Mainers from every corner of the state are stepping up to the climate challenge. Practical, creative and trailblazing teachers, bus drivers, students, communities, recent graduates and professional athletes alike are taking action to get ahead of the climate curve. Read their stories.
At Jay’s Spruce Mountain High School, students are putting climate education into practice by competing in Envirothon, an environmental competition program of the National Conservation Foundation. After winning its twelfth state championship in 2023, the all-star team went to work preparing for the international championship in Canada, working with the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future to learn more about climate adaptation.
Nearly 4,000 employees descend on BIW’s Bath shipyard daily, with over half of those employees commuting more than 70 miles round trip.
Lucas Huff, now a senior at Brewer High School, used his apprenticeship training experience last summer with the Associated General Contractors (AGC)’s Maine Construction Academy Pre-apprentice Program funded by the Jobs Plan, to land a clean energy job. He now works with Wyman & Simpson, Inc., which builds utility and hydro-electric projects around Maine.
On MDI, the towns of Bar Harbor, Mount Desert, and Tremont are engaged in both individual and regionally collaborative projects funded by the Community Reslience Partnership.
Individually, the towns are conducting a mix of greenhouse gas inventories and vulnerability assessments, exploring options to electrify municipal buildings, and doing pre-development homework for a municipal solar array.
The Town of Machias in Washington County earned a $45,000 Community Action Grant to develop an Upper Machias Bay Resiliency Plan.