The Wrack

How foolish would it be to leave fossil fuels in the ground?

A new set of photovoltaic panels will keep the reserve 100% solar for its electricity needs.

Three hundred and fifty million years ago, the supercontinent Pangaea floated where you sit today. It was a warm, wet world, bathed in oxygen and soupy seas. The Carboniferous period was a time from which we get a lot of the fossil fuels we now use to power our society.

Tom Twist, Sustainability Officer at The Chewonki Foundation, visited the Wells Reserve last week to present our very first Climate Stewards evening lecture. This series is funded by NOAA's Climate Stewards Education Project. The lectures aim to enable community members to develop a greater knowledge and understanding of climate change, thereby appreciating the impact of their choices more, reducing their carbon footprints, and becoming more impassioned stewards of the planet.Tom Twist's presentation sent us all down this path towards climate stewardship.

Tom began his talk with reasons to move away from fossil fuels: They run out, they pollute, they cause climate change, they fund tyrannical dictators, and they help widen the divide between the wealthy and the poor. Tom explained the inverse relationship that exists between freedom and the price of oil (learn more in Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded), and echoed Bill McKibben in saying that Exxon Mobile is the "richest company in the history of money."