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On Energy Action Day, Nov. 14, a group of young people came together on campus to come up with ways to change the world.
“We’re not experts,” said Morgan Goodwin, a visiting presenter from the Sierra Student Coalition in Washington, D.C. “We’re just young people trying to figure it all out.”
The coalition is a chapter of the Sierra Club that connects people ages 14-30 from across the country who are working for environmental change. Members of the group travel to universities and host workshops to teach students to become better leaders and organizers.
Zo Tobi, a workshop leader, told how he was inspired by a conversation he had as an undergraduate student. His professor asked him one day if he’d ever live in the woods by himself, like Henry David Thoreau. Tobi answered that he would.
“My professor said to me, ‘That’s the wrong answer. One day, you’re going to have grandkids, and they are going to ask you, ‘What did you do in that historic time?’” Tobi deferred his master’s degree and became a staff member of the student coalition. He considered it part of his duty to change the world.
At the workshop, there was also a general consensus that University of Maine students are apathetic.
The group brainstormed ways to fix the problem of getting people motivated. Student apathy was one of the main points on the list of problems to fix. Other issues on the list included: high levels of carbon in the atmosphere, population growth and lack of enough public transportation.
“We have to make it cheaper to do the right thing than it is to do the wrong thing,” Tobi told the workshop attendees.
Workshop speakers emphasized the importance of planning and coming up with tangible goals. “If it ain’t written down, it ain’t a plan,” one of the PowerPoint slides stated.
Community organizing is also about convincing people they can have an effect.
“It’s about taking that next step,” said Rob Goodwin, president of the UMaine Outing Club and Energy Action Day co-organizer. “People have a lot of knowledge; they just don’t always know how to apply it.”
The workshop wrapped up with “Grassroots Aerobics” – a physical exercise. “Stretch up, up, up to your high goals. Then down, down, down to those grassy roots. Then reach to the left, and a little to the right-but not too far right.”
A brainstorming session was also held to see what students want to happen on campus. Many expressed the desire to see the university use less energy, pointing out that some buildings are left heated all night with all the lights on, even though no one is in them.
Some attendees suggested billing students in dorms according to their energy use, appealing to the idea that most people will not make changes unless it directly affects them.
Dr. Habib Dagher, professor of civil engineering at the university gave Energy Action Day’s keynote. He shared his goals to start wind energy farms off the coast of Maine.
“The gulf of Maine is the Saudi Arabia of wind,” Dr. Dagher said as he showed maps of wind patterns in the U.S. Dagher said the gulf of Maine is the coldest place in the world during the month of January, and that’s just when we need energy the most.
The proposed offshore wind farms would generate the equivalent of 40 nuclear power plants. Dagher described a system for heating houses that uses wind power, heat pumps and geothermal technology. He is currently trying to get funding for the project and is looking for more students who might be interested in working on it.
For more information on the Sierra Student Coalition, visit its Web site at ssc.org.
Bangor Daily News