Close to 40 Kentucky students gathered over the weekend with one specific goal in mind: envisioning a sustainable Kentucky.
The Kentucky Student Environmental Coalition event introduced the participants, all under 30, to leaders in local and statewide environmental organizations and an actual mountaintop removal site. But coalition organizer Cara Cooper says the most important element was conversation – with the students trading ideas on what can be done in their own communities.
"I think our generation really realizes that this issue is going to fall on our shoulders," she says. "And it's going to be up to us to come up with the solutions that are going to work for our future."
Some of the ideas discussed at the event centered on alternate economic systems, worker-owned cooperatives, and efforts to convince campuses to invest in green jobs.
The coalition is made up of hundreds of students and young Kentuckians from more than 15 communities.
