Unity College president joins Maine Climate Table steering committee

Courtesy / Unity College Melik Peter Khoury, president of Unity College, has joined the steering committee of the Maine Climate Table, a coalition of diverse business and civic leaders seeking to increase public engagement in the challenge of addressing climate change.

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By Staff

Unity College President Melik Peter Khoury has joined the steering committee of a coalition that is working to increase civic engagement in efforts to shape public policies addressing climate change.

Maine Climate Table describes itself in a news release as a broad coalition of members from the “nonprofit, business, philanthropic and government sectors whose vision is to create a state-based model for climate communication and climate action that will increase civic engagement and lead to action by elected officials.”

The coalition stated that it supports “energy independence, food security, healthier forest management and improved public health” as well as increased private and public investment in job creation and workforce training that advance “climate mitigation” and build on Maine’s assets and natural resources.

“It’s really exciting to have the president of the first college to divest from fossil fuels on the steering committee,” Catherine Lee, founder and chairwoman of the Maine Climate Table, said in the release. “Dr. Khoury is clearly committed to Maine and to helping the state realize its educational, economic, and environmental potential.”

Since its board of trustees voted unanimously in the fall of 2012 to divest the college’s portfolio from investments in the Top 200 fossil fuel companies, Unity College has been joined by other higher-learning institutions in a national movement that has resulted in $5.2 trillion in assets being diverted from fossil fuel production, according to a 2016 report by Arabella Advisors.

Khoury, who was among the business leaders honored in Mainebiz’s 2016 Next list, said he was eager to join the other Maine organizations on the Maine Climate Table’s steering committee.

“Small private higher education has an important role to play in solving the most pressing issues of our time, like climate change,” he said in a release. “Climate change itself is a global symptom of a lack of systems thinking, the kind of informed critical thinking that we teach at ‘America’s Environmental College.’”