Senators Klobuchar and Coleman: compare and contrast

About 70 college students from 10 Minnesota colleges visited Washington DC for Power Shift Lobby Day. They met with Minnesota Senators Amy Klobuchar (DFL) and Norm Coleman (R). Amy was excited to meet them, Norm was not. Amy is a champion of environmental issues, Norm was condescending and dismissive. Norm is bankrolled by the coal, nuclear power and energy companies. Norm is a conservative Republican who will stand up for big business interests whenever he thinks they are threatened. Especially when their threatened by some meddling kids.

At the Power Shift lobby day yesterday, Minnesotan Senator Amy Klobuchar enthusiastically met with over 70 Minnesota college students from about ten colleges. There were so many of us, the lobby meeting was moved into the main atrium of the Hart Senate building. We could barely fit half of our group into her office. Sen. Klobuchar is a co-sponsor of the Boxer-Sanders bill and is champion of climate change solutions in the Senate.

Her counterpart, Sen. Norm Coleman, was not so excited to meet with us. When we saw that we were not scheduled to visit Sen. Coleman's office on lobby day, we decided to bring our vision of clean energy directly to him anyway. Fifty students waited outside his office, until the Senator arrived- and then they surprised him by cramming into his office (all fifty!) and demanded that he take our future seriously.

From the start, Sen. Coleman dismissed our ideas and demands. He rejected wind and solar power on the basis that there is no infrastructure and that it would hurt poor people by raising energy bills. He said that "green jobs" are unreliable and ambiguous, and that we really can't afford to move away from coal, because we would be forcing thousands who work in the coal mines, coal plants, and industries that rely on coal into unemployment. He also condescendingly told us that although he was young and idealistic like us once, he had since grown up and come to live in the "real world."

Experiences with Senators like Sen. Coleman are incredibly frustrating. We need urgent and comprehensive federal legislation that moves us toward climate neutrality and the creation of skills-based green jobs that can't be outsourced, and away from coal. Although it is true that we are young and idealistic, we are also practical.
(It's Getting Hot In Here)

Norm has no vision for changing our economy to a green economy. He obviously doesn't want to move in that direction. Norm would not work to help wind turbine companies get off the ground in Minnesota. Norm would probably oppose tightening car emissions or if he could, he'd weaken the emissions standards as much as he could. These students were savvy enough to see through the Norm-speak^TM.