Land of Opportunity: The American Response to Climate Change

The Wild Center has sponsored two programs--one national, and one regional (Adirondacks). Good for them for the conference and good for them for posting the slides online along with some videos that will be coming soon (they're available for the national conference last summer).It's an important topic, and using the Internet to disseminate the information quickly is wonderful for people who are time- and distance-stressed.So what are we to think about our beloved local paper, the Press-Republican when it runs an article on the topic of local lawmakers not attending because they were too busy or not invited? Sure, that's a valid point. But to print an entire article about the busy schedules or long distances these people had to contend with and not to devote one sentence, one phrase, or -anything- to the fact that the Wild Center is making so much of the whole shebang available online is bizarre. In all fairness, the P-R has run five recent articles about the conference. The online resources have been mentioned in several of them along with links to the Web site. Unfortunately, that information didn't follow along to this article.Yes, one or more of the legislators who did not attend should have mentioned the online resources (and should have used them).We have to keep reminding people that these new technologies exist to conquer time and space. We have to keep reminding the powers that be that the lack of broadband access in many areas of the Adirondacks prevents us from being virtually present. If a lawmaker (or anyone else) can't devote a day to attending a conference, the alternative is not necessarily skipping it: the alternative may be attending online. Online meetings are not the same as in-person events, but when you add up the pros and cons, sometimes the carbon footprint of the in-person meeting outweighs its value (note "sometimes").

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