Occidental students Emma Galbraith (senior) and Luci Johnston (junior) took to the stage to speak on the climate crisis Sept. 20, as Angelenos of all ages and backgrounds gathered in front of the LA City Hall. This speech happened as part of a yearly climate strike organized by Youth Climate Strike LA (YCSLA), a local climate organization that fights to enact progressive climate policy and spreads climate education. According to Johnston, members of Sunrise Oxy — the biggest climate activism group at Occidental — attended the event to show their support.
Johnston said the Sept. 20 climate strike is part of a five-year-long tradition of global strikes that originated with Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future Movement.
“Every year, a group of climate organizers and activists — people from different parts of society — join together to voice our hope that city hall and other levels of government will call for a climate emergency,” Johnston said.
According to Johnston, a comprehensive list of demands explaining the term “climate emergency” can be found on the YCSLA website. This list includes demands for an end to the sale of fossil fuel vehicles and the creation of a set of bills outlining how LA will achieve carbon neutrality within the next decade.
Sunrise Oxy member Karina Kachler-Glynne (senior) said that her family’s history of migration initially inspired her to become involved with the climate movement.
“The climate affects everybody. I can’t think of anybody in my family who isn’t an immigrant of some sort,” Kachler-Glynne said. “Those cases were not directly climate-related, but as the crisis continues, so many more people will have to flee their homes [as they] become uninhabitable. As a member of Sunrise Oxy, I want to be actively doing everything I can to prevent that.”
Kachler-Glynne said that as the earth becomes hotter, climate change will become increasingly visible and damaging to economically developed cities like LA.
“We saw it just a couple of weeks ago with the extreme heat wave here,” Kachler-Glynne said. “[LA has] such a prominent homeless population, and there was talk about public cooling centers being necessary to prevent people from suffering and potentially dying of heat stroke.”
Several of YCSLA’s demands deal with measures to reduce the impact of urban heat stress in LA. These include a clause advocating for the expansion of canopy covers in areas affected by extreme heat and the reduction of heat-absorbing pavement.
Johnston said that along with provoking legislative change, part of the aim of the Sept. 20 strike was to increase awareness in LA about the connection between current weather patterns and carbon emissions.
“We want people to notice that the heat waves we’ve had recently are not random events,” Johnston said. “We want people to know that they’re connected to climate change and that they’re worsened and made more frequent by emissions.”
According to Johnston, Sunrise Oxy has made significant progress advocating for some of its key issues, such as plastic waste and emission reductions.
“We helped get the eco-clamshells in The Marketplace two years ago, and we’ve done various mutual aid projects,” Johnston said. “In January [2024], [the Board of Trustees] also signed a document called the Second Nature Climate Commitment promising to reduce the college’s carbon footprint.”
The signing of the Second Nature Climate Commitment followed a 2015 student-led campaign by Fossil Fuel Oxy calling for the Board of Trustees to divest from fossil-fuel company stocks.
According to Occidental’s Director of Communications Rachael Warecki, signing the Second Nature Climate Commitment was recommended by the Occidental College Climate Resiliency and Equity (OCCRE) Task Force, which was founded in May 2022
However, Johnston said they worry that Occidental’s implementation of their promises is not happening fast enough to have an impact.
“Unfortunately, we haven’t heard much from the admin since January,” Johnston said. “They signed [the commitment], but now we’re not sure what’s happening. We haven’t heard any clear commitments after that. It’s just moving too slowly.”
Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Amos Himmelstein said that as of September 2024, Occidental College still retains some investments in the fossil fuel industry, but that the college is committed to decreasing its reliance on fossil fuel-related investments in the future. According to Himmelstein, the Occidental College Board of Trustees Resolution Regarding Climate Change and Endowment Investment Policy is the most recent document detailing the college’s fossil fuel-related investments.
According to the resolution, Occidental will “no longer make investments in fossil fuel-related private partnerships and will not make additional direct fossil fuel-related investments, unless such investments support lower carbon emission transition strategies to renewable sources.”
According to Kachler-Glynne, Sunrise Oxy’s plans for the semester center around encouraging the student body to register to vote and advocating for local candidates who Sunrise believes can tackle the challenges of climate change.
“We’re campaigning for some of the local candidates like Ysabel Jurado for City Council and David Kim for Congress — people that will center climate policy and affordable housing as top issues,” Kachler-Glynne said.
Kachler-Glynne said that a major point of striking is to encourage students to get out of their routine and get directly involved with action, even if it means giving up valuable time.
“People ask, ‘Why does it have to be on a Friday when we have class or work?’ But that’s the point of a strike. You have to do it when you’re supposed to be doing something else so that your absence is noticed.” Kachler-Glynne said. “Sometimes making a difference takes sacrifice.”
Contact Adam Pildal at pildal@oxy.edu
