College students have sincerity. It’s a
little quality noticeably absent from Internet discourse on everything
from politics to celebrities to run-of-the-mill idiot bashing. College
kids are often disregarded by candidates and mainstream news outlets
for the same reason: They aren’t expected to have any actual impact,
and their issues of concern are considered unlikely to travel beyond
the confines of their campuses. The Millennials deserve a pat on the
head, but it’s the Boomers who really matter.
Whether as a
journalist, a blog reader, a talk show radio listener or a city
dweller, you get used to this rather high level of cynicism. So it was
with some sense of detachment that I approached the Powershift 2007
conference at the University of Maryland two weeks ago (November 2 to
5). Honestly? I would have expected a lot of students to attend simply
to party somewhere new for the weekend; to make friends, escape
embarrassing hook-ups, or find new connections for pot. Not, I guessed,
to actually learn.
But
I met student after student who cared passionately about climate
change. Student after student who could talk at length about why we
need to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 80 percent below 1990
levels by 2050, without making “clean coal” part of the mix. Kids had
traveled from across the country to attend this conference, listen to
speakers, attend workshops and petition their Congresspeople, and the
most potent thing they drank were enormous cups of coffee. (If there
was any sign of hedonism, it was in the multiple coffee joints, one of
them a Starbucks, that surrounded the UM building where the conference
was held.)
Campus Role Models
At
one of the many workshops scattered around campus that Sunday, a room
was packed with students learning how to bring solar technology to
their campuses, following a model by student organizers at the
University of Colorado. It was titled “Anatomy of a Victory: How CoPIRG
Students Brought the Fifth Largest Campus Solar Project in the Country
to Denver.” Through student chapters of the Colorado Public Interest
Research Group (CoPIRG), these students had developed the largest solar
energy project on a college campus outside of California. CoPIRG campus
organizer Cory Nadler had dark curls and a short, thick beard and wore
both a Campus Climate Challenge T-shirt and a “Stop Global Warming”
wristband. He talked enthusiastically about how many kilowatt hours of
electricity were offset by the solar project (three and a half percent
of the college’s total, not a huge amount, but still a big step).
See,
the thing these college students get is that campuses can serve as
perfect renewable energy role models for other institutions, and from
there, for cities and states. And they understand that, as
tuition-paying students, they have a huge amount of leverage in
influencing their campuses to “go green.” By purchasing solar and wind
power, these campuses prove that there is indeed a real market for
alternative energy, and businesses that produce that energy are
motivated to set up shop.
Back
in 2001, the University of Pennsylvania made the largest retail
purchase of wind energy in the nation—buying 75 percent of what two
local 24-megawatt wind farms produced annually. Four years later, the
Spanish company Gamesa, one of the largest wind turbine manufacturers
in the world, changed its plans to locate its headquarters in Texas,
opting instead for the Keystone State, the new wind energy hotspot. It
brought with it a manufacturing plant and 1,000 new jobs.
“I
was a student at Penn State,” says Maura Cowley, who’s now the national
campaign director for the Sierra Student Coalition. “And when [the
college] bought five percent wind energy, we changed the market price
in Pennsylvania... We changed the price of wind power and changed the
whole dynamic and evolution of the state’s energy.”
Now consider that the Campus Climate Challenge is a movement spanning
more than 540 colleges and growing. You can begin to see the widespread
effect individual college initiatives can have on states, and the
country as a whole. If the federal government is not going to act on
curbing emissions and creating green jobs, these college students are
saying, we will. What’s more, they took their clearly articulated
demands to the U.S. Capitol that Monday—timed a year before the
Presidential elections—to let Congress know just how serious they are.
Today’s movement is nothing if not intensely focused and directed. The
students’ demands, under the 1 Sky Platform, are threefold:
1. A Clean Energy Corps: Create five million green jobs.
2. Reduce U.S. CO2 emissions at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and reduce emissions by 30 percent by 2020.
3. Transform energy priorities to renewables, with a moratorium on all new coal plants.
Creating Climate Change Champions
At
Monday’s hearing before the House Select Committee on Environmental
Independence and Global Warming chaired by Edward J. Markey
(D-Massachusetts), members of the youth climate movement testified,
with another 2,000 young supporters packing the room. “It was amazing,”
says Sean Miller, a representative from the Energy Action Coalition
(which backed Powershift) and also director of education for Earth Day
Network. “We had over 300 meetings with congressional leaders. It was
the largest youth lobby effort ever on global warming. We timed it to
be a year before the next election to let [these leaders] know they’ve
got a year to get out a climate bill.”
With
the success of the conference behind them, youth leaders on college
campuses across the nation are targeting specific congresspeople who
aren’t meeting their three demands. They call the initiative “Adopt a
Congressperson,” according to Brianna Cayo Cotter, communication
director for the Energy Action Coalition. They want legislative leaders
to know college kids are going to the polls, and the Millennials’
issues matter.
Climate
change, says Cotter, “is being redefined. Not as an environmental
issue, but as our generation’s issue. It’s health, justice, resource
wars, access to food and water. There is no issue that doesn’t have a
connection to climate change.”
According
to Cowley, the activists have really mobilized voters on the 500-plus
campuses that adopt their initiatives, racking up 85 to 90 percent
student voter turnouts. To ensure those numbers, Earth Day Network
gathers the names of students interested in registering voters on
campuses, as Student PIRG’s New Voters Project lures the youngsters to
the polls with cardboard cutouts of candidates, climate change stickers
that involve Paris Hilton crying, and text message reminders.
“We’re
looking beyond the elections,” says Ellynne Bannon, director of the New
Voters Project. “We’re trying to build a cadre of young people to do
civic engagement.”
Back to School
Earth
Day Network just made a big announcement with the help of a friend in
high places. Former President Bill Clinton announced a partnership
between his organization, the Clinton Foundation, Earth Day Network and
the U.S. Green Building Council to green all of America’s schools
within a generation. This applies not only to the building structures,
installing efficient lights, windows and the like, but creating
healthier play areas and serving sustainable, nutritious food for
students in K-12 schools.
“Every
child deserves a healthy school,” says Miller. “And the Bill Clinton
Foundation will be a pivotal player, to nationalize and formalize the
movement.”
While
the climate change movement sweeps across the nation’s campuses, EDN’s
effort to green schools, especially those in low-income communities,
can begin to make an immediate environmental impact where it matters
most.
