited our website, you would never know it.”  Pete Griffin, 29, is the congenial Campaign Director of the Energy Action Coalition, an alliance of 50 North American organizations lobbying for a clean, renewable energy future.  He joined the Coalition four months ago and is helping to drive efforts to streamline their digital strategy.

Founded in 2004 by charismatic climate activist (and Yale dropout) Billy Parish, the Energy Action Coalition’s mission is to support and strengthen the youth climate movement in order to effect change at the local, national and international level. Their partners include a diverse set of environmental, social justice and religious groups.

Energy Action has received notable attention from media outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and Rolling Stone magazine under the leadership of its passionate and articulate 28 year-old Executive Director, Jessy Tolkan.  In March 2009, the Coalition organized Power Shift ’09, a weekend of protests, concerts and panel discussions that brought together 12,000 young people in Washington, D.C.  The conference culminated in Tolkan testifying before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, declaring, “We are here today as the voice of a generation pleading for – and demanding from you – urgent action to address our climate and energy crises.”

With scores of partners, people and events across the U.S. and Canada to coordinate, the Energy Action Coalition relies on digital technologies to connect and mobilize diverse audiences.  To some extent, they succeed in leveraging the media-savvy skills of their young, bright and ambitious constituents.  But the Coalition’s online presence deserves improvement to showcase the organizations’ accomplishments and reach new people.  “Just being in various spaces like YouTube or Twitter is useless unless we are using the tools to interact effectively with our audience,” said Griffin.  “We need to create a valuable experience for our users on each of these platforms.”

Energy Action’s website formerly lived at Energy Action Coalition.org, where many of the pages are still live.  In the process of writing this article, the homepage was redirected to Local-Energy Action Coalition.org, a new site, which, according to Griffin, “serves more as an organizing tool for those already engaged in the clean energy fight. “ There is also Climate Challenge.org, yet another site for one of Energy Action’s campaigns.  This site’s copy is out of date, but it continues to be populated with new You Tube videos, Flickr photos and blogs entries.

The most accurate view of Energy Action’s activities can be found at It’s Getting Hot in Here.org, a collaborative WordPress blog shared by the youth climate movement.  Fresh content, including YouTube videos of rallies and photos from worldwide events, are updated hourly from youth climate activists.  But confusingly, the blog is not clearly connected to any of the Energy Action Coalition’s sites.

The Coalition has a Facebook page but its last – and only – post was on April 24, 2008.  Energy Action is also on Twitter, but under the name Power Shift ’09.  Indeed, it is at Power Shift 09.org where the heart of the Energy Action Coalition lives and breathes.  11 Power Shift regional summits are planned this month across the U.S. to mobilize local groups and push for policy reforms.  The site hosts its own blog separate from “It’s Getting Hot in Here” and “Climate Challenge.”  In fact, none of the Coalition’s blogs are connected via RSS feeds.  Once again, newcomers to the Power Shift ’09 site are left lost in a labyrinth of digital platforms and nomenclature issues.

To their credit, Energy Action has taken advantage of the diverse media tools at their disposal, specifically digital organizing techniques.  What it is missing is consistency and cohesion across their online communications.  For example, The New York Times covered the Power Shift ‘09 event, but the You Tube video of Tolkan speaking to the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming has only received 135 views to date.  The clip is not even housed on a You Tube channel for the Coalition, but rather on Congressman Ed Markey’s page.

According to Griffin, the major barrier has been a lack of resources, namely funding and staff.  “We haven’t invested enough thought, time, or resources into building an online strategy,” he said.  This is not to suggest, however, that improving online communications is not a main concern for Energy Action.  It is among their top priorities, and one area that Griffin feels especially passionate about.

Energy Action is hiring a web developer and has already staffed a new communications manager with extensive web 2.0 experience.  The Energy Action Coalition is also working with Scott Goodstein, the man responsible for devising President Obama’s text messaging and mobile strategy during his 2008 election campaign, to help them optimize mobile communications.

As Griffin noted, “our main point of interaction with people is online.  To harness the power of amazing events or to share news about climate-related issues from asthma-causing pollution to clean energy jobs, we need to be good storytellers.”  For this group of motivated and dedicated young people, it seems the potential to connect communities, inspire action and create sustainable change is only growing.

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