The thought of changing one’s lifestyle in order to combat the climate crisis might be overwhelming for some. That’s why Sara Wanous, a Chapman University alumna from the class of 2017, does not believe individuals should become vegan, cease their air travel and try to work with local governments on environmental solutions all in a single day. Rather, these and other changes can be spread out and implemented throughout different days, weeks, months and years.

“You can build these things in slowly into your lifestyle to take one step at a time in order to build these things in sustainably,” Wanous said at the virtual “Climate Champions” event April 28. “Because at the end of the day, what we need is a lot of people doing a lot of great things imperfectly rather than just a couple of people living perfectly sustainable lifestyles if we’re going to get to a sustainable planet.”

Almost a week after President Joe Biden hosted a two-day virtual climate change summit overlapping with Earth Day, Chapman University hosted an April 28 virtual conversation on the current global climate crisis. The Office of Sustainability and Civic Engagement Initiatives worked with Climate Reality Project Orange County and Citizens’ Climate Lobby to host the “Climate Champions: Leading on Climate, Energy and Civil Rights” event, which featured panelists from various environmental groups.

A tree was planted for each attendee of the event. According to a follow-up email from Justin Koppelman, a co-organizer and the associate director for the Department of Student Engagement, 75 trees were planted. During the two-hour event, the number of attendees fluctuated between 40 and 50.

In 2018, the University of Notre Dame published their Urban Adaptation Assessment of over 270 American and Puerto Rican cities, scoring each city’s climate change risk and readiness. Out of the eight Orange County cities scored, six — including Orange — were assigned a “high risk” and “low readiness” score.

Tristan Miller, the vice chair for Climate Reality OC, has been pushing for a climate emergency resolution in Santa Ana, which pulled in poor rankings from the Urban Adaptation Assessment. The resolution would help the city determine how they can transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy like solar panels.

Miller, a co-organizer of the April 28 event, supports the Community Choice Energy (CCE) program, which is also known as Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) in other areas. CCE will be launched in 2022 and is funded by the City of Irvine through that year, enabling residents to choose whether they want to get electricity from their city through the Orange County Power Authority (OCPA) or a utility company.

Cities who have already joined the program are considered to also be the founding members of the OCPA. Getting renewable energy via the OCPA would be more sustainable in reducing the effects of climate change, as CCE programs provide more environmentally-friendly options at a higher percentage of energy and a lower cost.

“(Cities) can make better decisions about what the energy needs are for their city because they’re closer,” Miller told The Panther. “Instead, that revenue then goes right back to the city, and the cities and all the community groups can quickly decide what to do.”

Co-founder of Impactree Jarrod Russell, who spoke at the beginning of the event, encouraged attendees to engage in any of the organization’s listed opportunities for taking action against climate change, racial injustice, gender inequity and more. Impactree directs users to the original site where the content was published and rewards them with points upon completing each task — for example, “Contact Your Representatives with One Click.”

Russell noted that approximately 90 actions, like “The Benefits of Community Choice Energy” and “Volunteer with Citizens’ Climate Lobby” had been taken by the end of the event.

“CCEs, cities and individuals get to choose how many of their energy or how much of their energy comes from renewable sources, all while buying power in bulk, which saves customers money,” said Irvine mayor Farrah Khan in a pre-recorded video appearance. “CCEs will continue to offer the care and discounted rates that (Southern California Edison) offers.”

University of California, Irvine, ecology and evolutionary biology professor Kathleen Treseder — a co-founder of Orange County Clean Power — started her grassroots organization after showing her students a video in 2017 of then-president Donald Trump announcing that the U.S. would be pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement. She noted during the event that her students were “heartbroken.”

“It really hit me at that point that we were failing; we were failing the future generation,” Treseder said at the event. “I decided at that moment that I needed to get out of the classroom, get out of the lab, get into the community and start working locally to convert our cities to renewable energy because we couldn’t count on the federal government to do it at that time.”

Jason Keller, the program director for Chapman’s environmental science and policy major, asked William Morris of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action and Sybil Azur, a volunteer for Climate Reality Project Los Angeles, about the role of local efforts and actions when dealing with the international reach of climate change. Azur has mentored many people undergoing program training.  

“I always tell my mentees to start where you are,” Azur said. “If that means your school or the business that you work at or your home or in your community, whatever shape that takes … it takes all of us to make this change.”

The final group of the “Climate Champions” event saw Wanous, a research coordinator for Citizens’ Climate Lobby, and 19-year-old climate activist Sophia Kianni, the founder and executive director of the international non-profit organization Climate Cardinals, speaking on the importance of older generations to learn from the younger generations about the intersectionality between climate change and social justice issues. The two also touched on how younger generations can learn about how activism has played out based on the older generations’ experiences.

“The reason why these intergenerational conversations are a little difficult is because young people approach situations and we enter rooms where we really are made to feel like we don’t belong,” Kianni said. “When really, we are some of the most important voices there, because we truly understand the urgency of the climate crisis and the way that it’s going to negatively impact our generation the most.”

The panelists all agreed that students have many options they can use when combating climate change and that using their voices is also important.

“We have to fight for systemic change, but we also have to practice what we preach, and that means individual action and local action,” Morris said. “These local efforts and people who are plugged into their communities are probably the most important thing when it comes to addressing the climate crisis.”