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On October 12th and 13th, more than 550 people from a variety of sectors - including civic, municipal, corporate, university, and even Presidential candidates - joined Clean Air - Cool Planet for its third biannual Global Warming & Energy Solutions Conference, held at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester, NH.
The conference kicked off with the news that, hours before, former Vice President Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had been awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Over the next two days, Clean Air - Cool Planet's schedule of speakers, panel discussions and breakout sessions built on this triumph and left participants feeling, in their own words, "energized," "intellectually engaged," and "excited to do more." Keynotes Jerome Ringo, president of the Apollo Alliance, delivered a rousing address Friday evening, urging attendees to be "proactive" and remarking that, with a Presidential election on the horizon, "the voters of this great nation have the opportunity to re-activate activism." Larry Schweiger, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation spoke eloquently of the need for stewardship. Guest speakers also included former New Jersey Governor and US EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, New Mexico Congressman Tom Udall, and activist and environmental writer Bill McKibben (pictured, top). Professor Berrien Moore, director of UNH's Institute for the Study of Earth, Ocean and Space presented an update on climate science. New Hampshire Governor John Lynch used the conference as a platform to announce an Executive Order establishing a New Hampshire Climate Change Task Force.
Awards Communities earning the biannual award were Maplewood, NJ, whose mayor Fred Profeta was on hand to accept the award, and Cambridge, MA, the award for which was accepted by City Manager Robert Healy. Mt. Wachusett State College in Massachusetts won the campus leadership award, which was accepted by College President Daniel Asquino. Members of ReEnergizeUS (above) were honored for their work organizing Step It Up climate action events across New Hampshire last spring and summer. More than a dozen members of the youth group were on hand to receive the award, which was presented Saturday morning by Bill McKibben.
Candidates Conference participants also heard other candidates articulate their positions on energy, energy security and climate action. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson declared that the United States' energy policy must both "wean us from oil … and fight global warming." Arizona Senator John McCain lauded conference participants, saying "I don't think you could be involved in a nobler cause for future generations of Americans than what you are here for today," before calling for increased research and development on replacements for oil and coal. And Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich blamed "the same type of mindset of an extractive, exploitative economy" for both "global warming and global warring."
Panels
Breakouts Many of the conference's presenters, speakers and panelists seemed to share a common goal: to foster hope and empower the audience while still maintaining a sense of urgency and emphasizing the need for decisive change to combat the challenge of global warming. This message was received loud and clear. "Yesterday was the time for action," commented attendee Marge Shepardson at the conference's conclusion on Saturday, October 12. New Hampshire State Representative Deborah Wheeler, who attended the conference along with about a dozen of her fellow citizen legislators, agreed: "We, as the people of the world," she remarked, "have to get going to save the world." ___________________________________
Clean Air-Cool Planet, the region's leading organization dedicated to finding and promoting solutions to global warming, creates partnerships in the Northeast to implement solutions to climate change and build constituencies for effective climate policies and actions. |
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At Friday's lunch keynote address, PSEG Chairman and CEO Ralph Izzo invoked Robert Frost and Theodore Roosevelt, cautioning that "if we do not redefine our future, climate change will redefine it for us." Noting that the best power plant "is the one you don't have to build," Izzo pointed 
Robert Semple, associate editor of The New York Times, moderated the second, Straight Talk on the Direction of State and Federal Policy (above), which included Rafe Pomerance, president of the Climate Policy Center in Washington, DC; Secretary Ian A. Bowles of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs; Robert Varney, regional administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency; and Jodie Freeman, professor of law and director of the Environmental Law program at Harvard University. Carbon Neutrality: It's the Journey that Counts, the third and final panel, was moderated by Mark Trexler, director of EcoSecurities' Global Consulting Services and featured panelists Erin Meezan, director of Sustainable Development at Interface, Inc.; Jasmine Hyman, communications director for the Gold Standard; and Iain Watt, principle sustainability advisor at the UK NGO Forum for the Future. 
