Photo Courtesy of Annalisa Peña
To younger generations, “there is no planet B” is a phrase as common as saying good morning to a neighbor, and the fear of a dying planet is as familiar as pre-exam nerves. We live in a time where students will go straight from class to protests, carrying signs with their backpacks as they beg for those in power to care about their futures. With each new generation entering a world edging toward the brink of climate catastrophe, a general consensus among young people is asking “Why hasn’t more been done already? And why are we the ones on the front lines, begging for change?”
Hofstra Leaders for Environmental Action and Fellowship (LEAF) is a relatively young club on Hofstra’s campus. The club as it currently exists was developed by its executive board during quarantine, after Hofstra seniors Annalisa Peña, a public relations major, and Page Swinerton, a public policy and public service and global studies major, met to talk about their desire for a club focused on sustainability to have a larger presence on campus.
The desire to do something, says Swinerton, the President of LEAF, came on the heels of the 2019 United Nations announcement that humanity only had 11 years to reverse the impacts of climate change before the damage was irreversible.
“I just felt my stomach drop,” she said. “I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know it was that bad. My heart dropped, and I knew that I couldn’t just not do anything.”
At the most recent United Nations climate summit, world leaders stated that they hope to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100 in order to mitigate catastrophic environmental decay. Increased warming will lead to loss of biodiversity, increasingly frequent storms and mass flooding in densely populated areas, according to reports from NPR. One report indicates that without large-scale change, the planet is currently on track for 3.6 degrees by the end of the century.
“One thing the paleoclimatology course [I teach] has taught me is that the Earth will be here; it will evolve and adapt. It’s just a question of how much human suffering are we going to let happen in the meantime,” said Emma Farmer, a professor in the Geology, Environment and Sustainability department at Hofstra.
Driven by these concerns, LEAF members meet to strategize activism, in addition to hosting conversations about how to adopt sustainable change in day-to-day life and workshops where members learn to grow and cultivate their own plants.
According to Swinerton, “LEAF exists so students have a space to do something and try to make a difference, and to congregate with students who feel the same.”
“I’ve found a club I really click with because there’s so many people I know that don’t care as much about sustainability to get angry about it with me,” said sophomore public relations major and sustainability studies minor Lily Brin. “It’s really nice to have people my age who are just as angry but also just as driven to do something. It’s healing.”
Moving forward, LEAF has three initiatives to promote sustainability on campus, led by three committees. First and foremost is the Hofstra carbon net neutrality proposal and petition, which aims to encourage Hofstra to recognize the role it plays in contributing to climate change. Similar to the Paris Agreement, the proposal aims to get Hofstra to cut its carbon footprint over time. The full proposal outlining these plans will be available to the public in spring 2022, with plans for LEAF to send a petition to the student body during the fall 2021 semester.
“There’s the day-to-day changes that are definitely important, but in terms of climate change, I think the biggest impact we could make would be with our investments,” Farmer said when asked about how students can push for change on their campuses. “A lot of schools are divesting from fossil fuels.”
The second initiative from LEAF concerns recycling and waste management on campus, with more research needing to be done, according to Swinerton. The third initiative is the revival of the on-campus student garden next to Stuyvesant Hall, which aims to collaborate with other organizations, like Hofstra’s Culinary Club, to encourage students to learn how to grow their own food. The greenhouse, according to LEAF representatives, will also help to teach students about the importance of cultivating natural biodiversity.
In tandem with these initiatives, LEAF meets regularly to discuss green strategies and attend local protests and marches. Recently, LEAF participated in the first global Youth Climate Strike since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The event, organized by Fridays for Future, took place in New York City and allowed students to march from City Hall to Battery Park to “demand intersectional climate justice” and highlight those most affected by climate change, according to event organizers.
“At the end of the day, we’re just students while we’re doing all of this work,” Brin said. “We’re trying to be the voice for the student body to put sustainability to a higher standard. If we were to successfully pull this off, it would be an amazing precedent. That’s my goal anyway – to set goals and be the reference for other schools to adopt sustainable practices.”
“Being loud and speaking up for what you believe in and for others is the only way we will make change,” Swinerton said.
When asked how she copes with the stress of the climate crisis, Swinerton acknowledges that “it’s very easy to feel hopeless.” But, she adds, “we have so much more power than we think.”
