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Public or Private Power?
Question 3
Seth Berry, Co-founder: Our Power
Former State RepresentativeWednesday, October 11, 2023, 7:00pm
Get the Facts on ""the Most Important Climate Vote in the U.S. this Year!""
Maine's Question 3 has been called ""the most important climate vote in the U.S. this year."" So what are the facts, and how can you help?
On November 7th and before, Mainers will vote on what leading climate activist Bill McKibben has called ""a model for transforming a nation and a world seeking (climate) solutions."" Climate leaders across the U.S. are watching! The people-powered Pine Tree Power campaign has been endorsed by national groups like 350.org and Sierra Club as well as Maine Youth for Climate Justice, Maine Climate Action Now! and others, but it also faces a multimillion-dollar ad campaign against it. Knowledge is power. Come join FOMB and former Rep. Seth Berry, co-founder of Our Power, to get the facts about Question Three on this year's ballot!"Seth Berry (he/him/his) is a Maine-based business, education and policy leader. An avowed progressive, Seth ran seven times for state legislature – winning each time in a district that voted twice for both Trump and LePage. During his service Seth was elected House Majority Leader by his peers, and chaired several top legislative committees. Seth also co-founded Our Power, a Maine-based movement to replace the state’s two large, investor-owned electric utilities with a not-for-profit, consumer-owned utility that will focus on the state’s climate goals, cutting costs, and improving reliability.
For his policy achievements, Seth has received the Sierra Club Legislative Leadership Award, the Northeast Clean Energy Council’s Maine Clean Energy Champion Award, the President’s Award from the Maine Development Foundation for bipartisan leadership on jobs and workforce measures, the Maine Children’s Alliance “Giraffe” Award (given to those who “stick their necks out for kids”), the Prevention Award from the Maine Alliance to Prevent Substance Abuse, the Clean Air Award from the American Lung Association of Maine, and has been named Margaret Chase Smith Distinguished Maine Policy Fellow at the University of Maine.
Earlier in his career, Seth spent the 1990s teaching in inner-city New York, and most of the next decade teaching back home in rural Maine. He also taught graduate-level courses in education in both New York and Maine. In 1999 Berry won the Hexter Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Public Education Association, and his teaching was featured in New York City’s Best Middle Schools, published by Soho Press."Since 2011, to make ends meet while serving in the legislature, Berry has also directed business development at Kennebec River Biosciences. KRB is a Maine laboratory and business working to improve the health and sustainability of aquatic farms and fisheries worldwide.
Seth holds a BA from Brown and an MA from Columbia University. He and his wife Adelaida have two bicultural sons, and live as close to the land as possible, harvesting much of their own food and firewood and using both passive and active solar for heat and to charge their zippy 2017 Chevy Bolt. To visit Adelaida’s family without enlarging their carbon footprint, Seth once hitched a ride on a freighter with his ten-year-old son from Philadelphia to South America.
Sarah Stapler