Straight out of the cornfields and back into more cornfields: My name is Greg Margida from Alliance, Ohio and I am a senior at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. I am majoring in Biology and French. I plan to go to medical school, even though much of my undergraduate work has dealt more with ecology.

In northeast Ohio, I was always within a mile of an oil well. They littered every landscape like grazing metal horses. Soon the oil wells were replaced with fracking, the closest site being just a half mile down the road from me. Needless to say, I was raised in an environment that was not very focused on sustainable energy. The truth is, I never even knew the dangers of fracking until after I went to college: all of the CO2 that is released into the atmosphere while transporting the 1-8 million gallons of water needed at each site, the methane gas that leaks from the fracturing site into the water supply, not to mention all of the carcinogens and other harmful chemicals that are left in the ground. People back home don’t really see fracking like this, though. They see it more like utilizing a resource and creating jobs, never fully considering all of the dangers it poses to our environment and to us.

It was refreshing when I got to Grinnell and got to work with other students who want to take action to protect the environment. Who don’t deny that climate change is real. In fact, the whole state of Iowa, not just Grinnell College, is actually seemingly steps ahead of Ohio in sustainable energy.

One baby step is ethanol. Iowans love ethanol. Mostly, they love it because corn is everywhere out here and it seems like a great idea to put it to use for fuel. Unfortunately, ethanol is really not too much better for the environment than gas due to the large amounts of fossil fuels used to make and transport it. Still, Iowans should be given credit for simply acknowledging that a replacement for fossil fuels is needed.

 A much bigger step that Iowa has taken is visible across much of the northwestern portion of the state. This summer, I drove to Lake Okoboji in Northwest Iowa to run the Okoboji Marathon. During the trip I was in awe of the massive wind farms I drove through, each seeming to have hundreds of colossal units. Anyone who has tried to walk anywhere during the Iowa winter knows too well how windy Iowa is. And what a beautiful site to see all of this turned into energy we can use, not to mention the jobs it creates.

So that has been my climate change journey thus far. And I cannot wait for it to continue throughout my COP21 experience. Let’s get to work!

Hey everyone! My name is Gilbert Vial and I'm a senior forensic chemistry major at York College in York, PA. I grew up in Columbia, Maryland. 

Hello everyone!  I’m Chris, currently a senior Chemistry major at Saint Edward’s University in Austin, Texas.

Hi Everyone! My name is Prakriti and I am originally from Kathmandu, Nepal. I am currently a senior majoring in Biology at Grinnell College in Iowa. This summer I am researching lupus genetics at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. 

I am incredibly excited to be a student representative for the American Chemical Society at the 21st annual United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP21). The COP21 will take place in Paris, France this December and I will try to keep you updated on all the events and activities through this blog as well as other social media sites. 

My interest in being an ACS student delegate at COP21 is a culmination of my experiences growing up in Nepal and my academic explorations of climate change in college. I became interested in learning about protecting the environment at a young age. My grandmother would tell me stories about the clean and holy Bagmati River that flowed through the city during her childhood. As a native of Kathmandu, the capital and most ‘developed’ city of Nepal, I frequently passed the Bagmati River. Years of dumping waste into this holy river had led to the creation of a foul-smelling and repulsive body of water. While I held my breath every time I passed this river, it pained me to see that humans could be so destructive. I wanted to learn how to prevent such destruction.

The school I went to in Nepal instilled a sense of awareness about the environment in me. We celebrated environment day every year, during which everyone had to dress in one of the earth colors, green, glue or brown and each class was responsible for a fun environment-related activity. During the year, we were taught to do small things like dispose of waste properly, recycle paper and cans, as well as reuse plastic bags. At home, we use solar power for hot water and we have a wastewater plant. As a teenager, I complained a great deal about not being able to take a hot shower on a cloudy day, or not being able to wash my clothes in a washing machine due to the shortage of water in our city. I am thankful I grew up in the developing world where I had to learn to live with limitations on water, gas and electricity because it showed me that we could survive without being wasteful. 

Attending college in the US has been a wonderful experience and made me even more appreciative of our environment. I have gotten the opportunity to explore the effect of climate change on organisms, learn about prairie restoration, been in the midst of passionate students advocating for a greener campus, and explored the relationship between religion and climate change. One of my biggest realizations since coming to the US has been that developed and industrialized countries like the US have a huge impact on the environment and thus play a very important role in mitigating the effects of climate change.

The effect of climate change that largely stems from highly developed and industrialized countries can be seen all throughout the world. In developing countries like Nepal, a majority of the population lives in rural areas and depends on agriculture for survival. Agriculture, however, is a climate sensitive occupation because a disruption in precipitation patterns, for example, can greatly hinder crop production. Furthermore, natural disasters like floods, and landslides can directly decrease productivity. Therefore, I feel it is important to learn about how we can balance human growth and development with environmental protection.

I feel lucky! The past year of my life has been an intense adventure and it continues.

I have a new home, a new life direction, and a new family member on the way.  This fall, among other endeavors, I will be able to learn about climate change from a different perspective as I attend COP 21.  My hope is that with a better understanding I will be able to achieve more change in the world around me.

As I prepare for the opportunity, I’m reflecting the change I would want to see for the future. 
I like the idea of eliminating waste and not just what to do with waste, but also the word. 
One day it would be incredible to have nothing considered as waste.
This becomes that and the cycle continues.

I grew up on a small organic farm where that cycle was a reality, for the most part. 

I planted seedlings, fed them with fertilizer, shared the air in a symbiotic way, enjoyed the literal fruits of my labor, and eventually returned unused parts as fertilizer from compost.
On the farm you are a part of the process and included in the ecosystem in a very direct way.  Whatever could be composted was composted; whatever could be fixed was fixed. 
We minimized what we threw out and that was a fact of life.

When I moved to Ottawa, Ontario to attend university, I saw a very different side of life.  It often seemed like everything was garbage and that was a fact of city life.

I remember thinking to myself: why doesn’t the city compost? It had a recycling program, so the framework was there.   I know some people may find it to be a lot of extra effort in an already busy week but I see it this way: when I buy something I make a commitment to follow through with it to the end of its use.  For example, if I buy an apple, I make the commitment to get that core into a compost bin, even if it means tucking it away in my bag and bringing it home at the end of the day. 

It’s not extra effort to what you were already doing, it’s just fulfilling a commitment. 

Over the years, I’ve seen many positive changes in city life, even compost pick-ups, which really was exciting for me!

Changes happen, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly; people are the catalysts for these changes.

Be the catalyst in your community.