Community Prepares for Inaugural Climate Action Day

On Wednesday, Feb. 11, the Academy will host its first ever Climate Action Day. Instead of attending classes, students and faculty will spend the day partaking in a variety of informational climate-related workshops, starting with an all-school seminar entitled “The Climate Fight: This Generation’s Greatest Battle” from keynote speaker Bill McKibben.

“Young people deserve to know about and be part of this fight, given that climate change will help define [their] lives in a huge way,” McKibben said. “We all need to be thinking about this crisis—and acting on it. [It’s] the most important story in the world.”​

Afterwards, students will separate into smaller groups for their two self-selected workshops, spanning from 10:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Each of the 22 workshops available are unique in their approach toward climate change, from the architectural perspective to food sustainability to economic analysis. In the afternoon, optional workshops will be available to all who are interested.

“Awareness is everything on this matter. We absolutely have got to be as serious about this as anything and everything."

Last March, a group comprised of students, alumni and faculty gathered to discuss ways in which Exeter could address the issue of climate change. Justin Landowne ‘14 proposed the idea of creating a day devoted to the informational side of climate change, similar to the structure of the Academy’s Martin Luther King day. After the meeting adjourned, the group sent a proposal letter to Principal Tom Hassan, who supported the idea. The group began contacting speakers for the day, amounting to an impressive total of twenty three.

Bloom, like many other Exonians, was amazed by the number of connections the Academy had. He believes that on Climate Action Day, there will be someone and something for each student and faculty member.

“You can go chat with the Vice President of Patagonia about marketing and what it takes to run an environmentally conscientious organization. You can go talk to a PEA alumni about their experience. You can go chat with economists and people who look [at it] from the political angle,” Bloom said.

As mentioned in Tuesday’s Climate Action Day assembly, not only does climate change impact current occupations, but it also opens up new ones. According to senior and E-Proctor co-head Holden Hammontree, Climate Action Day will have a pragmatic side effect of exposing students to new and developing career paths.

“[Assembly speaker] Tom Steyer touched upon this in last year’s assembly, the idea that this as far as the career sector or private sector goes, could be the next big thing. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to assume that more people will be thinking of how to cash in on this career sector,” Hammontree said.

Throughout the variety of perspectives introduced to campus, there exists a commonality; they are all coming to the Academy to inform. The Climate Action Day Committee members decided that the day should be devoted to teaching students about the issue of climate change. Bloom explained that becoming knowledgeable about the climate was the first step in implementing change. “To carry out actions as best as you can, you need to be informed first,” Bloom said.

Students and faculty alike agreed with Bloom that in order to make a difference to the current state of the climate, they must first be informed about the issue.

“I feel like in my past four years at Exeter we have never really taken the time to learn about Climate Change, let alone have a full day of events planned for it,” senior Jordan Bolden said. “I think this will really help us to see how the current climate is affecting us and why we need to do something.”

Theater instructor Robert Richards acknowledged the challenges facing this generation and believes that educating students is an effective way of decreasing the overwhelming aspects of the situation. “Awareness is everything on this matter. We absolutely have got to be as serious about this as anything and everything. I think one of the challenges is when students hear, ‘It’s going to be up to you, or your grandchildren,’ how they’re going to process that without rolling their eyes,” Richards said. “We have to burst that bubble in order to empathize with what’s really going on in some places.”

Some students and faculty hope that Climate Action Day will be able to do just that: influence students to care about the effects of global warming. “I think this day will really serve to both educate them and inspire [us]. I think it’ll appeal to both the intellectual and emotional side of people,” upper Timothy Wu said. “Hopefully it’ll leave a deep impression in the mind of the students.”

Upper Killian Dickson, who also believed that Climate Action Day could leave a deep impression on the students, related it to MLK day, which was able to raise discussions among the Exeter community. “Like the MLK Day speakers this year, who were very successful in raising conversations among students, these Climate Action Day workshops have the potential to be just as influential,” Dickson said.

Climate Action Day Committee member and senior Ruby Epler believes that the day will provide Exonians that necessary push toward the right direction. Epler reasoned this based off of her own personal experiences. As someone who was once uninformed about the environment and who is now a passionate environmental activist, Epler was inspired by a video called “The Story of Stuff” after learning the true ramifications of her actions. Epler believes the same will happen to others on Climate Action Day.

“I think that people on campus don’t really know what their day-to-day actions really mean for the environment. I think if you teach the students about what it means and what will happen to our globe in the next hundred years, that will change behaviors,” she said.

On the other hand, lower Olivia Liponis said that the effectiveness of Climate Action Day will be decided by the way the audience responds. In her experience, including Tuesday’s assembly, students have not “fully grasped the magnitude of the problem that [our world] is facing.”

In order to change this, Liponis said, “[After Climate Action Day], it would be a good idea to have follow up conversations, to bring it up again in a few months, and to provide more opportunities for students to get involved in ways that make them see and understand what’s happening.”