The Dropout

There are lots of ways to fight global warming: drive less, send e-mails to Congress, buy more efficient light bulbs. Billy Parish dropped out of Yale.

Parish, a junior from New York, became convinced that climate change poses a serious threat to human survival. So he quit school and became the coordinator of Energy Action, mobilizing more than a thousand student groups to lower climate-warming pollution. Working on a laptop and sleeping on couches from San Francisco to North Dakota, Parish has galvanized students across the country to take action on global warming. In July he led a three-day fast at the White House to call attention to the estimated 150,000 deaths caused each year by climate change. He dispatched a bus that runs on biodiesel and vegetable oil to tour summer music festivals and promote fuel efficiency, culminating in a two-day forum in Detroit. And he has persuaded more than 120 universities to sign the Campus Climate Challenge, vowing to lower their emissions of greenhouse gases.

Parish first became concerned about the environment in high school, when he spent a semester tending an organic farm in rural Vermont. The twenty-three-year-old is soft-spoken in a way that commands respect: He's sincere without sounding self-righteous. "Billy had the courage to leave Yale to go get something done on the climate issue when it is most needed -- now," says James Gustave Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. "His efforts to mobilize young people are exactly what is needed."

For Parish, who once dreamed of being a doctor, dropping out of college seems like a small price to pay to halt global warming. "More and more young people are beginning to realize that climate change will significantly impact their future," he says. "We need to do everything that we can -- fight as hard as we can. Right now it doesn't feel like there's time for me to be in school."

Next: The Avenger: Al Gore

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