Focused on solutions

LOCAL ACTION - Pacific University prepares for next week’s national teach-in on global climate change

By Debby De Carlo

The Forest Grove News-Times, Jan 23, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (2 Reader comments)

Pacific University students, left to right, Nick Engelfried, Kayla Johnston, Celeste Goulding, Xander Reeder and Anna McGeehan will all take part in next week’s Focus the Nation events on the Forest Grove campus.

Chase Allgood / News-Times

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Lois Williams loves her grandchildren. They’re too young to vote, yet she’s convinced that what happens to the planet in the next few years will have a huge impact on their future.

“We have to talk about it,” says the Forest Grove grandma. “Our grandchildren don't have a voice yet, but it’s their future. We have to speak for them.”

Pacific University student Anna McGeehan is quite comfortable speaking for herself.

“In my family, we talk a lot about we can do about global warming,” says the Moscow, Idaho, native.

“I think it’s important to bring pressure to politicians.”

That’s why McGeehan and many of her classmates are excited about Pacific’s participation in Focus the Nation.

“The implications are huge,” said McGeehan, a junior majoring in political science and environmental studies, who will take part in a Sunday panel discussion.

Focus the Nation is a national teach-in on global warming focused on solutions for the United States. Organizers say the free event, which is open to the public, has spread to hundreds of colleges, high schools, middle schools, churches, civic organizations and businesses from coast to coast. (In Oregon, events are also planned for Linfield College in McMinnville and Portland State University, among other locations.)

At Pacific, events will include an address by Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury and an exhibit by noted photographer Gary Braasch, whose time-lapsed photographs have documented climate change.

For Deke Gundersen, professor of Environmental Studies at Pacific University, the ambitious scope of the national teach-in gives it an appropriate sense of urgency.

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded we have less than seven years to reverse the increase in carbon dioxide emissions,” he said. “NASA scientists are saying the entire Arctic could be without ice in five years.”

Despite such dire predictions, Gunderson remains hopeful.

“There are solutions,” he said. “The technology is out there.”

Political science professor Jules Boykoff says there’s a lot that can be done on the local level, particularly as the country heads into an election year.

“We're hoping this event will literally focus elected officials and candidates at all levels of government to heed the warnings and implement solutions,” says Boykoff, who is organizing the events in Forest Grove. “We can ride our bikes, we can take public transportation, but all the things we do as individuals are negated if there's not a cultural change that includes governments and businesses.”

Forest Grove is a natural place for such solutions to take root, according to Gundersen.

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