Arctic explorer and staunch environmentalist Will Steger says slowing the effects of global warming rests upon youthful shoulders.

“The younger generation really has to take ownership of this,” he told a Minnesota State University dinner audience Monday to kick off a weeklong bioenergy conference at the school.

International Bioenergy Days is designed to jumpstart bioenergy commercialization and technology transfer initiatives between the United States and Sweden.

MSU is the traveling bioenergy congress’ first meeting site in the United States, and on Monday Steger sounded hopeful about the renewable energy industry’s role in fomenting change.

He said when businesses talk, legislators listen. And he’s optimistic that that dynamic will drive government policy regarding carbon-emission reductions that will mitigate rises in sea levels.

“We’re making progress, but we have to keep plugging because we’re still in our infancy here,” said Steger, who has witnessed first-hand the effects of climate warming on polar ice caps.

“Every ice shelf I’ve been on in my life has collapsed,” he said, adding that on an expedition in Greenland earlier this year he saw something perhaps unprecedented — water flowing freely on an ice cap.

“You almost have to see this first-hand to get a global sense of what’s happening.”

Steger said educating the young combined with a societal embrace of wind power, solar energy and other sustainable energy sources can ease the effects of global warming, if not halt them.

“The question will be trying to manage sea level rises so that we can adapt around it.”

But it may be too late for at least one low-lying locale, he said.

“You may as well write off New Orleans. That town doesn’t have much of a future.”

The bioenergy event at MSU, which runs through Friday, features the exhibits of 60 organizations and companies from Sweden, Norway, Ireland and the United States, plus presentations by international experts in bioenergy programs.

“We are honored to host IBED, especially as it connects our exciting applied research work with the International Renewable Energy Technology Institute,” said John Frey, dean emeritus of MSU’s College of Science, Engineering and Technology.

International Bioenergy Days was established through a larger Sweden-U.S. technology transfer system that includes the International Renewable Energy Technology Institute, created in Minnesota in April.