I just finished the first day of The Climate Project here in Nashville and I must say, I’m absolutely exhausted. It’s roughly 2am here but I wanted to share a few thoughts you all before I turn into a pumpkin. (As an aside, I’m finding that a lot of this session’s participants have been reading up on previous participant’s blogs. I hope that these entries help communicate my experience at The Climate Project!)

We began the session with remarks from Jenny Clad, director of The Climate Project, who introduced us to a stellar team of mentors and ‘faculty’ who will be supporting us over the next few days. Much like session 2, we learned that the participants this week have come from all 50 states as well as Canada, Thailand and Turkey and that the youngest participant this session is a 14-year old from Boulder, Colorado! We also learned that we’ll be joined by a couple of special guests… stay tuned! Shortly after the introductions, we had the great privilege of dinning in the newly opened Schermerhorn Symphony Hall where we heard opening remarks from Mr. Gore.

After some mingling over dinner, it wasn’t long before I began to gain a sense of awe in the breadth of the diverse backgrounds of the participants and their commitment to tackling climate change. It wasn’t merely the fact that there were physicists, lawyers, teachers, and CEOs in the mix, but that they all came with such unique points of view; perspectives and angles by which they’re approaching the topic of climate change. For example, I had the privileged of chatting with Jennifer Downs, Director of Outreach at Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, a non-profit whose mission is to engage communities of every faith in the stewardship of the environment. Another great example is Oscar Gonzales, previously California director of the National Hispanic Environmental Council, who hopes to inspire the Latino community to address climate change.

Over the past few months, it’s becoming more and more clear to me that in order to address a topic as general and broad as the environment, specificity is actually a great ally. That is to say, when tackling such a large and intimidating topic as climate change, identifying the specific issues and topics that resonate with a specific audience can be a key to being effective… (Coincidentally, this approach of finding and designing around ‘points of view’ is quite similar to the design methodology Vestal applies to product and experience design.) Ultimately, I must commend the staff for tirelessly working on organizing the project and assembling such an inspiring group of individuals!
I’m greatly looking forward to tomorrow’s deep dive into the science behind climate change!

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See Also: Geo + Info Postcards,The Climate Project – Day 2,New Year’s Resolutions,

This entry was posted by Mike Lin on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 2:03 am and is filed under Environment, Social Change, Vestal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.