Polar Explorers and Michigan Youth Climate Activists:
A Siren for Action and a Message of Hope

By Michael Collins
Michigan Student Sustainability Coalition

Most students on a Friday night are out celebrating a hard earned break from classes or resting up for the morning football tailgate. Not the Michigan Student Sustainability Coalition or students at Grand Valley State University. This past weekend the Michigan Student Sustainability Coalition (MSSC) caravanned throughout Michigan with the Will Steger Foundation (WSF) for their Longest Summer Tour. The Michigan leg of the tour kicked off in Grand Rapids with presentations all day and a Friday night program at Grand Valley State’s downtown Grand Rapids campus. The Friday evening event literally moved climate change from the lecture hall to prime time, as over 100 students filled a packed room to see polar explorers share the stage with professors, students from the Michigan Student Sustainability Coalition and Steve Chester, Director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Student representatives from various colleges in Michigan and MSSC coordinators had the honor of sharing the floor with arctic explorers and climate change solutions activists Will Steger and Toby Thorleifsson. Conversations ranged from how individuals and governments can combat climate change to the first hand accounts of arctic explorers on the effects of global warming on the polar regions of the world.