Weymouth student joins world leaders at climate conference

NAME: Isaac Mann

AGE: 22

HOMETOWN: Weymouth

IN THE NEWS: Mann will travel to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to serve as an observer at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference this month.

NOW YOU KNOW: Mann hopes to earn a graduate degree in ecology after graduating from Houghton University in New York.

HIS HISTORY: After taking an environmental public policy course at Houghton University, Mann said his professor, Brian Webb, shared what felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to attend the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Webb is a co-founder of the Christian Climate Observers program, which provides students with an immersive conference experience by allowing them to shadow professionals and see the work of a climate summit first-hand.

Signage promoting this year's United Nations global climate change summit, known as COP27, on the Road to Peace, in Sharm el-Sheikh, South Sinai, Egypt, on Wednesday 2 November 2022.

Mann said he applied and was one of two students in the class chosen to travel to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the conference. This year will be the first meeting of nations since the Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, came into full force, and a critical year for the world to take action to tackle climate change, he said.

“Being able to experiment and learn from this process is just amazing,” Mann said. “It’s one of the few times that people will try to cooperate with each other, and to be there and observe and learn from it is a really exciting prospect. I hope to bring back information on climate change management and put it to good use.”

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More than 35,000 delegates are expected at the event, including US President Joe Biden and more than 100 other heads of state from around the world.

While he said the group’s “reach of influence will be quite limited” at the conference, Mann said he would attend some of the critical conservations and meetings on climate change. He said students who participated in the Christian Climate Observers program last year were able to sit down with former Vice President Al Gore, so he hopes they get some sort of one-on-one time with the leaders.

Mann said there wasn’t one particular aspect of climate change research that interested him the most. The band will be there for the first week of the conference, which runs from Sunday through November 18. Mann was due to arrive in Egypt on Friday.

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“I think one of the things that makes climate change so befitting of our time is its scale. It affects every aspect of life, every human being and every organism,” he said. “It’s such a reach.”

Mann, a 2019 graduate of South Shore Christian Academy in Weymouth, is pursuing studies in biology and is applying for graduate school. In high school, he said he volunteered with the city’s parks department to help with trail work and hopes to pursue a career in conservation or restoration.

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Contact Jessica Trufant at [email protected].

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