The event will take place in Santa Monica, CA at the Annenberg Community Beach House, but will be streamed online.
Dr. Sylvia Earle, Captain Charles Moore, David de Rothschild, Jackson Browne, Alec Loorz, Fran Drescher and Ed Begley Jr. are just some of the presenters scheduled to speak at the forum. As additional presenters are finalized, they will be added to the event website.
Last Tuesday night I attended the 2009 Brower Youth Awards ceremony at San Francisco's Herbst Theater.
It was an AMAZING night!
The awards ceremony recognized and honored this year's winners of the Brower Youth Awards.
The annual Brower Youth Awards, established by the Earth Island Institute, honors six young people for their outstanding activism and achievements in the fields of environmental and social justice advocacy. Each winner is awarded $3000 and brought to San Francisco for the award week and a backcountry camping trip. The Brower Youth Awards not only promote the accomplishments of these young leaders but also invest in their continued success by providing ongoing access to resources, mentors, and opportunities to develop their leadership skills through Earth Island Institute’s New Leaders Initiative.
This year's winners are:
Robin Bryan, age 21 - from Winnipeg, MB Robin helped save nearly one million acres of boreal forest from industrial logging.
Sierra Crane-Murdoch, age 21 - from Middlebury, VT Sierra co-founded Power Past Coal to spotlight communities impacted by the mining, processing and burning of coal.
Also check out an older blog post that I wrote about Alec, here.
Diana Lopez, age 20 - from San Antonio, TX Diana co-created an organic garden at a site in San Antonio, Texas, as part of the struggle for environmental justice.
Rickshaw Films produced the short videos to introduce the rising eco stars and their work. These films were shown at the Brower Youth Awards ceremony.
In addition the films I really enjoyed the 2 performances by Youth Speaks. Founded in 1996, Youth Speaks is the leading nonprofit presenter of Spoken Word performance, education, and youth development programs in the country. Check out some of their work on the Youth Speaks YouTube channel.
On July 29, 2008, approximately 40 Ventura Charter School of Arts, and Global Education and Open Classroom middle school students erected 10 poles and signs along the Ventura Promenade, on the beach, to "wake up Ventura to the danger of sea level rise, because of global warming."
In preparation for the June 29th, event, the students presented to the Ventura City Council, and gained their enthusiastic endorsement.
The students held regular meetings at both middle schools where they made t-shirts, painted, and prepared the poles. Each school's team had a leader and a mentor: a professional from the community who advised the students. The project was also supported by an Advisory Board of adults and students, which included a City of Ventura engineer, an architect, a PR specialist, a green builder, a designer, and an environmental activist. The students had the support of the Green Building Council of Ventura County, the City of Ventura's Green Team, VCcool, and Ventura Charter School of Arts and Global Education.
On June 29th, in celebration of the poles' installation, the students held a Global Warming Youth Rally with youth bands and speakers who spoke to the crowd about global warming, held at the Ventura Promenade Park.
Following the installation, the students ran a booth at the 4th of July Street Fair, where they provided local businesses and neighbors with information about the poles, and invited them to participate by installing poles on their properties.
Ventura sits on the coast, about an hour north of Los Angeles.
Scientists project that within 100 years, sea level could rise 240 feet worldwide, because of Arctic and Antarctic ice melt, caused by global warming. That would put Ventura completely underwater. Just if Greenland melts, which climate change experts say could easily happen within one century, Ventura will look like the picture, below.
These signs, which read "You will be UNDERWATER here", mark a sea level 23 feet above current sea level. This indicates where the new sea level would be, if Greenland should melt.
The poles list well-known structures in Ventura, which would be underwater if the sea level rose 23 feet - Mandalay Power Station, the 101 Freeway, the waste water treatment plant, Pierpont Community, and the Ventura Pier.
The project's director, Alec Loorz, an 8th grader at the time, explained it this way:
The poles will also show how far underwater you would be standing at that particular location if we do nothing about global warming and the ice in Greenland melts.
We want to give people immediate things they can do as individuals and as a city. So, the poles send people to our website, www.SLAPventura.com (which will be live soon) to learn about what they can do to stop global warming. Our goal is to get people to change the way they view using energy and to care about the future generations of people who will be dealing with the impact of global warming.
photo: Alec Loorz
So how did this all begin? Alec explained ...
I started an organization called Kids vs Global Warming after I saw Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” last year on DVD. I wanted to be one of the 1,000 people who were trained by Gore to give the presentation themselves. But, I was turned away because I was too young. You had to be 14 and I was only 12 at the time. So, I created one of my own, with videos and music and animation so that kids would be interested and inspired to go out and make a difference. I now give the presentations to schools and environmental conferences all over California. Kids are really passionate about this issue and just need to see that their voices matter and they can make a difference in stopping climate change.
Then, last summer, I just had an idea for my town to be able to see how global warming will really affect us, and how soon. I thought if we could put up poles all around Ventura that showed how far underwater you’d be at different locations throughout the city, people would begin to see how it will affect them and make changes. I started talking about it with kids at my school and it grew from there.
Alec gave 30+ global warming presentations before being invited by Al Gore to be formally trained with the Climate Project in October of 2008. He is now the youngest trained presenter with The Climate Project.
The students hope to install 120 poles by Earth Day 2009. For the most current info, check out Alec's website.
This project has earned the support of the Surfrider Foundation's Ventura, CA Chapter.
