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A lesson in global warming truths for Albany High Students
'You have incredible power,' professor tells them

Dr. Steven Leibo, a Sage Colleges professor who was trained by Al Gore to present information about global warming, applauded the number of Albany High School students who had seen the former vice president’s award-winning film on the topic at a Tuesday morning assembly.

Then Dr. Leibo proceeded to give the 500 students in attendance a live presentation of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s documentary about the causes, effects, and call-to-action surrounding climate change that recently netted an Academy Award. 

“Global warming has already happened,” said Dr. Leibo, a professor of international history and politics at The Sage Colleges. “You have the power to make it worse; you have the power to make it better by changing what you do.” 

Dr. Leibo’s multimedia slideshow offered a compelling case that global warming has been caused by human’s treatment of the earth, and that the damage can be scaled back by human actions. He spent three days in Nashville, Tenn., in January as part of a group of 200 people that Gore trained to give these presentations around the country. 

Essentially, Dr. Leibo said, emissions caused by the use of energy sources such as petroleum, gas and coal, have resulted in Earth’s atmosphere trapping a an increasing amount of carbon dioxide, causing a variety of problems that begin with increased temperatures on both land and sea. 

Dr. Leibo stressed that although global warming will affect different climates differently, it will touch everyone’s lives increasingly more if it is not reversed. For example, the insurance industry is affected by more powerful storms that wipe out homes and buildings; more droughts could affect the food supply worldwide; populations in certain areas are not prepared for the heat waves that will follow a warming climate; and the economy is vulnerable because commercial centers near the coast are at risk as ocean levels rise.

Albany High School teacher Cathy Vitas, who teaches living sciences and coordinated Dr. Leibo’s visit, said she wanted students to understand the basic causes and effects of climate change – and what they could do about it.

“The effects of global warming will be more prevalent in their lifetime,” said Cathy Vitas, a living science teacher at Albany High School who coordinated Dr. Leibo’s visit.

Indeed, Dr. Leibo concluded on an optimistic note, leaving students with a list of concrete steps they could take in the future to reduce global warming. These included adjusting their thermostat, using energy efficient lighting, planting trees and driving less.

“This is not written in stone,” Dr. Leibo told the students. “It doesn’t have to happen. It has started to happen. But, what happens depends on what you do.”

 

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