They were relaxed as they joked around, but the students gathered at the conference tables were there to tackle a serious issue.
Tuesday afternoon 11 NBCC Miramichi environmental technology students gathered in one of the school's classrooms to talk about climate change.
The session was part of the Environment Department's Rock the Boat tour around the province as they try to involve youth in the fight against climate change.
Sara Boyce was one of the students who took part in the session and said it's sometimes hard to make environmentally conscious decisions.
"If everybody could do that it would probably make a difference."
As the session started, facilitators from the New Brunswick Advisory Council on Youth asked the students to pair-up and discuss their understanding of climate change.
The organizers jotted every answer down on a flip chart while a third member of their team sat away from the group and recorded everything on a laptop.
Detailed notes from the session would then be used to brief Environment Minister Roland Haché on what the students discussed during the meeting.
When the facilitators asked about some of the impacts climate change will have on a local level Boyce said droughts in Asia mean large amounts of wheat crops will be lost.
"That's directly going to affect us."
A few of the other ideas thrown around the tables were increased coastal erosion, more wet weather and a decrease in salmon stocks from acid rain.
But one of the issues mentioned by every group was the sense the world is reaching a tipping point on climate change.
We will start to see a loss of things like glaciers and ice caps as the world gets warmer, Boyce said.
"Some of these things you can't get back."
Andrew Parsons said taking part in the session was interesting because he got to see what other people thought about the issue.
"We kind of get to learn other people's point of view about climate change."
Jeff Preston said hearing ideas about climate change from different people was a good thing for the government.
"They could develop something around all those ideas."
He agreed the world is headed toward a tipping point and said once we go past that point it will be hard to go back.
"It makes it that much harder to get back to where you're supposed to be."
Preston said the sessions would get people thinking, but because they are studying environmental technology the students know more about the issue than most people.
"If they pick our ideas and kind of expand on that it will make people more aware."
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