THE CLIMATE PROJECTWEEKLY NEWSLETTER

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2008

PAGE 1

YOUTH MEETS EXPERIENCE

For the ﬁrst ten months or so of my tenureas The Climate Project’s CommunicationsManager, I lived a strange kind of professionalexistence. I was with TCP, for TCP, certainly insupport of the organization’s goals, a strong advocate of our amazing corps of presenters

sycophancy alert

, but I was not of TCP.

It had always bothered me that I had notattended a training session, having joined theorganization after the initial string of U.S.trainings and not having had the opportunity totravel abroad for sessions held earlier this yearin Canada and India. I knew there was anessential aspect of The Climate Project that Ihad never experienced. It was a bit like being a diehard fan of a team you’d never actually seenplay.

All of that changed last week here inNashville as I took part in and, indeed, helpedfacilitate TCP’s Faith Community Training.From the highly informed and inspireddissertation delivered from the stage by AlGore to the apparent commitment andeagerness of new presenters to the sheer energy of the room, it was an experience of which I amproud to have been a part.

I have spent countless hours over the last year trying to put myself in the place of you, TCP’s presenters. I regard such exercises as a fundamental component of my job, and Iconsider every one of those hours well spent. After last week, I feel even more up to the task.

The CurrentClimate

Alex Carey

Oh, so THIS is what it’s lik

It’s di

cult to know where tobegin with a man like Henry Hart, who, among other things, was bornin India in 1916, worked for thenascent Tennessee Valley Authority

TVA

during the Depression,served in the military during WorldWar II, taught political science formany years at the University of Wisconsin, and tells stories abouthis life in long, complicated sentences that sound as thoughthey should appear in Hart’s memoir and, indeed, just may.CONTINUED ON PAGE 3

Donor Hart attends training in Nashville,

becomes organization’s eldest presenter at 91

Two years ago, when Alec Loorz’s application to be a presenter for The Climate Project was turned downbecause of his youth, he could have wallowed indisappointment and hurt feelings.

Instead, Loorz got busy. Then 12 years old, he createdhis own presentation on climate change, using Al Gore’sbook and ﬁlm

An Inconvenient Truth

as a model. He weaved into his presentation information derived from various other sources, including the website of the Inter

CONTINUED ON PAGE 4

Turned down once by TCP, energetic AlecLoorz ﬁnally takes part in ‘the real thing’

By Marisa Hackemann TCP Logistics and Event Coordinator AMSTERDAM

The European Reunion had a rocky start for members of the sta

traveling from Nashville.Due to an odd odor, as the ﬂight sta

put it

the odorbeing that of an electrical ﬁre

, the plane was forced tomake an emergency landing in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After 8 hours of sleeping on a cold ﬂoor in a quarantinedroom, another plane arrived and the sta

safely made itCONTINUED ON PAGE 2

European reunion overcomes bumpy beginning

THE CLIMATE PROJECTWEEKLY NEWSLETTER

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2008

PAGE 2

TCP HITS AMSTERDAM

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1to Amsterdam.

The reunion enjoyed an amazing turnout of more than 80 TCP presenters. Every branch of TCP wasrepresented for the ﬁrst time in one room. We had presenters come from Indonesia, Australia, Spain, India,Mexico, and the United Kingdom, among others. All of the presenters, sta

members, and special guestsenjoyed an amazing two

and

half day re

energizing and learning experience, thanks to a generous donationfrom Tommy Hilﬁger.

There were a number of fantastic presentationsmade by our own TCP presenters. We were alsofortunate to have in attendance the Vice

Mayor of Amsterdam, Marijke Vos; the Minister of theEnvironment for the Netherlands, Jacqueline Cramer;and the IPCC Vice Chair, Jean Pascal van Ypersele. Onthe ﬁnal day of the reunion, Al Gore himself joined usfor a brief time. He thanked everyone for their hard work and dedication and answered questions from thepresenters who attended.

Many di

erent topics were discussed at thisreunion, from the correlation between the economiccrisis and the climate crisis to what TCP can do toprepare for Poznan and Copenhagen. At the end of thereunion everyone seemed to have thoroughly enjoyedtheir time in Amsterdam and the camaraderie that canonly be created by being a part of TCP.

After bumpy beginning, European reunion an ultimate success

GOING DUTCH

Above, Nadja Krylov, Yves Mathieu, Amanda Katili

Niode, and Paul Rippey

L to R

onstage at the European reunion in Amsterdam. Below, AlGore and Jenny Clad pose with attendees.

Mary Lou Fox delivered a presentation on climatechange Wednesday to executives at CitiFinancial’sBaltimore campus. The presentation was the ﬁrst tocome about as a result of a burgeoning educationalpartnership between Citi and The Climate Project.

Fox spoke to the group of executives about global warming and solutions, placing a particular focus on ways in which they could make their workplace moree

cient and climate

friendly.

“They have a ‘green team’ that’s starting up. They’re really looking for projects to tackle,” said Fox.

“I think the people really liked it.”

Fox is TCP’s District Manager for

Maryland, WestVirginia, Virginia, and the District of Columbia

Fox takes climate message to CitiFinancial

THE CLIMATE PROJECTWEEKLY NEWSLETTER

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2008

PAGE 3

YOUTH MEETS EXPERIENCE

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Last week the 91

year

old Hart became the eldest presenter in The Climate Project community when he tookpart in TCP’s Faith Community Training in Nashville. It was a homecoming of sorts for Hart, who graduated in1936 from Nashville’s Vanderbilt University

where heknew Al Gore’s late mother Pauline, then a law student

, but it was hardly an introduction to TCP orthe issue of climate change for him.

Earlier this year, as a consequence of his concernabout the climate, Hart made a generous donation to TCP, which has resulted in the creation of theorganization’s School Program. At present TCP’sManager of School Programs Raj Shukla

working closely with Hart and representatives of the Madison,Wisc. school system

is in the process of developing a system

wide climate change curriculum that will bereplicable elsewhere.

“The association with the Gore family, I think,facilitated getting Al Gore’s attention with my request.What motivated me to concentrate all my availablesavings was when I realized the urgency of the cause.Particularly, I was concerned about the melting of theGreenland glaciers,” Hart said.

“The idea that that whole ice cover on Greenlandcould melt, and the manifest urgency created by the possible shift of that huge continental

size sheet of reﬂectiveice to a very heat

absorbing brown stone, it was so obviously a vicious circle downward for the climate and a vicious circle up for the ocean levels that I thought, ‘Speed here is of the essence.’ I began thinking right away how we could mobilize public interest in blocking this rapid warming of the atmosphere of the earth.”

Hart’s interest in climate change and environmental issues is animated by his experience working on issueslike ﬂood control, river navigation, and hydroelectric power for the TVA in the 1930s and 1940s.

“That gave me a tremendous concern with the full and most broadly deﬁned use of resources, and the use of those resources through the very strong participation of all the possible users of the project. That really is still thecore of my commitment to the harnessing of our resources and the avoidance of the harmful e

ects of the humanimpact on the climate,” Hart said.

Last week’s training session left Hart feeling further educated, though a little unnerved. “I thought I knew global warming and found out that in just two days I learned ten times as much as I brought here on global warming,” he said.

Hart explained that he felt “a sense of at worst intimidation, at best extreme modesty, about how e

ective Ican be as a presenter. I’m determined to get my feet wet as quickly as possible and to get experience inpresenting.”

But if Hart’s e

ect on Shukla is any indication, presenting slide shows should be no problem for him.

“It’s amazing to see someone at his stage of life respond to this challenge with so much energy and be so generous with his wisdom and his intellect,” said Shukla. “It’s inspiring to work with somebody like him.”