Gustavus senior Amanda Varley is in intern with the Will Steger Foundation. (Photo by John Cross of the Mankato Free Press)

By Robb Murray
Mankato Free Press

Clearly, Will Steger was impressed with Amanda Varley.

The explorer was in town for the most recent Nobel Conference, which happened to focus on global warming and climate change.

To ensure his visit to Gustavus went well, he was given helpers, one of whom was student Varley.

“I basically chased Will Steger around for two days,” she said this week.

Steger, she says, was so impressed by the Nobel Conference and the enthusiasm he saw at Gustavus for the topic at hand that he requested a Gustavus student be hired on as an intern at the Will Steger Foundation.

They didn’t have to look too hard to find an interested student.

Varley was hired and put to work on a project that, once launched, will be very visible to anyone interested in fighting global warming.

Steger is gearing up for his next expedition — a 60-day, 1,400-mile dogsled journey to Ellesmere Island. With him will be six other people between the ages of 21 and 28, including the son of billionaire Richard Branson.

“The idea of this expedition is to witness global warming firsthand through the disintegrating ice shelves, retreating glaciers and destruction of wildlife habitat,” Varley said. “The team will document their trip through video, images, sound bites, etc. and will post them on their Web site as they go along.”

And directly to the side of those online updates (at globalwarming101.org), on the same computer screen, will be the result of Varley’s work during her J-Term internship.

Steger’s target audience will be youth, i.e., people between ages 17 and 27. Her job is to find people in that age group already doing things to change the world for the better. They’ll be featured on the Web site as “Action Stories.”

“I am gathering stories of young adults throughout the world and what they are doing to lessen their impact on the earth whether it’s walking to school or organizing rallies,” she said.

Some of the Action Stories are close to home. One involves a group at St. Olaf that has an organic farm. It is student run, and the group sells what it grows to the college.

Another features a young man with an environmental blog. A group of students at Carleton College live in a green house. And then there’s the St. Peter coffeehouse where Varley works part time.

“We’re doing an Action Story about River Rock,” she said. River Rock uses compostable take-out coffee cups made out of corn among others things — not petroleum.

So far she’s gotten positive feedback from everyone she’s contacted.

“When I contact people, they are really honored and excited to get involved,” Varley said. “They feel like they’re making a difference.”

This week she’ll be in Minneapolis. The Will Steger Foundation is having an event called Focus Minnesota, which is part of a larger nationwide event called Focus the Nation. Scheduled to appear at the event, which takes place at the First Avenue night club, are Steger, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and perhaps Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Varley has worked to organize and promote that event.

All this internship work with the foundation has taught her plenty.

“I’ve learned so much,” she said. “I didn’t realize how much grass-roots organizing there was on the college level across the nation.”

She still wishes there was more going on at Gustavus. The Gustavus Greens are active, she said, but the student body in general is mostly inactive when it comes to global warming and climate change.

But she remains optimistic.

“Just seeing what people are doing in the smallest ways,” she said. “I think people really want to make change, but they don’t necessarily think they can when there’s so much going on in the world … People want to make a difference.”

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Media Contact: Media Relations Manager Matt Thomas
mthomas@gustavus.edu
507-933-7510

Polar explorer, writer, educator and lecturer Will Steger is just one of the prominent speakers at this year’s Nobel Conference.

Heating Up: the Energy Debate, the 43rd Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College, Oct. 2 and 3, 2007, will consider global reliance on nonrenewable energy sources and explore a range of cutting-edge energy alternatives.

“The annual Nobel conferences are noted for timely and constructive discussions of important scientific and social issues,” said Nobel Conference Director Tim Robinson. “Literally fueled by rising gasoline prices, the energy debate is a topic about which more of us have become increasingly aware and formed strong opinions.”

For more than four decades, Gustavus has organized and hosted the Nobel Conference, which draws about 6,000 people to the college campus in St. Peter, Minn., and links a general audience, including high school students and teachers, with the world’s foremost scholars and researchers in discussion centered on contemporary issues relating to the natural and social sciences.

The Nobel Conference is the first ongoing education conference in the United States to have the official authorization of The Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden.

Executive Director of The Nobel Foundation Michael Sohlman said, “The Nobel Foundation proudly supports Gustavus Adolphus College and this year’s Nobel Conference as it brings together an inquisitive audience and renowned energy and resource experts to examine global warming and energy issues and the resulting conflicts which impact political stability.”

2007 Nobel Conference presenters include:

* Steven Chu, 1997 Nobel laureate in physics and director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory;

* Kenneth S. Deffeyes, professor emeritus of geosciences, Princeton University

* Lee Rybeck Lynd, professor of engineering, Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College

* James E. Hansen, lead climate scientist and director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York

* Paul L. Joskow, director, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

* Joan M. Ogden, co-director of the Hydrogen Pathways Program, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis

* Will Steger, polar explorer, writer, conservationist, educator, and photographer

More information about the conference, including additional information on each of the speakers and ticket information, is available online at www.gustavus.edu/nobelconference/2007.

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Media Contact: Media Relations Manager Matt Thomas
mthomas@gustavus.edu
507-933-7510