Student attends global warming conference

Student attends global warming conference

by R.J. Turner
TODAY (CSU-Pueblo)
February 19, 2007

On Nov. 4, CSU-Pueblo biology/chemistry major Jessica Viges, 25, attended the Young Global Leaders Summit in Ft. Collins, Colo. The conference topic: global warming.

It was held on the CSU campus and sponsored by an organization known as Americans for Informed Democracy (AID).

Founded in 2002 by a group of American students studying abroad, AID works with organizations such as the United Nations Foundation, networking with colleges across the United States.

Their goal is to inform, inspire and empower environmentally conscious students like Viges to initiate debate and take positive local action on serious global issues.

To date, the organization has connected with over 500 campuses.

Viges, a member of the newly formed Sustainable Future Ad Hoc Committee at CSU-Pueblo, said that she has always been interested in environmental issues.

"My family always recycled and we were very conscious of nature," she said.

Entering Eddy Hall, where the summit was held, Viges noticed a number of well-labeled, dark blue recycling bins scattered throughout the building and wondered aloud where she might get receptacles like these for the Pueblo campus.

"Reduce, reuse and recycle," she said.

Little things we do can make a big difference, she added. "Compost your food waste; replace your light bulbs with compact fluorescent lights."

In fact, fluorescent bulbs use at least 2/3 less energy than regular light bulbs, she said, which can help save on your light bill.

It’s after 10 a.m. and more than 100 people representing universities across Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas are now seated in the Eddy Hall auditorium.

Seth Green, 26, a third-year Yale Law student who is also a co-founder and the current president of AID, was introduced, and bounced out onto center stage to welcome everyone to the conference.

He began his presentation by talking about the founding of AID then quickly explained the day’s agenda before getting down to business.

AID was here, he said, to offer students tools that will enable them to act locally, and practically, on what they hear during the rest of the conference.

He said AID hoped their real work would begin when the students walked out the door at the end of the day.

AID offers templates, check lists and step-by-step guides to would-be event coordinators, providing everything from fliers and posters to money for food.

Green said that AID hopes to persuade students to go home and hold town hall meetings or global video-conferences or to just show, at no cost, documentaries from the AID library.

Students also can create individual out-reach programs, which AID will not only support but will share with other colleges within their network.

Green wrapped up his presentation and there was a short break while the organizers readied for the next speaker.

Viges, meanwhile, said she has been inspired by Green’s enthusiasm and feels certain that the Ad Hoc Committee will be able to take advantage of the numerous resources offered by AID.

Her ideas for creating awareness of environmental issues at CSU-Pueblo have not changed, she said, but she feels that they have been reinforced.

There were two speakers after the break, including the environmental coordinator for Vail Resorts, Luke Cartin.

Cartin is one of the masterminds behind Vail’s "Ski with the Wind" program, which calls for the complete conversion of every one of their lodging, resort and retail locations from fossil fuel to 100 percent wind power, making them the second largest corporate purchaser of wind power in the country.

After Cartin, the afternoon was filled by a panel discussion featuring an ex-U.S. Navy overt human intelligence collector, a political science professor and a professor of mechanical engineering (both from CSU), and two professors from the University of Denver.

Here are a few facts the speakers shared with the audience:

* Between 1990 and 1999, 188 million people per year were affected by increased natural disasters – that’s more people than were affected by armed conflict in the same period.

* In the past several years, extreme heat has caused upwards of 20,000 deaths in Europe.

* The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season broke all records for number and intensity of tropical storms.

* As of 2050 there will be somewhere around 10.7 billion people in the world – and 3.5 billion people live in water-stressed countries.

* 2.5 billion people in developing countries currently lack access to even basic energy services.

* The United States consumes 55 million barrels of fossil fuel per day; China consumes 25 barrels per day. Overall consumption in both countries is a still rising number.

Among the students, the consensus seemed to be that the day’s most important presentation belonged to Seth Green and the AID organization that not only showed them how to act locally, but gave them the tools to make a difference.

"Students have the power to change our world," said Green, "because they have the power to change."

Back home in Pueblo, Viges plans to share what she has learned with the Sustainable Future Ad Hoc Committee and with as many others as she can.

"I hope to see a sustainability policy in practice at our school before I graduate," she said. "We only have one planet earth. We should respect it."