I am a firm believer that someone doesn’t have to be in a big place to do big things. For instance, you don’t have to grow up in Hollywood to be a movie star, or have a job at NASA to study rocket science, although I personally don’t know why you would want to in the first place. The point is people are not confined by their geographical location. This is why it shouldn’t come as a surprise that young people in a small state are making a big mark by becoming leaders in alternative energy sources.
Students of Houston High School in Houston, Miss., a town with a population a little over 4,000, won the Dell-Winston Solar Car Challenge for the eighth consecutive time last week. Teams from all over the United States competed in this event, racing self-built solar powered vehicles. The 12 students from Houston raced two cars for the win, called the Sundancer and the Sundancer II, built of old solar cells and batteries. Winning this competition eight years in a row is no small feat, and shows an advanced knowledge of this technology from these students and the Houston community.
But this isn’t the only team in the state interested in solar energy. Mississippi groups have been competing in, and winning, these kinds of competitions for quite some time now. Last year, Mississippi groups won solar cell competitions in Australia and New York.
Another source of alternative energy youth in Mississippi are getting interested in is biodiesel. In fact, the Biodiesel Fuels of Mississippi, Inc., based in Meridian, is now fueling the school buses in Lauderdale County and trying to get the students more interested in math and science. By doing so, they hope that students will want to study alternative energy sources when they get older.
College students are also joining in what seems to be a statewide alternative energy movement. Students at The University of Mississippi have formed groups promoting saving the environment and raising environmental awareness in the community. For example, the student group Roots and Shoots was established to bring together students who shared an interest in making the campus more eco-friendly. Furthermore, the student demand for environmental awareness is so strong that the university is now offering classes in environmental studies, and is working on a curriculum for a minor in environmental studies. The university has also started “going green” by placing more recycling bins around campus and using biodiesel, which is made on the Ole Miss campus, in its lawnmowers.
So why is there such a huge interest in alternative energy sources in the state among young people? Well, the state does have the resources for the research. For example, the crops of the Delta region, the state’s terrain, and the power capable of being generated from the strong currents of the Mississippi River make the state ideal for producing alternative energy. Plus, like the rest of the nation, the state is feeling the impact of the high price of gasoline. The governor is even considering enforcing a four day work week for all government employees in the state, which include teachers at every level. This means our high schools and universities will have to change their schedules and hold longer classes, although the trade off is a three day weekend every weekend.
It’s because of all of this alternative energy talk lately that I’ve decided that for the next couple of weeks we will take a look at Mississippi and see how the state’s young people are being affected by rising fuel costs and how they are contributing to finding alternative energy. We will see the environmental issues affecting the state, and what young people are doing – or not doing – about them.