Vermont Academy Connects the Dots on Climate Change

May 2, 2012 - PRLog -- On Saturday April 28, students from Vermont Academy joined Bill McKibbin and members of the community of Bartonsville, Vermont to make connections between extreme weather occurrences and global climate change. The meeting and subsequent photo shoot was part of McKibbin’s latest campaign through his climate action group 350.org. The Bartonsville bridge was deliberately chosen as a kickoff site for 350.org’s "Connect the Dots" campaign because it was destroyed last fall during Hurricane Irene.

According to McKibbin, we are now seeing ever more floods, droughts, and storms of increasing power across the planet. People are dying and communities are being wrecked. The impacts from climate change are unlike anything that has been seen before. But because the globe is so big, it’s hard for people to see that it’s all connected.

Trevor Reynolds, a four-year senior at Vermont Academy said he was impressed by his encounter will Bill. “After learning about all the stuff he’s accomplished, I expected him to be wearing a business suit and lecturing us about parts per million of C02 and what we have to do to stop global warming. Instead, he was dressed just like the rest of us and he spoke in plain and simple language about how we’re already witnessing the impacts of climate change in Vermont and other places all around the world. He reached out to us as young people, which is really important since we’re the one’s who are going to have to solve this problem.”  

Trevor and some his fellow VA Students, not only participated in the photo shoot in Bartonsville, they also staged their own photo shoot back on their campus in Saxtons River. During the annual Vermont Academy Earth Day celebration, the community gathered with orange dots in hand (orange and black are the school colors) and positioned themselves into one great dot at the base of the ski jump that could not be used this past winter due to lack of snowfall. The photos were entitled “Vermont Academy Connects the Dots.” They will be submitted to the 350.org website on May 5th along with thousands of other photos taken from communities around the world as if to say—We get it. Climate change is real.  It is now. It affects all of us, and it’s time to do something about it.