American Conservation Coalition members at the Ohio State Earth Day Festival in April. Courtesy of Brenden Fowler
When Carbon Capture Club, alongside several other environmental organizations, hosted the 2022 Earth Day Festival at Ohio State, they planned to bring people together and raise awareness for their cause.
What they did not anticipate was gaining attention from a national institution.
Brenden Fowler, a fourth-year in biochemistry, and other members of the club were approached by the American Conservation Coalition, a nonprofit “dedicated to mobilizing young people around environmental action through common-sense, market-based, and limited-government ideals,” according to their website.
Starting as a branch of the national group in autumn 2022, Fowler and others remain in both clubs, taking many approaches to the fight against climate change.
“The thing is: you’re not going to meet anyone that doesn’t like the Earth,” Fowler said. “It’s just about getting people to realize that they’re fighting for the same thing.”
Fowler, alongside Lauren Wagner — a fourth-year in environmental engineering, the president of the capture club and vice president of Ohio State’s coalition chapter — began their journeys with an interest in finding ways to decrease carbon emissions.
“We’re trying to be carbon neutral,” Wagner said. “Being carbon neutral can be participating in a river clean up, or [helping] plant trees or [taking] a bike versus taking a car. Stuff like that is day-to-day things people can do to help reduce their own carbon footprint.”
As a student group, Carbon Capture Club is primarily focused on research, as seen when the group received a grant during NASA’s 2023 Gateways to Blue Skies competition, Wagner said. The American Conservation Coalition relies more on community-based gatherings and events to raise awareness and to gain donations for its funding.
“[The coalition] hosts large social events so that we can make people who aren’t generally involved in the niche category of sustainability realize they can be involved,” Fowler said.
The concept of climate change can be an increasingly divided political topic, Fowler said. Individuals on both sides often find themselves clashing within their ideals, but the conservation coalition is set on bridging that gap.
Despite being a relatively new club, the coalition has hosted several community events, including partnering with Goodwill Columbus for a pop-up thrift shop, cleaning the Olentangy River and having a public composting session.
The majority of these events stem from the objective of not only teaching students how to be more environmentally conscious in their day-to-day lives but also making sustainability more accessible. Both clubs make efforts to shine light on the smaller, under-the-radar, environmental clubs on campus, Wagner said.
“We want to try and collaborate and just create a community among the environmental [organizations] at OSU because we can all make a bigger impact if we work together,” Wagner said.
With natural disasters becoming more frequent in recent years, the coalition’s on-campus involvement has become all the more important for providing students with the resources to redirect and combat climate change, Fowler said.
“It’s about recognizing [that natural disasters] are going to be an increasing trend over the years,” Fowler said, “and realizing this issue isn’t going to get any better unless we address it.”
Now, Fowler has two means and two clubs to help address it.
