Last week I gave a talk with one of my former students, Lydia Sulik, to the Hastings MN High School Environmental Club. I spoke about climate change and showed photos from the Paris climate talk when I chaperoned a group of students to Paris to observe the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.  I also showed them the local links to climate change, as our winters get warmer, the forests move north, and we get more diseases that used to be confined to warmer climates. 

After showing the international and local impacts of climate change, I spent most of my talk discussing what students can do about climate change. Climate change seems overwhelming to all of us.  However, students need to research, write essays, do projects, and learn about science and math.  So, imagine all these creative minds that research, write, learn, and do science and math on useful topics that will get us closer to turning around climate change and adapting to the changes that are coming?

So, students out there, here is some advice: 

• Check out the listing site, ProjectsThatMatter.org that connects practitioners, students, faculty, and volunteers with projects to transform our world into a better place for everyone.
• As the maintenance people to show you how your school is heated and cooled. My college students loved seeing the steam plant and the behind the scenes tour of the science building. 
• Audit your school. The Healthy Sustainable Schools Guide for Change can get you started.
• Connect other students with civic engagement opportunities around climate and environmental issues by becoming a Sustainability Policy Partner.  

What else can students do? Who else is in your sphere of influence? Students live in a household and can impact how their household uses electricity and transportation. What can households do?

• See if the local utility has energy audits.  Xcel Energy in Minnesota offers inexpensive energy audits. Get one with a blower door test. If the household is in the Twin Cities, get an energy audit and have The Energy Squad come to your house, switch out your lightbulbs, do some weatherstripping, and put a water heater blanket on your water heater. If your house is older, these energy audits can show you ways to save a lot of money. Students who live in apartments can often get the Energy Squad to come to your apartment for free because of the income limits in the program. 
• Use public transportation if you can. In the Twin Cities. find your way around by using the Metro Transit trip planner.  Take the train. When I go to Chicago, I always take Amtrak.
• If you have to fly, offset your flights with GreenE certified offsets. Give a little money to plant trees or finance a landfill gas capture project.
• Are you in an apartment building that doesn’t have recycling infrastructure? In the Twin Cities, there is funding through the counties for recycling and composting infrastructure.  Check out BizRecycling.

Students are also part of a community.  What is your city doing? 

• Has your mayor signed the Mayors for Climate Protection?
• Is your city a member of Local Governments for Sustainability?
• If you are in Minnesota, is your city a Green Step City?
• Students can ask your local representatives to meet your green team.  You can also go to one of the city council meetings. Ask your representatives what is already happening in your community.

Are you part of a Faith organization?  All of the major religious organizations have a sustainability statement. Many are represented at the UN climate change negotiations.

• Greenfaith is an international, interfaith environmental NGO that organizes through faith organizations.

If you are working, find out if your workplace has a green team. If they don’t, you could start one.

• You can learn about best practices at the Green Team Project. 
• The Northwest Earth Institute has an excellent discussion book for workplaces, Sustainability Works: Rethinking Business as Usual.

No one student can change the climate alone.  But, if all of us use our own spheres of influence, we can change our communities and if enough communities change, we can change the world!