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Conservation voters group gets reboot with longtime activist
Three decades later,
Colleen remembers thinking
at the time: “What if
everyone recycled all the
cans, all the time — what a
big impact from collective
action!”
As the environmentalist
in her Midwestern family,
Colleen’s holiday presents
were often “green”, such
as the Greenpeace calendar and, one year,
a whale adopted in her name. In the fifth
grade, she continued her collective action
with a petition drive to reinstate a special
lunch day; the petition was signed by every
student and school leaders relented.
Persuasive, organized and passionate:
these are attributes that Colleen brought
with her to Emory University where she
joined the Barkley Forum debate team and,
as luck would have it, got to debate her
favorite topic her sophomore year: “That the
United States Federal Government should
increase regulations requiring industries to
substantially decrease the domestic emission
and/or production of environmental
pollutants.”
In 2008, Colleen received a master’s
degree in City and Regional Planning from
Georgia Tech which augmented her political
science and environmental studies degree
from Emory. After working for a local firm
doing green building and sustainability
consulting, she became the Georgia Chapter
Director of the Sierra Club in 2010. In her
six years with the organization, Colleen
directed successful campaigns to shutter
coal-fired power plants, add significant solar
energy resources and bring MARTA to
Clayton County.
Next, as policy director for Atlanta City
Councilmember Kwanza Flail, Colleen
drafted and helped pass a 100 percent
clean energy policy in May 2017, making
Atlanta the first city in Georgia to pass such
a measure and the largest southern city to
do so. By 2025, all city operations must be
powered by clean, renewable energy sources.
In early March, Colleen Kiernan became
GCV’s new executive director. She says
that the organization will build slowly and
strategically with a focus on the Georgia
General Assembly and a goal to inform and
mobilize conservation voters throughout the
state. She believes that there is no better time
than now to unite Georgians to protect their
air, water and future generations.
For more information, visit
gaconservationvoters.org. na
Let the mountains talk, let the river
run. Once more, andforever.
— David Brower
Called the father of the
environmental movement, David
Brower was a larger-than-life
figure: profiled by writer John
McPhee, vilified by federal
dam builder Floyd Dominy
and twice-nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize. As executive
director of the Sierra Club from
1952 to 1968, Brower guided
the organization from a small,
western mountaineering society
to a powerhouse of environmental
activism.
Understanding the need for
political action at the national
level, Brower co-founded the
League of Conservation Voters
(LCV) in 1969, a year before
the first Earth Day in 1970.
Today, LCV is considered one
of the nation’s most influential
environmental political action
groups, as it works to turn
environmental values into
national, state and local priorities.
Along with its 29 state affiliates,
LCV advocates for sound
environmental policies and holds
elected officials accountable for
their votes and actions.
In the early 2000s, Georgia
Conservation Voters (GCV) was
founded as a non-partisan
organization with a mission
to transform the state’s
political landscape by electing
leaders with conservation
values and holding them
accountable to implementing
policies that ensure clean
water and air, abundant
wildlife, scenic landscapes
and economic opportunities
for all Georgians. Annually,
state legislators who voted
to support environmental
initiatives were recognized by
GCV and a valuable scorecard
was produced to inform
voters.
As politics changed in
Georgia (and elsewhere) in
the decade that followed
GCV’s founding, it became
increasingly difficult for the
organization to accomplish
its mission and, in 2013, it
discontinued operations. Five
years later — with a dynamic
new director and a state
population that is growing
more diverse and progressive
— GCV is rebooting. Polling
shows that a large number of
Georgia voters now identify
with environmental issues.
At the age of 10, Colleen
Kiernan became an activist.
Away from her parents
overnight for the first time
at a basketball camp at
Northwestern University,
she says there were only a
few ways to be “rebellious,”
one of which was to drink
lots of “pop” — soft drinks
not allowed at home. As she
and her friends consumed Collen Kiernan
their pop, aluminum cans
accumulated around them;
at the time (the late 1980s), the college
campus did not have a recycling program.
At school, Colleen had learned that recycling
just one can could save enough energy to
power a television for three hours. She and
her best friend collected cans from the entire
dormitory and took them home to recycle. A
lifelong environmental activist was born.
ABOVE
THE
WATER
LINE
By Sally Bethea
Sally Bethea is the
retired executive direc
tor of Chattahoochee
Riverkeeper and cur
rent hoard president of
Chattahoochee Parks
Conservancy whose
mission is to build a
community of support
for the Chattahoochee
River National Recre
ation Area.
1 0 April 2018 | Q3
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