Billy Parish - Brower Youth Awards 2004

Billy Parish first developed a concern for the environment in high school when he spent time on an organic farm in rural Vermont. As a student at Yale, Billy started The Climate Campaign to take aim at global warming. He mobilized students on more than 130 campuses to take action to change their state governments' and schools' energy policies to reduce global warming emissions and bring alternative energy technologies into the main stream. Billy became so immersed in his activities that he made a bold decision and dropped out of Yale. In 2005, Billy led a three-day fast at the White House in honor of the estimated 150,000 deaths caused by climate change each year. He also arranged for a biodiesel- and vegetable oil-run bus to tour summer music festivals and end up in Detroit for a two-day forum on climate change.

Billy is the founder and director of Energy Action. Energy Action has organized more than 30 student organizations and more than 500 college campuses to work together on the Campus Climate Challenge, an ambitious effort to cut university emissions by 90 percent in 50 years, or two percent per year over the next 45 years. Billy and Energy Action have emerged as the recognized leaders of the campus climate change movement.

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