NORTH STARS:
Climate Actions
Wildlife & Ecosystems
Diversity & Inclusion
“What I have learned in my now 15 years being involved in the climate movement is that the outcome of any one election does not change the work to be done.”
In the wake of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s re-election, with hard-fought climate progress once again in jeopardy, a science museum in New York is a refuge for hope. Tucked into the Adirondacks, not far from the village of Saranac Lake, lies a magical 115-acre science museum. Inside The Wild Center, exhibits like the Climate Solutions Hall and Planet Adirondack invite visitors to learn about the region’s past and envision a thriving future.
Outside, woodland trails, forests, and an accessible elevated tree walk help people connect and discover nature in new ways. At the center of it all are young people. For 15 years, The Wild Center has hosted an annual Youth Climate Summit centering and empowering the voices of high schoolers in the climate movement. They have no plans to stop.
“We will continue to do the climate education work necessary to move our program forward, support youth, and connect with educators across New York state, the country, and around the world,” says Jen Kretser, the youth leadership coordinator for The Wild Center’s Climate Program. “Since the election, we’ve had multiple inquiries about how to start youth climate summits in Albany, Chicago, multiple locations in Canada, and in Nigeria and Italy,” says Kretser.
What Is the Adirondack Youth Climate Summit
Started in 2009, the Adirondack Youth Climate Summit is a two-day, conference-style event that gathers together 165 high school students from all across the Adirondack Park and Champlain Valley. The two days are focused on six Youth Climate Program values: place-based, action-oriented, youth-driven, solutions-focused, equitable, and hope. The goal is that the summit will empower young people with the knowledge, competencies, and confidence to take climate action.
“It’s a very inspirational event with tons of high school students who care about the issue of climate change and feel empowered to do something about it,” says Witter Swanson. “It had a huge impact on me; it motivated to some degree the kind of courses and internships I pursued in college, which built the career I have now.”
From Food Forests, Carbon Neutral Proms, to Green Economy Professionals
Swanson, who grew up in Saranac Lake, became involved with the Youth Climate Summit nearly a decade ago as a planner and attendee. Today, he works as a solar energy developer.
“I was environmentally conscious before the summit, but through the act of actually planning the summit, I was connected to other students with similar, like-minded ideas,” Swanson says. “I was especially inspired to see other students with similar perspectives, and it’s been very cool to watch their career growth.”
On the summit’s first day, participants attend workshops and listen to guest speakers, engaging with hands-on learning experiences to build skills and knowledge around the many challenges and solutions presented by the climate crisis. The second day is action-oriented, where summit participants use what they learned from day 1 to create a Climate Action Plan for their home communities, which they take back and implement.
Over the past 15 years participants have built food forests for their communities, installed solar-powered charging stations for phones and computers, planned carbon-neutral proms, created a student-run business turning food waste from schools and businesses into compost, and hosted numerous climate education school and community events.
“When we started the Youth Climate Program in 2009, we thought we would do it for a couple of years, and here we are,” says Kretser. “We still do it every year; the youth participation has been invaluable, and the model has been replicated all over the world.”
Youth Summits Proliferate Around the World
The Wild Center’s model program has been recreated over 200 times, with summits in more than 24 U.S. states and nine countries.
Many past participants, such as Swanson and Meadow Rutenbar, who also grew up in Saranac Lake, have gone on to have careers related in some way to climate solutions.
Rutenbar comes from a family focused on living outdoors and thriving in nature. Her dad, a fly fishing guide in the area, became an early resource for the people establishing The Wild Center, and Rutenbar got involved with the museum from a young age. It was the museum and Youth Climate Program that inspired her career path.
“I give a lot of credit to The Wild Center and the leadership opportunities I was given at a young age,” Rutenbar says. “The experience still informs much of the work that I do today. I’m now surrounded by amazing climate scientists, and I can see how the seed for my work was planted early on.”
Rutenbar attended the first Wild Center Youth Climate Summit in 2009 as a high school junior and later helped plan a Youth Climate Summit in Finland. Today, in addition to being the youngest person sitting on The Wild Center board, she also works as a Senior Manager of Sustainability & ESG Services at Deloitte & Touche LLP.
“The Youth Climate Program represents many of the grassroots efforts that need to be done,” Rutenbar explains. “We need not just action from the public sector and government but also from companies.”
The Youth Climate Programs also planted the seed for The Wild Center’s Climate Solution exhibit, which opened in 2022 and drew inspiration from, among other sources, the summits, the book All We Can Save, and Project Drawdown, a resource for climate solutions.
“We drew a lot of our knowledge from youth, and we had an advisory team that included young people,” says Kretser about the exhibit’s planning. “We kept thinking about what makes a really good exhibit, what tells a good story, and how it connects to the Adirondacks.”
Hope and Solutions: Tackling Climate Change Without Politics
While the topic of climate change is often a political and contentious subject in the United States, , The Wild Center knew that they wanted the exhibit to focus on hope and solutions. Krester believes this approach has helped them avoid politics.
“We haven’t come up against any of the politics, and I think it’s because we’re starting at the solutions level; we’re not arguing about the science,” Krester said.
The region itself has also seen the impacts of the climate crisis firsthand in recent years, with wildfire smoke, extreme flooding, and mild winters impacting tourism, which is a major part of the local economy.
It makes the Youth Climate Summits, and now the interactive Climate Solutions exhibit, feel all the more urgent. The exhibit provides ways for people of all ages to learn about the people, groups, and organizations, many youth-led, working on climate solutions in the Adirondacks region and further afield.
“It’s really important that we try to facilitate how we empower youth to lead these conversations because we’re talking about them and their future,” Rutenbar says.
Much like the summit itself, the exhibit, which is open year-round, can be a starting point for people to find climate solutions and hope in their own lives.
“What I have learned in my now 15 years being involved in the climate movement is that the outcome of any one election does not change the work to be done,” says Rutenbar. “If anything, it emphasizes the importance the efforts of those, like the Wild Center’s Youth Climate Program, truly are. Elections highlight how critical engaging and educating young people are, as they are the future. In my experience, any perceived setbacks or adversity come with the territory or are a necessary part of doing meaningful work,” says Rutenbar.
Bridget Shirvell is an independent journalist based in Connecticut. Her food, parenting and environmental reporting has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Martha Stewart Living, Good Housekeeping and more. An environmentalist for as long as she can remember, her climate solutions work took on new urgency after becoming a parent. Bridget lives in an old house in Mystic, Connecticut with her daughter and dog. She can be found online at breeshirvell.com. Follow Bridget on IG @breeshirvell.