Every Friday near the HUB Building, senior Brandon Faust takes time out of his schedule to strike climate change. 

His goal? Faust wants the greater Moravian community to rally together to promote a clean and truly sustainable Moravian College. 

Faust came to Moravian College four years ago as an environmental science major — he eventually switched to political science –and that is when he realized what his mission was. Learning just how severe the climate crisis really was, he knew he needed to take action and become part of the global effort  to reduce CO2 emissions to neutral by 2030. 

Faust says that President Grigsby supports his climate efforts, but Faust understands that getting student support is also critical to accomplishing real change on campus.

To that end, Faust is currently pushing an effort to get rid of single-use bottles sold on campus. 

Faust would like the College to improve the energy efficiency of campus buildings, as well, but understands the challenges — and the cost — of doing that with a physical plant as old as Moravian’s.

Still, he said, small changes can be just as powerful. 

Faust said he takes inspiration from  the sixteen-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who developed FridaysForFuture, in which students walk out of classrooms around the world to protest their governments’ lack of action on climate change.

From September 20 through September 27 is a Global WeekForFuture. Moravian College will begin  its own WeekForFuture this Friday, the 20th, 3:00 pm, when Faust will stand at the 1742 Splotch, hoping others will join him to consider what Moravian students can do to address the crisis of our time. 

Said Faust, “If we woke up tomorrow, and all of our energy came from green renewable sources, our cars were electric, and all of our food sustainably harvested, even with those solutions and preventive measures, the melting of the major west Antarctic ice caps, along with the Greenland ice sheet, would still result in sea level rise of 15 feet within the next 100-300 years. That means cities like Miami, Houston, New Orleans, parts of Washington D.C. and New York, would be underwater.”

Striking now, he said, will prevent the worst effects from happening.