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Students at College of the Atlantic are hosting the Third Annual Maine Campus Climate Change Summit from Feb. 9 through 11. The weekend summit features workshops on a variety of topics related to current environmental issues.
Friday night's keynote address is of special interest to the general public. The speaker will be Alison Drayton, a high official with  the United Nations Development Programme. Prior to joining UNDP, Drayton was Counselor in the Permanent Mission of Guyana to the United States. She coordinated the Group of 77/China on sustainable development issues during Guyana's Chairmanship of the G77/China in 1999 and was vice chair of the Commission on Sustainable Development in 2000.
Drayton was also a former negotiator for the United Nations climate treaty, Kyoto Protocol, Convention to Combat Desertification, and for the UN Commission on Sustainable Development.
Drayton will be speaking on the future of the Climate Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the impact of climate change upon small islands. She hopes to offer insights on the upcoming fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which was established to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.
The summit begins Friday night with a keynote presentation on the issues of climate change, followed by workshops and talks on Saturday offering insights into energy alternatives and climate science issues, and a session on effective organizing Sunday. Among the speakers will be David Hales, COA's president. Hales has an extensive background in international environmental negotiations and brought the college to its carbon net-zero initiative last October.
COA members of the youth environmental movement, SustainUS, organized the summit. Speakers will be traveling from around New England to make presentations. While the gathering is primarily for youth, community members are fully welcome to participate.
The organizers of the summit feel quite strongly that they need to take charge of climate issues if they are to have a world to grow into. They also believe that Maine is the perfect environment to nurture such change. Says Matt Maiorana '10, one of the event organizers, "We, as youth, want to see Maine at the forefront of meaningful and effective action to stop climate change. Maine is already taking some steps, and we would like to work with stakeholders to assure these steps are timely and sound. For the third annual state climate summit, we hope to share ideas, expand knowledge, and organize ourselves in order to become agents of change and leaders in the fight to stop climate change while gaining the benefits of a progressive green economy."
Registration for the summit begins at 3 p.m. Friday. Saturday's session begins at 9:15 a.m. with the talk by Hales. Later that morning, the focus will be on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, with a choice of workshops that includes a discussion of the possibilities of solar energy on Maine campuses, a biodiesel basics class and the views of a climate change skeptic. Additionally, Juan Pablo Hoffmaister, a COA senior and one of 14 international youth representatives to the United Nations Environmental Programme, will discuss the diplomatic questions of climate change.
Saturday's mid-afternoon workshop focuses on a panel on science and technology with environmental engineer Robert Niven, who has been working on developing a cost-effective, environmentally-benign carbon capture and storage process, called CO2 Accelerated Concrete Curing. Also on the panel is transportation engineer and land use planner Jon Slason of Burlington, Vt., who has worked with organizations, municipalities and states to assess the impacts of development and land use changes while encouraging growth and economic stability. Additional panel members are solar engineer David Kaufman and COA 2006 alumna, Julia Clark who is representing Planktos, a company researching the role of plankton in carbon storage.
The latter part of the afternoon will feature a second set of workshops, including success stories in organizing; a session on sustainable planning with land use planner Slason, a further discussion of cutting edge technologies with Clark and Niven and a workshop by Eliot Coleman, noted four-season gardener and COA trustee, on the impact of emissions from food transport.
Sunday morning sessions will focus on organizing a network for Maine youth tackling climate change issues. The summit is sponsored by the Sierra Student Coalition and Planktos.
For more information, contact climatesummit@generationkyoto.net or call 288-5350. Click here to see a detailed schedule.
For registration, please follow this link: http://www.ssc.org/involved/registration.php?e=66
Caption: Juan Pablo Hoffmaister, one of the summit's organizers, with Steven Nitel at the Conference of Protocols in Nairobi last fall.
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