Sharing hopeful stories from people living and working around the Adirondacks and interactive examples of ways to mitigate climate change

The Wild Center announces the opening of “Climate Solutions,” a 3,000-square-foot interactive exhibition that explores the encouraging stories of people from across different backgrounds, generations and sectors who are building a web of climate solutions in their lives and communities. The exhibition is open to the public beginning July 7, 2022, and is included with regular admission.

Over two years in the making, “Climate Solutions” highlights four different sectors that can help deal with climate change that visitors can relate to their own lives:

● Energy: Transforming our Energy Ecosystem
Solutions demonstrate how transitioning to renewable energy will create an energy ecosystem that ensures lower carbon emissions, healthier communities, and cleaner air, water, and soil.

● Food: Rebuilding our Food System
These solutions steer society toward an equitable food system for both people and the planet. By treating land, soil, and waters with respect, we can ensure access to healthy and affordable foods, and uplift people by supporting farmworkers.

● Natural World: Caring for Our One Home
Exploring ways we can support Earth’s ecosystems to help build a livable future. The moss wall is an artistic representation and interpretation of carbon in the landscape, with various colors of moss representing the amount of stored carbon.

● Action: Taking Action on Climate Change
What happens when people put their skills and passion into action? This space gets people to think about what tools are being used to combat climate change and communities taking action on climate change.

Visitors will meet 12 people who live in the Adirondack North Country region who are living climate solution examples. Their inspiring stories offer evidence of how science, technology and social change can become part of how your life can be a climate change solution. Stephanie Ratcliffe, Executive Director, The Wild Center said, “One of the most interesting and uplifting aspects of working on this project was talking to the many people who are working on real solutions not more than 100 miles from The Wild Center. This gave the exhibit team a real perspective about the sheer amount of change happening across disciplines from engineers to architects to farmers to young people.”

Individuals featured:

• Neil Patterson Jr.: Assistant Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment
• Nicky Hylton-Patterson: Director, Adirondack Diversity Initiative
• Steve Langdon: Research Station Director, Shingle Shanty Preserve
• Michale Glennon: Science Director, Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute
• Courtney Grimes-Sutton: Butcher/Farmer, Mace Chasm Farm
• Birch Kinsey: Farmer, Youth Activist
• Astrid St. Pierre & Ellen Lansing: Student Activists, Lake Placid High School
• Blake Lavia & Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo: Documentarians, Talking Wings
• Sue Powers: Director of the Institute for a Sustainable Environment, Associate Director of Sustainability, Jean ’79 & Robert ’79 Spence Professorship in Sustainable Environmental Systems, Clarkson University
• Jesse Schwartzberg: Principal, Black Mountain Architecture
• James Ammon: Owner, ADK Solar
• Ken Visser: Associate Professor, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Clarkson University

Interactive elements provide hands-on experiences including a magnetic mural that shows how renewable energy can integrate into our landscape, a telephone wall that plays the voices of those engaged with climate solutions and a tinkering studio to fuel creative problem solving around climate impacts and solutions.

Charlie Reinertsen, Exhibit Developer and Project Manager said, “‘Climate Solutions’ is more than interactive displays and immersive experiences – it is an invitation to be a part of a growing community of people who are shaping the future of life on Earth. When visitors step inside the exhibit, they will find themselves surrounded by a welcoming community of people who are finding ways to care for our one home and the diversity of life that Earth supports. These leaders and community members will invite visitors to think about what tools they might offer to work on climate solutions in their own communities, and what actions might bring them joy as they join the growing climate movement.”

Individuals are invited to further engage with the exhibition at solutions.wildcenter.org, where people can:

● Submit Solutions: Share your own solutions to be featured in the exhibit’s interactive mosaic.

● Extend Your Experience: Continue your climate solutions journey by exploring these – and other – climate solutions. Then learn how you can put things into action.

● Find Your Place in the Climate Movement: Take a virtual look at the exhibit and be inspired to find your place within the climate solutions movement. In addition, The Wild Center will reveal related programming and enhancements across its campus. These new offerings build on the Center’s 15 years of climate education expertise.

Stephanie Hanson, Exhibit Developer said, “It has been really inspiring to see all the climate solutions already at our fingertips. In the process of creating this exhibit, I learned that we need to make big changes to the way our economic, social, and political systems function so that everyone has access to these solutions and to make sure the rate at which solutions are being implemented matches the urgency of this problem. We need equitable, interdisciplinary solutions for this interdisciplinary problem born out of inequity. Finding our way to a livable, vibrant future means scaling up solutions and breaking down social and economic barriers to their implementation. And collectively, we have the knowledge and wisdom to get there.”

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and a gift from Peter and Hela Kindler.

“Climate Solutions” is on display inside The Wild Center, which is open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.