Mainers from every corner of the state are stepping up to the climate challenge. Practical, creative and trailblazing teachers, bus drivers, students, communities, recent graduates and professional athletes alike are taking action to get ahead of the climate curve. Read their stories.
Meet Edge Venuti, 18, who is taking climate action by serving as the youth representative for the Maine Climate Council's Coastal and Marine Working Group. As a member of Maine Youth for Climate Justice and a student at the University of Maine studying Environmental Science and Ecology, Edge is speaking up to help shape the Maine Climate Action Plan update in 2024.
Carter Frank used to love playing City: Skylines, an Xbox game where players get to build their own city, decide the placement of roads, and design public transportation. Frank, now a senior studying Environmental Planning and Policy and the University of Southern Maine, had no idea just how much a childhood hobby would translate into his career trajectory.
Like many other students, Frank’s educational journey had a few twists and turns before he found his passion for environmental planning.
It can seem pretty overwhelming to navigate the world of green jobs in Maine. So, we sat down with Kassie Murch of Maine Public's @GreenJobsExplained to break down everything you need to know about sustainable careers.
Q: How did you get to where you are now – running the Green Jobs Explained Instagram account for Maine Public?
Martin Carriere first faced the reality of the climate crisis in 2014, when the farm that had been in his family for generations struggled with drought and a new uncertainty due to climate change. Then in 2021 there was not enough water to flood his grandfather’s rice fields in California, a phenomenon that had never occurred since the farm was founded in the 1800s.
Marissa McMahan can recall the summer that fishing off the coast of her hometown, Georgetown, changed. “It was 2012 and a marine heatwave hit us. All of the sudden we were pulling up lobster traps with black seabass in them.” McMahan grew up fishing on her father’s lobster boat and she had never seen black seabass in the traps before. “Talking to the older fishermen who have a historical record of what they have seen in these waters really indicated how big of a deal this was.”