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Water Lily	Trio of Flowers by Justin Sedor, Piedmont HS, Piedmont    Exotic Hibiscus Click photo's to view larger image	Mendocino Cala

In Our Alaskan Village, Shishmaref

Editor’s note:
In Shishmaref, Alaska, a 4,000 year old Inupiaq village, the Eskimo villagers are living the global climate change experience. Three students from the village were in San Francisco in mid February and met with EarthTeam students to explain what their village is facing. Here are some excerpts from their stories. 

"Global Climate Changes"
By Frieda Grierson
Grade 9
Science Level 5

…I would like to learn more about Global Warming and I want to tell other people about our village and what is happening to it. With temperatures rising, two things happen.  First, ocean ice doesn't form as early in the fall as once did and the permafrost is melting.  When we get a storm in the fall, there is no sea ice to act as a buffer to the in-coming waves.  The waves hit the shoreline where the permafrost once was and carry off sand that was frozen in place for centuries causing the ground to erode.  During the cold parts of winter, the land freezes up again protecting it through the Spring and Summer.  If we get a storm in July or August, the shoreline will not erode as much because the permafrost hasn't thawed as it is in the early fall.  However, the permafrost just can't hold out through the fall.
	Each year, when the sea ice forms, it has been forming thinner and thinner.  This is making it hard for us to go hunting, fishing, and other subsistence activities that we do relating to the ice.  If the ice gets too thin to walk on, we won't be able to get  the Eskimo foods, like bearded seal.  The only benefit to thin ice is that we don't have to worry about polar bears and foxes coming into our town. Frieda shows one of the beaded sealskin ornaments that she makes
Another part of our subsistence lifestyle involves us picking berries (salmon berries aka cloud berries).  Traditionally the berries ripen in late July to early August when we have traditionally gone out and picked them.  However, the berries are starting to ripen earlier and at a faster rate.  One week the berries will be hard (just about when we want to pick them), and then the next week they will be too soft and fall off their stems.  This happened last summer.  When it gets too hot, the berries will "cook" on the plants and then fall off.  It is very important for us to pick the berries at a critical time when they are ripe but still a little hard. These are some of the things that are currently happening to Shishmaref relating to Global Cimate Change.

Frieda's statement at the AAAS press conference
Everyone knows that the polar bears are in trouble. My grandfather was a great hunter. He hunted 72 polar bears and his largest one was 12 feet, 9 inches. He said polar bears are always left-handed and that if you speak to them in Eskimo they will understand you and you can tell them what to do. He has raced and played hide-n-seek with them but when they played they were both hiding from each other. Now that he is gone, I will tell these stories to my children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews so they will know who my grandfather was.

Simon's statement at the AAAS press conference

This is a billiken, which is a good luck charm made out of walrus ivory. I was kinda like my grandpa’s apprentice on making billikins. I started out sweeping up his ivory dust, then I started to sand and polish his billikins. He told me to watch him make billikins everyday after school. He told me he also used to watch his dad and grandpa make and carve all kinds of things. He says it’s our culture to pass on what we know and what we know how to make and carve. He told me when I have kids and grandkids to show them how to make and carve billikins, but I think that may be difficult because the walrus uses the ice to rest and the big ice is slowly melting and disappearing because of global warming and global climate changes.

The supply of walruses for food and ivory will be very low and we will have to go further into the ocean to find the walruses.  My grandpa is now 88 years old and he has taught me a lot of things from our cultures, languages, and our ways of life.  Simon Weyiouanna Shishmaref, Alaska Jamie's statement at the AAAS press conference Living in a village, the ice is very important to us for hunting bearded seals and walrus. During the spring breakup, my uncles, brothers, and other men travel on the ice but now the ice is getting thinner, making it difficult for them to hunt. The ice now is breaking up earlier than it did in the past. Lately it has been breaking up in early June instead of at the end of June or early July. The ice is becoming rotten, making it dangerous to get to the open water where the men hunt. Our subsistence way of life is threatened. This is going to change the way we have been living for more than three thousand years. Jamie Barr Shismaref, Alaska Simon and Jamie enjoyed a SF Bay Cruise on the SF Belle on their first trip to SF.

Poisoning of the Planet - Academy Project Reflection

America the Beautiful: Shades of Red, White, and Blue_Global Awareness Studies: Poisoning of the Planet_By Elena Nielsen, Hill group Editor’s note: At Clayton Valley High School students in the Arts Academy participated in a extraordinary group project called “America the Beautiful: Shades of Red, White and Blue – Global Awareness Studies”.   The classes were divided into groups which were responsible for creating projects based on different parts of environmental awareness.  Each group published its own magazine, including art work, articles, career education, and science.  They built booths where skits were acted out, with students in costumes with appropriate props and activities.  Several of those projects will be featured in coming months on The Green News and on The Green Screen. Elena Nielsen was in the Hill group and here she reflects on her part of the project.
I'm going to be a chemist on presentation day of the projects at Clayton Valley High School’s Academy to sort of represent what occupation the person in my interview had. Mr. Robinson was in a group that was contracted out to test areas and determine how much pollution was effecting the creatures and plant life there. They didn't just find out what species were being effected and how, they went beyond. His business was one of the few groups that actually investigated what pollutants did to the cells of the animals or plants instead of just an individual creature. For example, instead of just finding out that otters were dying in a certain place, they'd study the otter's cells and see how they were affected. That's simplifying it a lot, but that's basically how it works. Mr. Robinson's group was testing the cells of bivalves for a company that was suing the company of Exxon Valdez for their oil spills in Prince William Sound (including the infamous 1999 Exxon Valdez oil spill). They were trying to show what the 10 years of excessive amounts of oil from the Exxon Valdez oil tankers did to the bivalves that lived there. The company that Mr. Robinson was hired by had used detergents to try and clean up the remaining oil. Charles's research and tests showed that the detergents were also harming the bivalves. Charles's group was only allowed to publish the test results from 2 of the 5 sites researched on because 3 were incriminating to the association they were working for. His group ended up going out of business because when they reported the truth, they didn't just say what the companies they hired out to wanted to hear, they simply told the truth. We are not born selfish or hypocrites, we learn to be that way. Apparently we have some pretty fast learners on Earth when it comes to being selfish.
I know that it wasn't just us, the students that had a lot of work to do on this project. Inspiration is one thing, but making it happen is another. Our teachers probably went through a lot of stress trying to organize everything, and still add that little creative flair that is absolutely signature to the Arts Academy. Like everyone else, sometimes I got a little frustrated and worried about getting everything done, but I understand the essence of what we were supposed to get out of this activity. I think we were supposed to learn to think outside ourselves. Maybe that's why we were put in such large groups. We had to think outside ourselves to get along and compromise with others. Sometimes that can be really hard, but I think it's worth it in the end, and isn't that what really matters?

Poetry

Letters to Dr. Green
	EarthTeam’s own environmental “advice” columnist with a prescription for what ails her readers – and the Earth.

The Climate Project Diaries

Prelude:  It’s me, EarthTeam’s  Dr. Green. Follow me as I live the environmental dream: to be trained by Al Gore to make his very own speech, “An Inconvenient Truth.” I was selected by Al Gore’s Climate Project to fly to Nashville, TN along with a small group of environmental icons.

Day #1: January 1, 2007

After visiting friends in New York, I traveled solo to Nashville TN. I arrived at 3:00 pm and checked into the Hilton.  As soon as I walked into my sizeable hotel room, I took one deep breath of satisfaction. I was so elated to have the freedom to be doing something so important without the bother of invasive parental jabber.  I was independent and free, and with those feelings, I completely crashed—for 23.5 hours.

Day #2: January 2, 2007

The first day of the training, I woke up at 2:30 pm in a pool of my own drool! Yes, I had been asleep for 23.5 hours! I didn’t think sleeping that long was even possible.  I was supposed to check in downstairs in the ballroom for registration at 3:00 pm!!!! Frantically, I threw on a conservative outfit and headed down the elevator into the unexpected.

I walked up to registration outside of the ballroom and was handed a nametag, and a huge bag of tools including a textbook the size of a TV screen, an XXL T-shirt, and a sliver of Al Gore’s very own foot. Okay, not really the foot, but I did get everything else. I trailed into the ballroom and noticed that everyone was already forming groups of babble.  Needless to say, I was certainly the youngest one there. 

I finally took a big gulp and marched up to a man in his 30s who was standing alone.  His name was Mark Dixon, a Stanford grad and the co-founder of yourenvironmentalroadtrip.com. He was completely pleasant, and his friendliness gave me the confidence to walk up to everyone that intrigued me. 

Little did I know that the people I would meet would not only be some of the most educated people in the world, but they were all devoted to environmental justice in their daily lives.  Every second, I was growing more and more appreciative of being selected to join the Climate Project.

After mingling for only a little while, I met Amanda McLenon, my Climate Project confidante.  She was a gorgeous and tall 31-year-old southern belle in the process of being hit on by some hotel chain owner.  Oh yeah, and she was brilliant.  Have you ever heard of the Human Genome Project? She is in charge of a species of the sea urchin.  Who knew that a San Franciscan outrageous teenager would bond perfectly with a relatively reserved southern girl? Somehow and someway, we didn’t leave each other’s sides. Amanda is incredible; even in her town of Charleston, South Carolina, where people generally deem environmentalism as “mish mosh”, Amanda stands tall for what she believes in and is respected by everyone for her research.  Just writing about her makes me miss her so much.

After an introduction by Jenny Clad, the director of the Climate Project, we were given a grandiose introduction and were told that two celebrities would be arriving soon: Cameron Diaz and John Doerr.  At closing, we were sent out for more mingling at the new concert hall in Nashville. It is here that I would meet Al Gore. 

In the chaos of food distribution and the presence of Al Gore, Amanda and I decided to take it easy for a while.  We started talking a lot to Michael Beruman, Liaison to the Honors College at University of Arkansas. In addition to his liaison obligations, Michael goes to a new travel destination almost every week to do coral reef research (yes, he dives into the depths of the ocean and you have probably seen him on the Discovery Channel). At first, Michael was very shy and reserved, but he couldn’t hide how interesting and quirky he was. It wasn’t long until he joined our posse.

Finally, we found the right time to tackle Al Gore. After chatting for a great deal with a Cameron Diaz look-a-like, I jumped in and stuck my hand out to Al. Believe it or not, he was rather shy and reserved up close and personal. He didn’t talk very much at all.  Our conversation went something like this:

Al: Hey.
Samantha: Hey, the work you do inspired me to make my life goal to spread as much global warming awareness as I can. 
Al: That’s great.
Samantha: I was actually kind of disappointed when you told me that the youngest person here was 14. I thought I would be the youngest!
Al: Ha-ha, not even close! How old are you?
Samantha: 17
Al: No way! I would have thought you were much older than that! (Giggling)
Samantha: Will you be on The Green Screen?

Didn’t sound like Al could make it to the Green Screen. But I tried for all you folks anyway. 

My night ended after Amanda, Michael and I went to a Nashville hot spot called Tootsie’s.  We laughed for about an hour as we listened to live country music and watched a bunch of drunken square dancers wobble around on the dance floor.

That night, I went to sleep smiling. I was still convincing myself that this wasn’t a dream.

Day #3: January 3, 2007

RRRRRRRING. RRRRRRRRRRRRRRING. I woke up to the sound of my 7 o’clock am wake up call.  We had to start the lecture by 8am.  After dressing, I ran downstairs to the lecture and made it just on time.  Amanda was saving me a seat and Cameron Diaz herself was sitting behind us.  I asked her for a picture but she quickly denied me! At first, I was dejected, but shortly realized I may have said the same thing if I had been approached 200 times on a daily basis by strangers.

Eventually, Al Gore came out and the extensive lecture began.
Eight hours later, it ended.  This was the most crucial but least exciting part of the trip.

We ate dinner at BB King’s with some Stanford PhD students.  Afterwards, I met Dr. McCracken, Al Gore’s scientific advisor.

By the end of the day, I was feeling completely dead.

Day #4: January 4, 2007

The last day was all about speech presentations. Andy Goodman, author of “Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes,” trained us on speech-giving technique.  We were distributed into groups to practice introductions and conclusions.

My table was very unique: there were a few male adults, a religious woman, and a 15-year-old girl who was the daughter of one of the men.  We hung out for a while, laughed, criticized and complimented each other for a few hours. 

When I got home, I recognized one of the nametags of a man at our table: John Doerr.  He is a successful venture capitalist at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in Menlo Park, California. He is estimated by Forbes to be worth well over a billion dollars, making him one of the richest men in the world.  I simply broke out into laughter; I had been criticizing the speech of a technological demigod.

After speech practice, we ate cake and I snuck over to Amanda and Michael’s table while the lecture was being finished. At one time, we were passing notes to none other than the voice actor of Captain Planet AKA David Coburn, the environmental cartoon celebrity. We snapped a picture!

At the end of the closing speech, Al Gore was standing right next to me shaking hands with various volunteers. I waited to meet him again but I could tell he was skipping over me either because I thoroughly annoyed him or because he wanted to give other people a chance to meet him. My personal theory is that both were in fact true.

After all of the crazy hype, I was called down to the front desk because my mom had forgot to book a hotel room for me that night. Yikes! Thank God that Amanda was staying at the hotel; she, Michael, and I ended up talking about life and college into the depths of the night. Finally, I crawled into bed and nearly cried when my alarm clock signaled that it was time for me to go home.

Day #5: January 5, 2007

As I walked through the hotel to the front door, I could see all of the new trainees joining in little circles. Despite their age, gender, or reason to be there, it was obvious to me that they were exhibiting the very same nervousness that I did on my first day.  It all hit me at once.  Each and every one of these people will be reaching out to large audiences with the message of global warming. There is SO much hope left as long as we keep pushing harder to make this cause one of our country’s biggest priorities.  The steps between the Hilton Hotel and my blindingly bright taxicab were the hardest; I had to walk out of the best experience of my life and back into the rejection of the real world.  It was only when I got home that I realized that my experience with the Climate Project will last as long as I carry on the message of the urgency of the climate project in the months to come.

To schedule me at your school, contact drgreen@earthteam.net.

Why Gore Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize   

by Justin Sedor, Piedmont HS, Piedmont

Why Al Gore Deserves a Nobel Peace Prize (and an Oscar)

            “An Inconvenient Truth” is the most disturbing film I’ve seen in a long while. It is more engrossing than “Dreamgirls,” more timely than “Babel,” more compelling than “The Queen.” It is also more powerful and profoundly moving than anything nominated for Best Picture this year.
            The fact that the name “Al Gore”, a name previously associated with a dry, rather unremarkable public persona and mediocre, middle-of-the-road statesmanship, gets top billing in the film speaks volumes about its influence; after the release of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the once second-string politician was catapulted straight through the Ozone hole into the stratosphere of fame and international recognition, especially from the scientific community. And deservedly so; with his mind-boggling and eye-opening slide show, Gore has managed to make significant headway in a task that had once been thought impossible--he transformed the issue of global warming from an absurd assertion of Californian tree-huggers into a mainstream, comprehensible concept, one that is deeply real, and obviously so, to every single American. By presenting the scientific facts behind the phenomenon in a simple, straightforward way to a worldwide audience of skeptics, Gore has shoved global warming to the front of the collective mind of the American people, and by extension, to the forefront of the evolving political scene. He has attempted to change the world, one slide, one frightening fact at a time.

Forest Art
by Carlos Flores at DeAnza HS, Richmond

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