Sea Level Rise: Practical Tools and Community Implementation
Fri, 9 December, 9:30am – 12:00pm
Island Institute, 386 Main St, Rockland, ME 04841, USA (map)

What can coastal, estuarine, and tidal river communities do to address sea level rise and storm surge? Join the discussion hosted by Grow Smart Maine to learn what you and your community can be doing now to address the imminent challenges faced by a rising ocean level and increased storm and tidal surge. No matter the stage of planning, from zero to advanced, there will be relevant content and tools presented to help move Maine forward on this pressing concern. Presentations will be appropriate for all attendees from beginners to those who are familiar with the subject and anyone in between. Facilitated discussion time will be provided to get your questions answered. Connect with the experts and with other communities wrestling with these issues. FMI and to register go here: https://growsmartmaine.org/events/smart-growth-forums/sea-level-rise-practical-tools-and-community-implementation/

Tankers Full of Tar Sands in the Gulf of Maine?
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED!!
Tue, 6 December, 6:30pm – 8:00pm
The Farmstead (next to Flatbread Pizza), 399 Commercial Street, Route 1, Rockport. Maine (map)

Can you imagine what would happen if a supertanker spilled tar sands oil in the Gulf of Maine? Our fisheries and coastal tourism could be ruined for generations! Tar sands oil is the dirtiest, most polluting oil on the planet. A tar sands spill is nearly impossible to clean up if spilled in our waters. Now, TransCanada, the energy giant that fought to build the Keystone XL pipeline, wants to build an even more massive pipeline across Canada—passing just miles from the Maine border—to deliver tar sands oil to Saint John, New Brunswick. Once there, tar sands would be loaded onto nearly 300 supertankers every year and shipped across the Gulf of Maine!

Please join Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM) in Rockport for a presentation by experts from the Natural Resources Defense Council, along with a local perspective from the Island Institute about this emerging threat to Maine’s coast.
FMI go here: http://www.nrcm.org/event/tar-sands-tankers-rockport-2/

Science, Technology and Sustainability– the 7th Annual Naval Academy Science and Engineering Conference
Nov, 13-15 November 2016
Annapolis, Maryland

Up to four undergraduate students from Bowdoin College to attend and participate

This year’s conference is titled “Science, Technology, and Sustainability” and it is organized around three technical themes:

Energy and Alternative Fuels (Professor Laura Schaefer, Rice University)
Cyber Physical Systems (Professor Rajeev Alur, University of Pennsylvania
Water and Sustainability (Professor Sandra McLellan, University of Washington, Madison)

A main objective of this conference is to bring together undergraduate students from a wide variety of institutions of higher education to foster discussions about STEM and the challenges our nation faces in solving some of the critical technical issues we encounter now and will be encountering in the near future. Keynote speakers from academia, government and industry will present their perspectives on the main topic of the conference to the attendees. . (Information on NASEC 2015 is available at http://www.usna.edu/AcResearch/NASEC. We will have this year’s website up in a few short weeks.)

It is our plan to follow the successful approach of the previous six NASEC conferences, with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) introducing the technical themes during their presentations on the first day of the conference.

Please contact Rosie Armstrong if you are interested in attending by Thursday, Sept 29.

Our goal is to have undergraduate student representatives from a cross-section of science and engineering colleges and universities in North America. We are hoping to have about 150 or so student participants, including the Naval Academy midshipmen who will serve as student organizers, leaders and hosts.

The Naval Academy will provide lodging in a local hotel, bus transportation between the hotel and the Academy, and all meals and refreshments during NASEC 2016. The student attendees (and/or their home institutions) will be responsible for the transportation arrangements and costs for the students to get to the conference hotel by noon on Sunday, 13 November and to return home on Tuesday evening, 15 November (the conference ends by 1300 on Tuesday).

If faculty members from your institution who would like to participate as mentors or as SMEs during NASEC 2016, please let us know so that we can reach out to them to discuss opportunities and arrangements.

USNA looks forward to hosting your students and to have them be participants in these important discussions. Based on past conferences and feedback, the attendees found this to be a unique experience, as the conference is a student organized event, and its success is dependent upon student discussion and their level of engagement and interactions.

Please feel free to call us, or have any of your staff members get in touch with us, if you have any questions. USNA looks forward to interacting with you and with having your students join NASEC 2016.
Reza Malek-Madani Cody Brownell
Director of Research and Scholarship Prof of Mechanical Engineering
US Naval Academy US Naval Academy
410-293-2504<tel:410-293-2504> 410-293-6525<tel:410-293-6525>

Publishing Party for The Earth Wants You by Reverend Billy Talen
When: Wednesday, May 18, 7:00pm
Where: Gulf of Maine Books, 134 Maine Street, Brunswick, ME
Reverend Billy comes to us from New York City, and from recently touring with the choir from the Church of Stop Shopping as opening act for Neil Young’s “Monsanto Years Tour’.
The Earth Wants You is “a motivational handbook, meant to inspire its readers to challenge the consumerism, racism and militarism that are killing our planet.” and a “call to arms for a wild, creative, Earth-led cultural revolution.” Reverend Billy has taken this gospel to mountaintop removal sites, Monsanto offices, Zucotti Park, Burning Man, Ferguson Missouri, Black Friday in New York City, and Grand Central Station. (Reverend Billy himself has been arrested more than 70 times in the service of the Earth)
The musician Laurie Anderson says of the Reverend’s new book “You must check out the newest from my favorite transcendent and down to Earth preacher.”
Activist Mike Roselle says “The Church of Stop Shopping is in the vanguard of a new movement that challenges this consumer society that is killing our planet.”
Clayton Thomas-Muller, of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, says of the Reverend ” Reverend Talen is a warrior whose aim it is to wake the sleeping to the realities of climate change. He is guided by a higher power and fueled by love.”

A trailer for the book can be seen here
Here’s Billy preaching Monsanto is the Devil: here
and here is Billy asking What would Jesus Buy, from a documentary about Billy, with that title here

Please join us for an Earth-rousing evening with Reverend Billy
open to the public, a free event
for more information please call Gulf of Maine Books at 729-5083