A SWELL EFFORT
Members of the Sierra Student Coalition, the student-run arm of the Sierra Club, took a trip to San Rafael Swell, Utah, to aid in wilderness preservation efforts
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Taking It to the Streets
It's not just governments that are getting caught in the crosshairs of environmental activism. Increasingly savvy young people realize that targeting corporations is a useful tactic. Hence, Green Mouse, the youth wing of France's Green Party, demonstrates against globalization by staging protest picnics at McDonald's outlets. When the Sierra Student Coalition launched a campaign to protect old-growth forests, they targeted the office supply giant Staples in an effort to persuade the chain to spare ancient trees and sell recycled paper.
Often, the chance to protest — rather than a long-term commitment to a cause — is what initially attracts young people. But today, more and more students are learning that there's more to changing the world than marching in the streets. Lindsay Poaps, 23, a co-founder of the Vancouver student group Check Your Head, regularly offers reality checks to kids anxious to man the barricades. "They want the glamour of these events," she says. "That's the image of being an activist, but we try to tell them there's a lot of work done before the protests and after the protests in educating others."
When it comes to getting results, students are realizing that what you know is more important than how loud you shout. The Sierra Club and several other conservation groups stage summer camps and seminars to help nurture the environmental leaders of tomorrow. Through its education fund, the League of Conservation Voters teaches students how to get involved in election campaigns, and the program has more applicants than it can accept.
Says Dan Jones, a senior at Hunter College in New York City and a member of SustainUS: "If you have an agenda, educate yourself and get a degree in the field that interests you. If you want to change policy, become a lawyer; if you're interested in how bottles are produced, get a degree in engineering." Students are getting that message in a way that League of Conservation Voters president Deb Callahan, who has been active in the movement for 20 years, finds "awe-inspiring." "In my day," she says, "we leapt first and learned second. Now, they learn first and leap second."
-- With reporting by Delphine Schrank/Paris; Regine Wosnitza/Berlin; Petti Fong/Toronto and Andrea Dorfman/New York