The nationwide marketing campaign coordinator for the Power Democracy Challenge Selena Feliciano has labored within the discipline of renewable power for a few years, and now she is working extra on environmental and local weather justice.
Selena advised Egypt At this time that the Power Democracy Challenge is a coalition of about 35 totally different organizations, every group doing their work on the bottom.
“Some organizations host group workshops to assist folks perceive what power is, whereas others do coverage and advocacy work, making an attempt to move sure insurance policies on the federal degree in order that the communities can personal, management and handle their very own energy. So it is a fairly numerous group and a fairly numerous set of stakeholders. However I might say that on the finish of the day, we’re actually making an attempt to work in the direction of unity and making an attempt to determine how all these organizations can work collectively” mentioned Selena.
How can now we have a sustainable financial system with the usage of photo voltaic power Selena defined that renewable power as a know-how is a instrument, it isn’t the answer to local weather change.
“We will not count on a local weather know-how firm or a photo voltaic panel manufacturing firm to save lots of us. On the finish of the day, we’re those who know what we wish and what the world seems to be like, needs We would like it to thrive and we wish it to not solely survive, however thrive.”
Selena additional defined that all of us need clear air, clear water and we wish the identical for future generations.
“Photo voltaic power can be utilized as a instrument to assist folks perceive that our relationship with the solar may be a lot larger than what it’s as we speak. We have to perceive that photo voltaic power can energy our properties, the seeds develop due to the solar and we get our vitamin D from the solar. The solar is energy so photo voltaic power is only a instrument for us to deepen our relationship with the solar.
Selena provides that individuals’s tales assist us outline how we understand the world round us.
By means of the Power Democracy mission Selina is main a brand new marketing campaign to ask folks to inform their very own tales.
“We all know that our tales are additionally the identical and all of us need the identical factor. ” Throughout the context of the local weather, all of us need a vibrant future that’s wholesome for all of us and that we are able to all thrive. we wish and we are able to undoubtedly proceed and work collectively” added Selena.
Selena additional defined that inside local weather activism as a motion, younger persons are main radical causes.
“These are younger people who find themselves capable of suppose exterior of themselves as people and do a novel activism. Younger folks at all times come first as a result of in addition they know that they would be the ones to face of the numerous penalties of local weather change.
Relating to the environmental modifications that Selena has tracked up to now years of working as a local weather activist she mentioned that she started to see a larger acceptance of the intersection between the local weather motion and plenty of different actions.
So for instance, in 2020 we noticed the uprisings that occurred in the USA after the killing of George Floyd and we noticed a form of cultural reckoning with the understanding that our historical past as a rustic is kind of darkish and enormously exploits many individuals. So once we take into consideration the local weather motion in the previous few years, I feel there have been a variety of conversations about that. “
Selena added that low-income communities of coloration are the primary and worst affected by local weather change in order that they know what must occur.
On how tough it’s to draw the eye of the worldwide group to local weather change, Selina admits that it’s tough as a result of inside the context of the USA, local weather is a political problem and there are lots of individuals who don’t consider. that local weather change is an actual factor.
“It is also a matter of how will we inform the story? How will we inform the story in a approach that does not maintain again and invitations folks into this motion and makes them perceive that the need for a protected residence and group is one local weather points within the first place as we see for instance how folks transfer from one place to a different attributable to rising sea ranges.”
Selena mentioned that just like the previous few centuries, particularly due to colonization and capitalism, now we have grown other than our reference to one another and our reference to nature and the way fantastic it could be if we might develop that reconnection.
Selena has been working within the renewable power area for a few years, and now she is at present working extra on environmental and local weather justice.
Lately now we have had an amazing inflow of profit-driven initiatives to struggle local weather change. “In fact we’d like firms that develop photo voltaic panels, and naturally, we’d like those who develop applied sciences as instruments” recounts Selena.
“However on the finish of the day, it is capital, it is cash, it is revenue that obtained us right here. So we won’t suppose that the identical people who find themselves blowing cash into extraction techniques are going to take us out of it. let’s act in a framework of justice and ensure that we permit the voices of the individuals who have been rejected in historical past to be the loudest and the clearest, as a result of they’re those left exterior this method of extraction and haven’t benefited from extractive system.”
