The Patten Free Library aims to inspire young people to think of how to implement climate solutions in local communities during its annual Bath Climate Conversations next week.

On Wednesday, Jan. 14, Bath Climate Conversations will focus on how young people can unite communities for local solutions to the climate challenge. The event will happen in the Community Room of the Patten Free Library, both in-person and on Zoom, beginning at 5:30 p.m.

Leia Lowery, cofounder and director of The Climate Initiative (a Maine-based nonpartisan organization), will speak at the Bath Climate Conversations for the first time this year. Lowery will speak with Jackson Chadwick, advocacy director of the Maine Youth for Climate Justice (MYCJ), about successful efforts to get young people engaged with their communities through climate action.

“[Young people] have a long-term stake in the outcomes of what happens; most of us that are older are not going to be around for the real long-term issues,” Lowery said. “We can’t basically run up a bill and make another generation pay.”

Lowery and Chadwick will talk about how students are initiating climate-action projects in their communities and sparking an intergenerational conversation on why it is important for young people to be at the table for climate issues.

Communities in southern Maine have a real problem with climate anxiety and a loneliness epidemic, Lowery said. The Bath Climate Conversations is one way to recreate community connections while listening to young people’s concerns about climate change and encouraging them to lead the conversation about making future climate actions, she said.

Since forming in 2019, MYCJ has been open to anyone under the age of 30, connecting with a coalition of over 400 young people from all over the state. Two years ago, MYCJ launched a podcast focused on dispelling misinformation about wind turbines.

The youth-centric lecture is the second part in a series of Bath Climate Conversations. There will be two more lectures, one with award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen on Feb. 11, and another with students from the University of Maine, Maine College of Art and Design, Northeastern University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst on March 11.

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