Climate Change Messengers Deliver Important Message at Lees-McRae

     Climate Change Messengers Sally Beth Shore and Whitney Coe, trained through Al Gore’s Climate Project, will speak at Lees-McRae College on Monday, Feb. 26 on climate change, global warming and what we can do about it.
     Speaker Sally Beth Shore will present “Engaging the Climate Crisis” in Hayes Auditorium from 2 to 3 p.m. for Lees-McRae students, faculty and staff and the community. Armed with information and skills from climate change scientists, educators and Al Gore, Shore will present her version of Gore’s presentation in An Inconvenient Truth.
     At 7 p.m., Whitney Coe will join Sally Beth Shore in leading the evening discussion on global warming. Their joint presentation, also open to the public, is called “The Climate Project: Answer the Call” and will be held in Evans Auditorium in the Cannon Student Center. 
     The Climate Project is a movement to educate and challenge citizens and governments into action against the growing crisis of global warming. As a non-profit group, The Climate Project works to bring education, community information, research and citizen action programs to communities across the country.
     The first initiative, sponsored by Participant Productions, is the training of 1,000 Climate Change Messengers who will present information delivered in An Inconvenient Truth to audiences across America. Each messenger has committed to making at least 10 presentations on global warming in 2007.
     Leading up to the programs on Feb. 26, S.A.V.E., (Students Against a Vanishing Environment), a student club at Lees-McRae, will sponsor An Inconvenient Truth shown throughout the day and evening in Evans Auditorium on Feb. 22. The first showing of the film will be at 11 a.m. and the last showing at 7 p.m.
     Laurie David’s book The Solution is You! will be available at half its retail value during both programs on Feb. 26. Laurie David is the producer of An Inconvenient Truth and founder of the Stop Global Warming Virtual March.
     Climate Change Messenger Sally Shore, a native of Southern Pines, NC, received both her undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in geology/geography and environmental science, respectively. Her experience includes service as a Peace Corps volunteer, geologist and non-profit director.
     Currently, Shore is an adjunct instructor of environmental science at UNC-Asheville. She is studying for a Master of Divinity degree and serves as a student minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville. She is married to air policy analyst Michael Shore and has three children ages 11, 9 and 6.
     “I’m called into ministry to make a difference by preaching, teaching and caring. To be an environmental steward is a profound way to care for each other today, and to care for our children and all children of the future. So much depends on the choices we make today. My hope is that humanity will learn many lessons as we respond to the climate crisis,” Shore said.
     Climate Change Messenger Whitney Coe is originally from Athens, TN, and received her B.A. in religion and philosophy and writing from Queens University in Charlotte. She is currently studying for her M.A. in Appalachian studies at Appalachian State University. Eventually, Coe hopes to go to divinity. She is married to Matthew Coe, a special education teacher in Mountain City, TN.
     Coe said of her involvement, “The Climate Project has been a wonderful way for me to combine my passion for Appalachia’s environmental heritage with my desire to raise awareness about the reality of the global climate crisis.”
     Sponsors for these programs are Lees-McRae’s Division of Science and Mathematics, the Global Community Center, and S.A.V.E. For more information on these programs, contact Kathy Campbell at (828)898-3142. For more information on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth and the Climate Change Messengers, visit www.theclimateproject.org, www.stopglobalwarming.org, or www.climatecrisis.net.