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My March 8, 2006 Climate Project presentation was part of The Adventures in Learning series sponsored by the Shepherd’s Center (http://www.shepherdscenter.org) which has the credo - Promoting and Supporting Successful Aging. The meeting location was Salemtowne Moravian retirement community (http://www.salemtowne.org).

The Adventures in Learning series was well attended this day with about 100 retirees attending 4 tracks of day long one hour lectures on various topics ranging from Middle Eastern society, Environmental Awareness to Pilates. I was invited to speak to this group by our friends, retired Wake Forest Anthropologist Dr. Tony Layng and his wife Donna. They are very active in their 70’s and my husband and I met them playing tennis at the Wake Forest indoor tennis center. Tony and Donna were also the ones that invited us to take a Peace Bus to DC to protest the Iraq war.

I set up in the impressive board room of Salemtowne’s community center. There were about 25 people in attendance gathered around the long board room table and along the walls of the room. I presented the 40 minute version of the slide show that I created using the notes posted that recanted The Oprah Winfrey Show slide show version. Afterward I had many questions. I assumed correctly that there would be retirees from RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company there. I was displaced during the KKR buyout of RJR and incorporated the tobacco lobbyist reference into my talk but not into the slides. I am very careful doing this saying, “I worked on the Joe Camel promotional system and was part of the PAC when I worked there. Mr. Jim Johnston, the former RJR CEO was part of our Old North State Winegrowers Cooperative. I understand the mind numbing duality of making your living from a product the world is against, and should be. But people change. I know I have.”

A retired RJR Asian woman research scientist asked, “What are governmental plans for the impending disasters and what other GHG do we need to consider.” I mentioned that FEMA is the best disaster relief organization in the world and we saw how badly they handled Katrina. Governments are not ready and this is why it will cost us less in human lives and GDP to do more about GW now rather than later. I brought up the Alaskan government’s predicament involved in moving small villages which cost millions of dollars better spent someplace else if they did not have this inconvenient GW. Regarding the other GHG, I mentioned methane and how covering landfills to trap methane as an alternative fuel was a double good whammy in that it reduced two GHG at least if not more by displacing some quantity of CO2 that would ultimately have been burned instead of the methane and also the net loss of the methane that would have gone into the atmosphere as a GHG had it not been captured. I also mentioned that we eat too much meat. If we could cut our meat consumption in half, we and the planet would be healthier. Rainforest are being cleared to provide grazing space for cattle which is a negative double whammy because cows give off lots of methane (they fart a lot, I said and got a good shared embarrassed laugh) and the trees are no longer there to absorb the excess CO2.

One question was, “What happened to you to get “The Religion” regarding wanting to proselytize about Global Warming?” This being the south and my being from the south, I understood this to be a compliment and not a stab. Religious lingo is commonplace in the south. I pulled out Dr. Seuss’s “The Larax”. I told them to buy this book for their grandchildren and make sure they talked to their grandchildren about nature to instill that sense of awe. This was how I started, as a 'wee child'. I think if we instill a love - a true love of nature- one can not help but want to take care and be appreciative of all that we have been given. I told them the micro and macro solution action items. I only printed 10 copies of my solutions hand out and needed many more. I did have enough surveys to give out but only got 6 back. They were all positive. I really enjoyed speaking to this group of caring retirees. It made my day!