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.
Earlier this year, STS co-chair Susie Arnold, Senior Ocean Scientist and Director of the Center for Climate and Community at the Island Institute, presented about the Science of Hope, and how we can apply the hope theory construct to climate action.
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.”
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.
From a young age, Alyssa Soucy was fascinated with graphs, maps, and data But it wasn’t until she attended college in Lowell, Massachusetts that she learned about climate change in an academic setting. As Soucy undertook a degree in geology, she learned about earth systems and earth history but recognized that her interests expanded beyond the physical aspects of the earth and into the human dimensions and interactions with these systems.