Talking ‘Bout My Generation

Climate Champion Billy Parish

According to Climate Champion Billy Parish, global warming is an issue that should be thought of in generational terms. “For my generation,” says the 23-year-old once-and-future Yale student, “global warming activism is a call to arms — because we are the ones who will have to deal with its growing consequences. And our efforts are at the same time a plea for accountability to the generation now in power; they have allowed the crisis to get to this point.”

Working to help develop sustainable U.S. energy policies and attitudes is, in Billy's words "an awesome, and a sobering, responsibility for the youth community.” One Billy Parish, founder of the Climate Campaign and recent recipient of the Brower Youth Award from the Earth Island Institute, has taken up with gusto.

In the summer of 2002, Billy was in India, doing research on community forestry and giving a lot of thought to his new role as the incoming head of the Yale Student Environmental Coalition. Pulling from his environmental background—which included a semester at Vermont’s Mountain School as a high school junior, Billy pinpointed the lack of a unified student network to address the issue of global warming, within campus communities and beyond. He decided to start there.

Back on campus in the fall, Billy began surveying the student-activist landscape to get a sense of what networks and resources already existed. As a way of bringing together the groups he discovered, he began to plan the Yale-hosted Northeast Student Environmental Leadership Summit, held in February 2003, convening 75 students from 32 colleges and universities throughout the Northeast.

Finding ways to collaborate on issues—particularly global warming—participants at the Summit had an opportunity to, in Billy’s words “unify around a common set of goals and strategies.” The event was considered a huge success and laid the groundwork for increased coordination between what until then had been a fractured student movement, made of discrete, nationally focused student environmental networks.

After the conference, Billy, deciding to take time off from his studies to concentrate on his environmental efforts, put together a two-week New York City summer training on coordinated global warming activism. Involving 40 student environmental leaders from campuses around the region, this training was one of the final steps in the official coalescence of the Climate Campaign.

Under Billy’s leadership this Campaign brought together 10 of the established national student activist networks (ConnPIRG, ECO-Northeast, EnviroCitizen, Free the Planet!, Greenpeace Student Activist Network, MASSPIRG, NJPIRG, Sierra Student Coalition, Student Environmental Action Coalition, SustainUs) around two key goals: 1) reducing campus emissions through both energy efficiency measures and clean energy purchases; and 2) to “build state-based networks” to educate and advocate around effective state policies on energy and climate. With newly-trained state coordinators in place, his efforts centered around targeting and streamlining their efforts, and giving them the tools and information they needed to advocate effectively for CO2 reductions and climate policies on their own campuses, and in their states.

The Campaign “played a major role” in organizing a North American Day of Action that November, 2003; more than half of the 65 participating schools were members of the Campaign. Then in February, 2004, they put together the Northeast Climate Conference, “the first unified student climate conference in the region,” held at Harvard. (CA-CP was a presenter and sponsor). It more than quadrupled the number of participants from the previous year’s Environmental Leadership Summit, bringing 400 students from 95 campuses to issue briefings, skills training, and state strategy sessions. Another national day of action was planned for April 1—“Fossil Fools Day”—this time involving 130 schools from across the country, 78 of which were members of Billy’s network. The Climate Campaign had hit its stride, and he had no shortage of work to do as a result.

Climate Campaigners spell out their goal—Clean Energy—at the
2004 Northeast Climate Conference at Harvard.

That work had Billy cut his teeth on politics and politicking, as well as the fine art of diplomacy. As he notes, coalition work has its ups and downs.

“While collaborating with so many established groups is powerful and necessary for this movement, it involves a lot of give and take. At times, individual groups have to sacrifice or concede a piece of their own particular agenda to advance the work of the larger coalition. It can be really difficult.”

By spring 2004, Billy was able to obtain grant funding for the Climate Campaign from the Kendall Foundation, giving the Campaign more resources and an opportunity for Billy, who had essentially been a volunteer director for the Campaign to be compensated.

At the same time, the state lobbying work became increasingly important. Connecticut and Massachusetts were considering legislative action to implement their agreed upon carbon-reduction targets under the voluntary New England Governors/ Eastern Canadian Premiers Climate Change action Plan, signed in 2001. The Climate Campaign was in a position to support legislative efforts in both states, calling on their activist networks to contact state legislators and governors, attend hearings, generate media attention.

This, along with efforts like a sign-on letter from 69 professors in Connecticut, created continuing encouragement for state policy-makers to adopt meaningful legislation. In June, Connecticut’s Climate Change Action Plan was signed into law; Massachusetts’ plan was released soon thereafter.

Student lobbying and education efforts have helped get green energy and energy efficiency programs on their campuses, and successfully push for responsible state energy policies.

This was a major victory for the global warming advocacy community, including Billy and the Climate Campaign, and it created continued momentum to broaden the reach and depth of the Campaign. Another student training was held in August 2004, a nine-day session with 60 students, and efforts began to recruit another 20 students to join onto the campaign in September as state coordinators. This local focus is important, Billy notes, because the state and even municipal levels are where many policies and actions affecting climate change are currently being made, and will continue to be.

Pleased with the progress and direction of the regionally-based Climate Campaign so far, Billy nevertheless began thinking this summer about broadening his work to a more national scale. “The Northeast, in many ways, is already getting it,” he says.

“We have become a leader on this issue; the problem is that the same thing isn’t happening in other regions. If we are going to really address global warming, we have to take on other more difficult areas. And people need to be hearing about this at all levels.” He is a co-founder of Energy Action, a new North American Youth Clean Energy Coalition, focused both on campus emissions reductions and more broad-based political reform to encourage action on global warming.

As Energy Action gains traction, Billy’s plate remains full. He is currently coordinating efforts to get 30,000 people to sign a "Declaration of Independence from Dirty Energy" and get 300 campuses to participate in a National Day of Action on October 19th (www.energyaction.net). Though he’s talking about returning to school—probably in fall of 2005—to finish his Bachelor’s degree, he says he is for now right where he needs to be.

“I don’t know if we will ever have a better opportunity in American history to recruit young people to do this work. We need to radically change the direction of our country’s energy policy—and because the stakes are so high for us, young people are willing to fight for change.”

To learn more about The Climate Campaign or how you can get involved, check out www.climatecampaign.org.

--Jennifer Schroeder