Climate Action Day Plans to Engage Exeter

With an emphasis on student and local community involvement, the fifth annual Climate Action Day, organized by the Climate Action Day Planning Committee, will take place on Friday, April 26.

The goal of Climate Action Day, according to biology instructor and CAD member Sydney Goddard, was for faculty, staff, alums and students to bring “climate change more to the consciousness of the Academy.” The principal at the time, Tom Hassan, arranged the first Climate Action Day and a committee composed of volunteers planned out guest speakers and activities.

Goddard spoke to the importance of staying mindful about the fate of the planet. To her, climate change is “the most pressing issue of our lives  …  Unless we do something about it and make some kind of difference, we're not heading in a very good direction,” she said. “I'm passionate about it, and I'm very worried about where [the planet] is headed.”

To further the Committee’s mission, 30 workshops will be offered Friday with a keynote assembly at 8:45 a.m. While some workshops inform students through a presentation about Icelandic glaciers or climate change data, others will involve students actively aiding the environment through workshops such as Dune Grass Planting, Tree Planting or Habitat Restoration.

Each student must attend the keynote address “Every Choice Matters,” in which  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Vice-Chair Ko Barrett will discuss the latest climate developments. “We're always trying to make things more current, bring in people who are experts in their field, involve alumni, get students to lead,” Goddard said.

Some members of the Exeter community are particularly interested in specific workshops, such as Music Instructor Jon Sakata, who is looking forward to “'Water Quality at Exeter and Beyond' with Mindi Messmer and the GULL Class.” “I’m particularly excited about the student-organized and driven workshop on Exeter’s water treatment issues and THM levels that grew out of fall term’s G.O.A.L. class of Mr. BreMiller,” he said.

Sakata continued, describing the far reaching lens of the workshop. “The intersection and galvanization of environmental science, activism, community care and rigorous criticality that the students are enacting is a model for us all,” he said. “More generally, I’m excited about the range of global and local conditions, problems, solutions that the entire day involves.”

MATTER Magazine Editor-in-Chief Anjali Gupta agreed, expressing that the interdisciplinary nature of the day will aid its impact. “What I feel is so important about the climate is that it's not just one singular issue,” she said. “It's not just going to affect the economy, it's going to affect health, the economy, the way we live, the way we have to learn to adapt and build our infrastructure to rising sea levels or the way that we have to push science even farther to adapt.”

Another workshop that members of the Exeter community have devoted time and energy to is the “RedBikes Rollout!” workshop. This event commences a new bikeshare program run by the Green Umbrella Learning Lab and Student Council’s Student Life Committee. “This project is sustainability focused,” Student Council President and upper Ayush Noori said. “RedBikes allows Exonians to increase the pace and quality of campus life without increasing their carbon footprint.”

Science instructor Alison Hobbie hopes that students will develop an action-based mindset from their workshops. “Climate change is real and requires both reduced emissions and innovations to minimize its impact on our environment.  It is also the responsibility of all of us to make changes if its effects are to be minimized,” she said.

Upper and Redbikes co-founder Summer Hua echos Hobbie’s message of responsibility. “I think [that] as students, we have the responsibility of being the future generation to change some sort of thing like that,” she said.

Gupta hopes that students begin to understand that helping alleviate climate change is possible. “I like seeing different ways in which people can help. You don't just have to be someone who travels to the North Pole to take measurements about rising sea levels. There's so many other ways; there are many different fields in which you can get interested in climate change and make your mark,” she said.

Sakata noted that change begins with the individual, but that alone, individual impact does not suffice. “When one witnesses what current students and alums, colleagues and parents near and far are doing on so many fronts of environmental and human justice, then it is important to express that the Exeter community is making a difference,” he said. “That said, the staggering immensity, complexity, layers of what we face really demands each of us to bring, daily and sustainably, our full capacities, capabilities, energies as individuals, collectivities, institutions, peoples.”

Goddard reflected on the mission of the day, concluding that the event should spark action. “I want students to have an understanding of what's happening and maybe to have some agency that they feel they can do something about climate action,” she said. “It's not that the day itself is going to have [a large impact], but instead that it may spur individuals or students on in their future direction, so give them a spark and make them want to pursue something related to climate action.”

“There are few things as powerful as the voices of youth, of high school students, of Exonians,” Noori said. “If we follow our words with appropriate action, we have the ability to make an impact in the world.”