by Courtney Hight, Executive Director, Energy Action Coalition
In the face of a growing population, declining world resources, and a rapidly changing climate, how do we make life on Earth sustainable?
This is the critical question and awesome challenge we have been grappling with over the last three days at the Aspen Environment Forum, held in the incredible mountains of Aspen, Colorado.
I have been meeting people from around the world and the country that work on population, reproductive health, water issues, and climate change. All of these do not have easy solutions, so we are discussing how to address these problems on an international and national level.
I have met people from all over the world; a former President of UN General Assembly; the CEO of Duke Energy; Carl Pope from Sierra Club; city official from Oregon; a teacher from Oberlin; and a mother of two from Denver that just wanted to know more about climate change and population growth and how to communicate that with her daughters.
On Monday night I spoke on a panel with young leaders from around the world, including Jamaica, India and fellow Power Shift-er, Juan Martinez from Los Angeles. The panel was moderated by, Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka, who is the former Deputy President of South Africa. The organizers of the forum wanted to bring a younger voice into the mix, and also wanted us to shake things up a bit.
