Global aspirations

Alex Coolman

Kirsten Cappel is going international.

The energetic 21-year-old from Huntington Beach has been interning at

Earth Resource Foundation, an environmental group in Costa Mesa. The

experience, she says, has given her a sense of the way local politics

work.

But Cappel’s professional and intellectual aspirations go far beyond

Costa Mesa. Later this month, she’ll be heading to Geneva, Switzerland,

where she will be part of a delegation of American students who will

participate in a human rights summit.

The Youth Empowerment Summit, as the two-week event is called, will

feature round-table meetings with United Nations officials, a trip to

sign the universal declaration of human rights and other activities.

Cappel said the diplomatic aspects of the program will fit in well

with her overall career goal, which is to focus on the complex problems

of global climate change.

“It’s huge,” she said, speaking outside the Earth Resource Foundation

office. “People have no idea how big [global environmental problems] are

going to be.”

At the foundation, Cappel’s work has focused on the group’s local

concerns. She helped to coordinate the Bike the Back Bay event in April

and has worked on developing the Green Restaurant Assn., which encourages

area restaurants to be environmentally sensitive in their business

practices.

Dani Gold, the environmental project manager for the foundation, said

the group has been energized by Cappel’s raw enthusiasm and technical

understanding.

“She’s got both,” Gold said. “She’s definitely got expertise in the

area she’s studying. People just want her around because she’s really

smart and she knows what she’s doing. It’s a good combination.”

Cappel is still raising funds for her European adventure and is

searching for additional assistance. She said she’s intrigued by the

challenges of dealing with large-scale environmental problems, which can

mean trying to forge alliances between nations at different stages in

development.

“I used to think the answer was just not to develop,” she said. “But

it’s not that easy.”

Later in the fall, after returning from Europe, she’ll head to a

three-month internship with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in

Washington, D.C.

Cappel admits her drive to tackle an issue such as the global

environment sets her apart from most of the people with whom she went to

school.

“All of my friends are just kind of moseying through life,” she said.

But it feels right to her, she said.

“This is my passion,” she said. “This is what I’ve always wanted to

do.”