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The MAST Makos’ Sustainable Future: Kid’s Get It

February 6, 2017 DReynolds

If you’ve ever wondered whether today’s youth understand that our warming planet is causing a growing crisis, or whether my peers are serious about solving the problem then you only needed to be with me last week when I spent a day with 1,500 Middle and High school students at MAST Academy. And if you’ve ever been concerned about whether kids can quickly swing into action to create those solutions then you sure would have been impressed by the kids that I met on campus that day.

MAST Academy is a nationally recognized school, the only maritime and science technology magnet middle and high school in the Miami-Dade County system and has a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) focus.

It also happens to be located on Key Biscayne, a beautiful barrier island just off the coast of Miami, that is only one of the most susceptible places on earth to a future of sea level rise. In fact, at the rate we are going it’s likely that MAST and much, perhaps all, of Key Biscayne will be under water in a few decades unless those kids and others like them join me in solving this problem.

I started my morning with presentations to two groups of high school students that filled the school’s auditorium. These young people were very engaged, had excellent questions, and were eager to learn more about what they could do to help.

I then spoke to the school’s environmental clubs and we discussed ideas to help make their school and community more sustainable. Prior to my visit I was asked to help the children think of new projects, to inspire and motivate them. We talked about their recycling initiatives, beach cleanups and campus greenhouse. And we talked a lot about solar power, a topic that the students were fascinated with.

While my time with the high school students and clubs was amazing, perhaps the highlight of my day was the enthusiasm of the middle schoolers that packed every seat in the auditorium after lunch. In fact, after my lecture these students had over an hour of questions and comments about climate change, sea rise and solutions to these problems.

The children were so enthusiastic that day that the school’s leadership was spontaneously inspired to create a school-wide sustainability committee. Over 50 children volunteered on their own volition to participate and then joined me to discuss how they could raise money, approach local political leaders, design, plan and implement a range of projects on their campus and in their community.

When I say that these children were motivated, I really do mean it. They were hungry to learn and become involved and, most importantly, to solve the climate change crisis with one another. As I have said and seen many times before, Kids Get It and that sure is true at MAST Academy.

Thanks to Michele Drucker for kindly inviting me and being so enthusiastic towards the children as well as me and my work.

Thanks also to MAST’s Principal Ms. Otero for allowing me to visit her school as well as supporting the children’s excitement for the future.

I’ve promised to return to MAST and help the children in any way that I can and I look forward to doing that so as to build on their enthusiasm. It’s exactly that type of enthusiasm that gives me great hope that by working together my peers and I will, in fact, solve the climate crisis.

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Amazing Disgrace

January 22, 2017 DReynolds

I woke up this morning filled with joy, elated and proud to be an American.

On Friday, however, I was not sure how to feel or what to think. To say that I was upset is an understatement.

You see, it was Friday that my entire school gathered for convocation and watched the Inauguration of our new President. Although Mr. Trump was not my preferred choice to become our new President, the ceremony itself was not what upset me. No, not at all.

White House climate change web page as of January 20th, 2017

It was later in the day when one of our school’s College Counselors, Ms. Armato, shared the news that the White House website had already removed its LGBT and Climate Change pages that the Obama administration had built and embraced. After seven years on campus for Middle and High School I’m known, I suppose, for many things and two of those are my passion for diversity, as a member of our school’s Diversity Council, and the other is my work related to the environment, especially climate change.

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Washington D.C. Women’s March, January 21st, 2017

In a simultaneous change, at the same time that our new President was being sworn into office, his new administration was taking one of, if not their very first, actions in leading his vision of America by removing these pages from the world’s eyes and in doing so sending a strong, disheartening message. His message could not be more clear: LGBT rights and climate change are unimportant to him and his followers. That reality, those actions, made me sad. So sad that I was in tears multiple times on Friday. Click here to read an article about the website changes.

But today is, thankfully, different.

My elation has to do with the millions of amazing women and men that marched in Washington D.C., here in Miami and all over the world yesterday to send a message to Mr. Trump that we will not allow our voices to be silenced or our concerns diminished. The women, and those with them, who descended on Washington one day after the Inauguration far outnumbered those who attended Mr. Trump’s ceremony and that, too, gives me great hope. Their powerful passion can (and must) now be turned into votes.

APTOPIX Trump Womens March

Demonstrators in New York, January 21st, 2017

Until then, we cannot forget the first actions of our new President. How he attacked our LGBT friends or the environment. Or learning a day later that the National Park system’s leadership was banned from using social media after publishing pictures of Washington’s Mall, the park it oversees between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capital, that compared Trump’s Inauguration day with that of President Obama’s eight years earlier. Or any of the disturbing, terrible things that we will likely witness over the next four years.

920x920 (1) National Park Service retweets comparison of Obama and Trump inauguration

Let us use all of these things to motivate us to work hard to make progress and positive changes wherever possible within our own communities. Speak up. Speak out. And when it comes to the environment remember that science trumps politics.

Let us use these events to register to vote and then to voice our views by turning out to express ourselves in record numbers.

That’s my plan.

To work hard to make a positive difference wherever possible while fighting for what’s right and fixing what’s broken. I do hope that you will join me and, while you are at it, please bring a friend or two, we can use all of the help we can find.

Together we can do great things in this amazing place called the United States of America. And along the way when you suffer from doubt or fear or shed a tear, please think of those patriotic people that marched all over the world yesterday. They are my inspiration and this is my plan.

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2016 Breaks 2015’s Record, Declared Hottest Year In Recorded History

January 19, 2017 DReynolds

Well, it’s sadly, but not surprisingly, official.

2016 has been declared the hottest year in history since mankind began measuring earth’s surface temperature in 1880. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), among others, announced today that 2016 is the hottest year on record.

2016 broke the record set just one year before in 2015. And 2015 had broken the record set just one year before that, in 2014. As such, 2016 is the 3rd year in a row of record-breaking temperatures as carbon emissions continue to warm earth’s climate to alarming heights.

During this recent warming streak, every month from May of 2015 through August of 2016 was the hottest month since scientific data was first collected in 1880.

And if that’s not enough, July and August of 2016 tied in setting a new record as the hottest month of any month in recorded, scientific history.

As earth’s temperature continues to set records virtually every year, all of us must work together to cease our reliance on fossil fuels and shift our energy production to sustainable solutions such as wind and solar power before it’s too late. Whether we do this in our local community, state or nation it needs to happen and happen fast.

Annual Global Temperature: Difference From 20th Century Average, in °F