Student Climate Groups Should Organize around Attainable Goals (Forming a Commune)
by Matt Romano
As time runs out to save the planet from climate change, averting catastrophe seems more and more unlikely. A few hundred college kids posting infographics made in Canva and hosting biweekly meetings in MGC probably won’t be the thing that will make lawmakers fix our dying environment. If millions of voters supporting climate change and millions of dollars lobbying for it has not resulted in anything close to a Green New Deal, then empirical evidence shows that on-campus climate groups are probably unable to save our planet no matter how hard they try. But they could save themselves.
For under $400,000, over 100 acres of vacant land is available in nearby Indian Head, Maryland. While this area may not seem like an adequate place to live currently, manual labor from passionate college students who fear that much of the planet will soon be unlivable could quickly transform this area into a sustainable commune. As a result, groups like Sunrise AU will finally be able to give their members what they really want: a guarantee that they will be okay when the climate crisis starts to impact them personally.
Instead of wasting funds on meetings and the occasional “political action,” climate organizations on campus should pool their resources together, purchase this plot of land, and work together to make it a livable (and maybe even warm and cozy) environment. At any rate, it’ll be better than living in Leonard Hall. Once the land is acquired, members who visit each week to work on building shelters, engineering infrastructure, and establishing a sufficient agricultural system will be rewarded with a guaranteed spot in the colony that they can cash in on once they are forced to relocate because their homes become impacted by climate change.
Ensuring that we have the manual labor required for the project may be challenging, since wealthy liberal arts students are not exactly known for their handy work skills; however, they are known for roleplaying as identities they don’t actually align with! Therefore, to incentivize production, we will have to make converting a 100 acre plot of land in Maryland an aesthetic. Commune-core, if you will. While a bucolic lifestyle may not seem cool right now, a few viral TikToks and Instagram story memes would efficiently brainwash enough AU students to have a strong labor force. Perhaps, they can even use a grossly misinterpreted Mitski song to promote the aesthetic on TikTok.
Governing this colony will be quite difficult, because AU students love to argue about politics. Moreover, selecting a system of government that we all agree on is impossible because some students here claim political ideologies that only really exist in a manifesto riddled with typos on Reddit. Luckily, most of these people don’t really know what their alleged ideology would look like in practice or even what it means, so as long as we are vaguely anti-capitalist we should be fine. In case we have to label our government system for PR reasons, we could probably just put “anarcho-” in front of a vague Marxist principle. Obviously, we can’t tell the Kogod majors about this governing system, so we’ll make sure that none of our commune’s advertisements will be featured in the kids book section of the library.
If there is one thing we have learned from the failures of the West in the last 100 years, it’s that American democracy is not all it's chalked up to be. If it was, we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place. It is pivotal that we stray away from democracy in our commune. The most important part of running an undemocratic commune is a charismatic and attractive leader paired with people who are united by a fervor for a new, hip philosophy. We already have people united under the ideological umbrella of climate activism, but we don’t yet have a prototypical leader. Unfortunately, I don’t think I am attractive enough to fulfill this role. Just in case, I have uploaded the most flattering pictures of myself to this folder, and created this Google form for you guys to rate my looks. I also have created this one for you all to submit yourselves for my own personal judgment of your physical appearance. It’s for the sake of the commune, obviously.
I anticipate that many people may be skeptical of the feasibility of collecting enough funds to buy this land in the first place. You may say that I’m a dreamer, but as Lenin said: “a newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organizer.” Donate to our GoFundMe to fundraise for our new commune.