Someone once told me that the Chinese word for crisis can be translated as “danger and opportunity”.

So what is climate change? Is it a crisis, a danger, or an opportunity?

The study of history is all about how people respond to crisis and challenge. Today, the challenge is climate change.

And we can respond to the challenge a positive, hopeful way. We can meet the challenge successfully if we engage climate change as an opportunity – an opportunity to focus our educational institutions -- our engines of research and innovation -- to grow clean, 21st century jobs in our state.

Vermonters are fortunate. As individuals, we all take responsibility for conserving our natural resources. But we can do more.

And our leaders are united. Governor Jim Douglas has taken leadership with his “Vermont Way Forward – a four-part strategy of environmental leadership, job creation, technological advancement and innovative education – a strategy that will allow Vermont the opportunity to complete an economic transformation that no state has achieved, but all will envy”.

Leaders in our legislature are also promoting new ways for our state to confront the climate change challenge.

Vermont’s education leaders, like UVM President Dan Fogel and others around our state, have made science, math and engineering studies a priority, to grow a new generation of young Vermonters with the skills and knowledge to invent solutions to environmental challenges here in Vermont, and all over the world.

In fact, researchers, innovators and investors around the globe have been concentrating on new energy solutions and cleaning up and preventing pollution for quite some time.

And today, an abundance of answers are close to fruition – with new fuels like hydrogen and ethanol, new advances in familiar energy sources like wind and solar, new products for energy-efficient heating, cooling, lighting and living, and strong new ultra-light materials that will save energy in planes, cars, trucks, trains and other vehicles.

It’s also exciting to discover that Vermont’s university researchers and innovative companies are at the forefront of delivering environmental solutions for our entire planet.

Professor Walter Varhue and his researcher team at the University of Vermont (UVM)’s College of Engineering, Mathematics and Science (CEMS) is developing a way to produce clean hydrogen fuel.

Last March, I led a delegation for our state to the largest environmental trade fair in the world, called GLOBE 2006 in Vancouver, BC.

At the GLOBE conference, I drove a car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. It drove and performed like a normal car -- yet it produced no pollution, and it emitted no greenhouse gases. You could literally breathe fumes from the exhaust pipe.

The car’s one big drawback was that its fuel cell engine cost more than $700,000 to produce! A Vermonter named Bob Selzer and his team at JMAR Technologies in South Burlington is working on technologies to help reduce those costs, and usher in a new era in personal transportation fueled by hydrogen.

During my four years as Lt. Governor, I have promoted an idea we call the Green Valley Initiative. It is a unifying vision that reinforces what makes Vermont a special place. It is a vision to help focus our colleges and universities, a vision to help to motivate a young person by sharing a dream about growing jobs in Vermont by helping to clean up our world.

Our goal is to assist Vermont innovators and companies who develop cutting-edge real world answers to the world's environmental challenges. Vermont companies like GroSolar, Geotech Environmental Equipment, NRG Systems, Northern Power, Clean Earth Technologies, Earth Turbines, Concepts NREC and many, many more are world leaders in these fields. We have worked to help promote Vermont’s Green Valley brand in our nation and internationally.

Efficiency Vermont has convinced the world that saving energy is cheaper than buying it, by pioneering the concept of an efficiency utility in Vermont. And by showing Vermont’s employers how to save on energy, Efficiency Vermont has helped those companies to stay competitive in the global marketplace.

Vermont has looked for ways to encourage young Vermonters to choose Vermont as the place to build their careers and their families. I think that retaining young Vermonters in our state will take more than a financial incentive.

It will take a dream. It will take a challenge.

Like the dream of creating a hydrogen economy, or the challenge to produce cellulosic ethanol from our abundant forest products.

It will be the dream of educating and inspiring the next generation of young Vermonters.

It will be the challenge to discover new technologies that will clean up contaminated air, soil and water for a better, more livable world. These are exciting challenges all Vermonters can share.