The Climate Reality Project Campus Corps, commonly referred to as Campus Corps, at NC State educates students on climate activism and takes on initiatives to reduce NC State’s carbon input. As part of the 100% Committed Campaign, the organization is working to get NC State to switch to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030.

Meredith Bain, a third-year majoring in German studies and mathematics and the group’s current president, described how the organization came to be.

“We’re part of an international organization which is the Climate Reality Project and former vice president Al Gore actually started this after the initial success of ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ so he wanted to build on that,” Bain said. “The original purpose of the Climate Reality Project was to train people on how to talk about climate change when engaging with people and policy makers so that they could have some formal background on why it’s an issue … and a lot of that was to combat the dissemination of a lot of misinformation that was being supported by big oil companies.”

In 2016, an NC State student Emery Kiefer invented the Campus Corps dimension of the Climate Reality Project, according to Bain. NC State is one of the first campuses to have a Campus Corps, which is the name for the Climate Reality Project’s university chapters.

“What all the campuses do when they first get set up is you run this campaign called 100% Committed, and it’s a campaign to get the administration to commit to using 100 percent renewable electricity by the deadline year 2030,” Bain said. “That’s particularly important at NC State, because 52 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity.”

The Campus Corps ran the campaign for three semesters and submitted a proposal to try to change the way the university buys energy so that NC State purchases it from renewable resources rather than continuing to support outdated infrastructure, according to Bain.

This proposal was written by Robert Van der Drift, a first-year studying meteorology and applied mathematics and an executive at NC State’s Campus Corps.

“[Chancellor Randy Woodson] was really supportive of a lot of the ideas we proposed with ways that NC State can try to fund renewable electricity in an indirect manner,” Van der Drift said. “Overall he was willing to still work with the idea in the future and continue to support NC State becoming a more green campus in that way. It was really nice to see.”

Part of Campus Corps’ mission is to educate students on climate activism, a goal which their grassroots committee helps facilitate. Caleb Bartholomew, a second-year studying English literature and philosophy and the group’s current treasurer, talked about what the grassroots sector teaches others.

“In grassroots we focus on outreach,” Bartholomew said. “One of the things we do is training people on how to petition, so what that involves is we have a table where we go out and ask people to sign and get that student’s support. That would involve me or another person who has been in grassroots for a little bit and we would teach them how to talk about the specific issue that we were communicating. One of the big things was people were saying [was] 100 percent renewable energy instead of electricity.”

Facilitating conversation about climate change and environmental activism is a key part of the group’s on campus efforts. Campus Corps does, however, pay attention to off campus efforts concerning environmental issues as well.

“When I was out there talking to students who were walking by, I’d ask ‘Oh, do you care about the environment?’, or ‘Do you care about NC State as a school and our institution? How we compare to our sister schools, the 17 other schools that we have [in the UNC System]?’” Bartholomew said.

Social justice issues are also intertwined with energy usage, as some communities are far more negatively affected than others.

“Communities who are already vulnerable and oppressed face an extra issue — they also have to live in the worst spaces of land that we have to offer,” Bain said. “So, by transitioning to renewable energy, NC State would be supporting a cleaner environment for everyone but especially people who need it most.”

Other activism education is done alongside community groups like the Sierra Club and the Dogwood Alliance, according to Bain. While activism on campus is important, it is also important to be a citizen of the community now and after graduation.

Faced with complex issues regarding energy and climate change, it may feel like not much can be done on an individual level, but everyone has something to offer to movements. After all, it is the passionate individuals dedicated to making a change that make up broader movements. 

“While I was talking to someone, they were like, ‘I think this is cool and it’s a great idea, but it’s bigger and not [only] one person can do it,’” Bartholomew said. “I was able to say [that] after three semesters we had a team write an amazing research proposal, my committee got over 6,000 petition signatures [and] we had endorsements from various other organizations.”

While the Campus Corps supports sustainability and waste reduction, its main goal is making a long-lasting impact and change, according to Bartholomew. This focus becomes possible with dedicated students who work with lawmakers to turn environmental-related passions into realities.

In the future, the Campus Corps is working to broaden their involvement beyond renewable electricity to green building certification of NC State buildings.

 “The research committee, which is what I’m in charge of, has moved their sights onto something a little bit different,” Van der Drift said. “So, rather than the broader renewable electricity stuff, we’re looking at specifically some green building certification type issues.” 

NC State currently tries to have a lot of buildings be LEED certified, which means there is a checklist of things the building must have with the goal of making it more green and energy efficient, according to Van der Drift.

“The certification we’re looking at is called Passive House, which sort of has this main goal from the very beginning to make the building as energy efficient as possible. What’s really great about that is part of what goes into it is a more integrated design of the building, so there’s lots of advantages for using Passive House,” Van der Drift said. “We’re writing a proposal to give to the chancellor at the end of this month to look at how NC State can do that, and [we are] looking at similar buildings in the local communities and Raleigh area and some at other universities.”

At heart, NC State’s Climate Reality Project chapter is made up of student environmental activists who are dedicated to making an impact that will be felt for years to come. While actions may seem small on their own, the collective power of a group of people dedicated to a cause is, in many ways, unstoppable.

Students who want to get involved in the Climate Reality Project Campus Corps at NC State can find more information at: https://climaterealityncsu.wordpress.com/.