While the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) sells t-shirts proclaiming “Green is the New Black,” Focus the Nation claims: “at this moment in time, we owe our young people at least a day of focused discussion about global warming solutions.” This substantive approach to addressing climate change issues culminates this week in a national teach-in on college campuses about the realities of climate change and the United States’ role in mitigating the existing dangers of global warming. At SF State University, the educational symposia is already underway, events having kicked off yesterday and continuing through today as educators and activists from around the Bay Area gather to discuss these pressing issues. While the lectures and presentations cover a broad range of topics, the locality of the symposiums begs the question: what role do students play in shaping our collective environmental future?

Kevin Washington, PhD, and Paul Baer, PhD, spoke at SFSU on issues of climate change and social justice. When posed this question directly by BeyondChron, their answers were complementary. Washington spoke to the role of students in raising their own awareness of environmental issues and reflecting upon their actions within this context, of making small changes in their lives that have greater implications, and reflecting upon the means to spread those changes to the community at large.

Baer addressed the need for students to be informed and opinionated on environmental and climate change issues, and to disseminate the information they’ve gathered in the university setting. He also spoke to student empowerment within the political process, and to the need for the educated to take advantage of their cultural resources to make universities examples by demanding utilization of sustainable technologies and energies.

Their comments neatly segued into the following panel discussion, about ecological activities on campuses and within student life. This panel, comprised of green activists on SFSU’s campus and on a state level, addressed meaningful avenues of participation for students.

Housing Eco-Friendly Residents’ Organization (HERO) is an SFSU organization promoting small changes within the lives of campus residents that have big impacts on the sustainability of campus housing on a whole. HERO has solicited donations of energy efficient light bulbs, streamlined residential recycling, and built community gardens within SFSU’s housing. The student organizers are developing plans for sustainable move-outs at the end of this term, coordinating the disposal of electronic waste, planning for clothing and food donations, sourcing boxes to ensure plastic bags aren’t used for moving purposes, and planning a swap meet for campus residents.

ECO Students is an organization addressing the thousands of students who commute to SFSU, and their need to be involved in ecological activism regardless of their majors. The student coalition, representative of 33 academic disciplines, hosts events and workshops ranging from Bike to School and Earth Days to an Environmental Career Fair. Among its many achievements, the coalition has accomplished the institutionalization of several sustainable practices on SFSU’s campus. The introduction of composting within the student center, which is phasing from behind-the-counter to student-led composting, was led by ECO Students, as was required recycling of batteries by all campus offices. The organization is also SFSU’s sponsor of the Sustainability and Social Justice Fee initiative, which has already been implemented on several California campuses.

On a state level, both the California Student Sustainability Coalition (CSSC) and the Alliance to Save Energy – via its Green Campus Program – are working to build California students’ solidarity in the effort to mitigate the impacts of global warming. The Alliance to Save Energy’s Green Campus Program funds student interns on campuses up and down California, from Arcadia to San Diego. Students run a variety of creative educational programs that inform their local campuses about means to increase their energy efficiency, including green dining projects, office energy audits, and mock energy bills sent to dormitory students.

CSSC is a student developed NGO (non-governmental organization) that is focusing on transforming institutions of higher learning into models of sustainable energy use via the energy policies of the UC, CSU, and community college systems. CSSC has had success in improving the efficiency mandated on UC campuses by the Regents, and they are currently working to increase the energy efficiency of the CSU system.

Multi-faceted green campus organizing seems, not least of all, to be inculcating sustainable habits in a new generation of university students. Recycling is a norm on most campuses, and composting is becoming one. Fluorescent lighting is replacing incandescent, and students are learning the importance of carbon emission offsetting. E-waste is rapidly becoming as recognizable a term as e-mail.

Perhaps then it is not surprising that to this reporter, a member of this generation of green students, the moderator of the climate change and social justice discussion had the most innovative and inspiring response to the question about students’ role in environmental activism. “Insist on better coverage,” Glenn Fieldman, PhD, said. She encouraged students to contact their local newspapers and ask “Why is this scandal on the front page when – pick a day, pick a country – this major event is happening in the world?”