On the 5th, Zoe Sikon and I attended the Climate Change and Environmental Issues Panel. It featured Colin O’Brien and Scott Weaver, who represented Earth Justice and AEP respectively. It was a very interesting talk about power generation vs. the future of our environment. Both speakers had interesting perspectives to bring to the conversation. Colin Ob’Brien comes from California, which is obviously a very different political climate and climate in general, and he works as a lawyer defending environmental cases. Scott Weaver works as the environmental advocate for one of the largest power companies here in Ohio. One of the most interesting things that they spoke about was the difference in the constituents they served. There have been efforts to make Ohio’s power generation greener, especially by the power companies, however the people are often resistant to these changes. They could be more expensive, or the wind turbines and solar panels could simply be in a place that people don’t want them. In California, the effects of climate change have already taken a toll. The recent fires changed a lot of people’s minds about green energy and climate change. So as Colin was saying, the government has made a huge commitment to make California use 100% green energy within a specific timeline. Overall, even though both Colin anf Scott came from different places in terms of work, they were in agreement about the need for green energy. I thought it was interesting that the power companies are actually putting in a lot of effort to convert to green energy, but legislation and people have been resisting and slowing them down. It’s fair to say that there’s been a misconception amoung people I know that it’s the power companies who are the major problem, and not people or government. The panel caused my perspective to shift a bit. It’s also interesting that a lot of the push towards green energy is coming from local and state governments and not the federal government. Colin commented on how this is most likely because climate change has become such a partisan issue on the national stage that it’s hard to get effective legislation passed without major resistance from one of the two main parties. Overall, I thought the panel was really informative, and it’s caused meto want to be more involved in getting policies enacted on a local level to deal with climate change and green energy.