by Amanda Carpenter, Program Associate, Second Nature

(This post is part of a series by the Second Nature team about why we do what we do.)

My passion for sustainability started, oddly enough, with a fascination with the weather. As a kid, hearing the severe weather warning tone on the television was as close to Christmas as I could get in the late spring. The warning would go off announcing the advent of a severe storm or flash flood warning, and I would be glued to the TV hoping that the announcement would mean that something cool was about to happen.

One such occasion interrupted a family barbecue on the last day of May. The forecast that morning had said that there was a high likelihood that there would be severe thunderstorms in the late afternoon, and you could definitely feel it stepping outside. The air was hot and humid, sitting heavily as the fog rolled in that early evening, and draining the motivation out of everything it touched. Around 4PM the severe weather warning started across the TV screen accompanied by a warning I had never heard before: Tornado Warning for Eastern New York.

The EF-3 tornado that dropped down about 10 miles north of my mom’s house is now known as the Mechanicville-Stillwater Tornado. The half-mile base of the tornado slashed a 30.5-mile gouge down Route 67, and was part of the historic Late-May 1998 Tornado Outbreak and Derecho. The estimated wind speed of 150-200 miles per hour was strong enough to tear the bark off of trees, and lob bricks through the side of tractor-trailers. While thankfully no one died in this tornado, 350 homes and businesses were destroyed, and 68 people were injured. Many of those who were harmed and lost everything were living in trailers and mobile homes and had little capacity to rebuild, let alone rebuild resiliently to withstand future storms.

by Timothy Carter, President, Second Nature

One month ago I began a new chapter in my career, accepting the challenging and thrilling opportunity to join Second Nature as its third president. As someone working on environmental issues in higher education for the past 13 years, I have been aware of the rich legacy and commitment of the organization to lead and accelerate bold commitments to sustainability in higher education that transform society.

The network generated by the ACUPCC is arguably the strongest collection of presidential leadership in higher education relating to sustainability anywhere in the world. Since 2007, these leaders gather regularly at the Presidential Summit on Climate Leadership to hear from expert speakers, share experiences with each other, and discuss the sustainability issues that are most pressing on their campuses. This conference has ranged in scope, size, and focus throughout the years but every Summit has had at its core a commitment to serve the members of the network in the best ways possible. On October 1-3, 2014 we held the seventh of these summits in Boston, and we are incredibly grateful for the time the more than 300 participants took to meaningfully engage with content and each other.

by Peter Janetos, Summer Intern, Second Nature

(This post is part of a series by the Second Nature team about why we do what we do.)

Having a father who was knowledgeable about sustainability and global climate change never really mattered to me until later in life. It wasn’t until early high school when global warming and serious environmental impacts really got my attention. I took a class my senior year of high school called Environmental Systems; in retrospect probably the most important class I took in high school, and really opened my eyes to global climate change. After the school day was over my head would be buzzing with questions off of topics we discussed in class, and who better to ask than my own father. My questions would deviate off onto other questions and before I could blink we would be having a full-blown conversation starting with GHG emissions ending with politics and our ailing economy. This continued well into college.

Majoring in “the hard sciences” never appealed to me but nonetheless the issues of global climate catastrophes lingered in the back of my mind. I decided to major in Communication because I thought I’d be good at it, with a minor in Kinesiology because it only made sense to me that I take some type of sports related classes. As I went through the first half of my college career, questions would still keep popping into my head about not only climate change but life choices, patterns I never noticed before, people, jobs, my future, and I knew just who to ask. I’m fortunate to have the smartest man I know be my own father and that is really something I shouldn’t be taking for granted but at the same time I do because I’ve grown such accustomed to his knowledge and help.

by Janna Cohen-Rosenthal