Columbia students on Friday, April 17, launched a 10-day initiative to commemorate Earth Day and Earth Week that involves more than 30 campus groups in a series of cultural, political and religious events. Earth Day has been held every April 22 since 1970 to raise awareness and appreciation for the earth and its resources.  The event series, named Greenspiration, aims to expand students’ thinking and action on the environment. It kicked off with a speaking panel on "renewing green politics," which assembled three environmental leaders to discuss effective environmental activism.

Greenspiration co-chair, Eliav Bitan (CC, '09), said the idea behind the kickoff was "to see how we can re-think environmental and political issues as being fundamentally tied together."

Colin Beaven, Bill Mckibben and Paige West

The speakers on Friday's panel included Bill Mckibben, a noted environmentalist and writer whose book, The End of Nature, published in 1989, is considered to be the first book about climate change written for a general audience; Colin Beaven, who in 2006 began the blog No Impact Man, which documents his family's attempt to live in New York City for a year without making any net impact on the environment; and Columbia and Barnard College anthropology professor Paige West, whose research interests include the link between environmental conservation and international development.

During the panel, Mckibben emphasized the urgency of reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and the necessity of swift, large-scale action to do so. "When we're talking about making change large enough to make a dent in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 we're talking about political action that changes structures at a basic level."

Beaven agreed that lobbying for structural change is important, but said that political change and individual lifestyle changes are not "necessarily at odds with each other." Individuals who lead by example and live in way that is respectful to the earth and its resources, he said, are "a way of appealing to people whose politics are different than ours."

West spoke of "Euro-American overconsumption" and how it affects populations hundreds of miles away, including the indigenous peoples of Papua New Guinea. She pointed out that there are multiple scales of action that can affect change: "What you can do on the ground every day in your life, what we can do at Columbia University as an institution, what we can do in the United States, and then what we can do at this global scale."  She suggested considering how our "individual choices connect to those global choices and how state choices connect to those global choices."

Bitan said the Greenspiration organizers think of their event series as "Earth Week on steroids." By working with the environmental groups that plan Earth Day and Earth Week activities to incorporate non-environmental groups into Earth Week as well, he said "Greenspiration is an expansion of the spirit and events of Earth Day and Earth Week."

Greenspiration partners include cultural groups such as the Postcrypt Coffeehouse, a café and performing venue in Lerner Hall; religious groups like the Muslim Students Association and Hillel; and political groups, including the Columbia Political Union and College Democrats. Other events have included a concert at Teachers College with the folk singer Pete Seeger, a work day at the Columbia Community Garden and a dinner event featuring locally grown and sustainable food. Upcoming Greenspiration events include a facilitated discussion on environmentalism and privilege held the evening of Wednesday, April 22; Harlem Community Action Day on Friday, April 24; and the Postcrypt Folk Festival on Sunday, April 26.  For more information on these and other events, visit the Greenspiration website.

Although Greenspiration is an annual event held in April, Bitan says the group may make a special exception to plan an event on Oct. 24, when international demonstrations organized by Bill Mckibben and the group 350.org will raise awareness of the need to decrease the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere.

"We think climate change, and the cause of getting carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million, is so important it justifies a special event," Bitan said.