Recently, members of the Climate Action Club of NTU celebrates its 10th birthday.

Keeping a student group alive for a decade is not an easy task. Climate Action Club was two of the clubs I participated the most in my undergraduate years, the other being the media literacy club Let’s News. Both were founded in late 2014, being the products of a post Sunflower movement time. Back when I joined, Let’s News operated across multiple universities with hundreds of members; however, in mere two or three years after I graduated, the entire organization collapsed into a shadow of its former self. When I just returned to Taiwan from Germany, some juniors tried to revive the club in Soochow University and NCCU, but to no avail. On the contrary, Climate Action Club has always maintained a small but consistent membership, maintaining basic functions even in its low times.

During an online webinar held earlier this week, I gave a retrospective presentation as a former club organizer. Due to the time limit I was only able to chose important points to elaborate. Below is a more comprehensive reflection based on the contents I gave that day.

Direction of the club when I was organizing

I was the main organizer of the Climate Action Club around the year 2016. This was a time when the club had become mature enough for members to try various strategies and coalitions.

In spring 2016, we held the external event “Water Water 100” and conducted climate-related investigative journalism in Keelung. Internally we held a series of Climate Change internal seminars. “Water Water 100” was the event that laid the foundation of the club, so we continued it that semester, while the internal seminars aimed to connect climate change with fields of study of different members. In addition to Elaine’s discussion of carbon sink in forests, You-An’s introduction to carbon footprint in the health care system, I held a seminar on the 1st part of the IPCC report since there were no Atmospheric science students in the club then.

After the summer break, I thought that CAC could advocate further for a sustainable campus. The first energy conservation project of our club was therefore born. Besides a review on data transparency and the effectiveness of energy conservation policies in public buildings (such as the general library), under the full participation of Andy and Da-Wei, we also began energy conservation initiatives with several departments and also the Sustainability Department in the student government later.

• So how do you analyze the energy efficiency performance of a building, and what to do next?

While all of this was going on, Meng-Hui from the NTU Roots and Shoots Club sought to integrate and coordinate the momentum and resources of environmental groups on campus. Thus emerged the Facebook group Environmental NTU. It was also the first time we CAC held welcoming event together with the Roots and Shoots Club and the NTU Conservation Club, so that students who were interested in environmental issues could learn all the relevant groups on campus at once.

After some exchanges with other groups, we agreed that it might be worthwhile to pursue a normalized platform promoting campus sustainability in the student government. At that time, out of historical coincidence, the incumbent student government just happened to resign, and a re-election campaign was going on in the university. Establishing a Sustainability Department therefore became the main initiative environmental groups asked of the various candidates (there were like a dozen of them, the most I had ever witnessed in a student government election).

• Call for the student government to establish a Sustainability Department (in Mandarin)

In the meantime, Climate Action Club still had its own events and seminars. Dominique was in the Nederland then, and he held an online webinar on studying abroad in sustainability. In addition, while NTU students were busy holding their elections, the people in the USA elected Trump for the first time. Amidst the shock and uncertainty, our last public event in the autumn semester was a seminar about the potential impacts of Trump’s presidency on climate policies of the USA and the world.

It was at the end of the autumn semester of 2016 that I stepped down from my organizational role of CAC and participated in the newly established Sustainability Department in the last semester of my undergraduate years.

Reflection: the role of Climate Action Club at campus

2016 was the first time Climate Action Club made actual impacts on sustainability issues at campus. There was no doubt that CAC played a major role in the coalition of environmental groups and the establishment of the Sustainability Department in the student government. CAC therefore became a main player in sustainable governance at campus. Afterward, in many important campus sustainability initiatives, including divestment of NTU funds from high polluting industries, CAC also contributed a lot.

The organizational structure of the student government varied a lot in recent years, and the Sustainability Department has ceased to exist. This is of course a very sad thing. However, the vision we had when we advocated for its establishment, i.e. to make sustainability a normalized topic in the student government, is not lost. Various environmental groups in NTU should still be the voting base who view sustainability dearly, ensuring that the student government continues to pursue sustainable policies.

There exist plenty of potential initiatives CAC can promote at campus, be it the deployment and usage of renewable energy, the reduction of waste disposal, and the promotion of sustainable diets. Many new sustainable issues will probably also emerge later on. What is important is to make the discussion from personal behaviors to collective actions and policies, and this is where I believe Climate Action Club is most capable of.

Reflection: the role of veganism in climate action

During the call for establishing the Sustainability Department, we aimed for greater legitimacy by seeking many environment-related groups at campus. We eventually asked the Animal Rights Club to join our mutual statement.

Seeking the Animal Rights Club as a coalition partner was my first actual experience with veganism. At that time I was not that familiar with the animal rights theory, so I asked a friend C in the Conservation Club who I supposed had some understanding on the topic. C was an animal welfarist and was critical of many aspects of the animal rights theory¹. Her main arguments could be summed up as: asking everyone to not eat meat was impractical, granting basic rights to non-human animals was also too radical, and it would be more effective to improve the living conditions and welfare of livestock under the status quo.

From an outsider, the difference between animal rights and animal welfare was probably the same as the difference between free software and open source software, which nobody outside the community cared. I myself naturally did not think deep into the logical fallacies C made in her arguments². Looking back, I am very glad that we did not give up building coalition with the Animal Rights Club due to the common misunderstanding and stigmatization of the animal rights theory in society. After knowing some vegans through this coalition, I was more open to the animal rights theory and no longer reacted with knee-jerk rejections upon encountering them.

After my experience in climate action networks in Germany and Norway, I gradually recognize the importance of veganism in climate action. Rejecting meat, egg, and dairy is not only the most direct climate action one can take personally, it is also a strong political statement. I am now convinced that the vegan movement is the natural ally in the climate action movement, and that it is also the moral principle we must take on the path towards net-zero.

Reflection: the role of climate action groups in society

I do not think many strategies and targets adopted by social movement groups in Taiwan during 2014-16 can be replicated today out of context. It was around the Sunflower movement, during a honeymoon between the left and the Taiwanese nationalists against the rule of Chinese nationalists. Left independence theories were the mainstream among all social movement organizations. That time will never return. We now live in an era where DPP governs forever, while the only effective opposition parties are a gang of opportunistic conservatives.

But the current time is not a completely alien historical period. As I mentioned earlier, the seminar on Trump was the last event I held as an organizer in CAC, which also occurred around December. Eight years later, we are now facing the same problem, perhaps with more clarity and insanity - everything has been written in project 2025. History may not have universal laws, but patterns and trends can be common.

Of course, compared with setbacks in other areas, the visibility of climate issues has become higher and more mainstream, even integrating into the intrinsic logic of capitalism. SDG has become another three-letter enterprise tag (after CSR, ESG, and DEI) that everyone now mentions; the continue decrease of the cost of solar, wind, and battery means that the continual acceleration of their deployment is inevitable.

Perhaps the more important thing now is to identify which sustainable goals are destined to realize under capitalism and affect the pathway as much as possible through the lens of just transition and grassroot participation. As for problems that cannot be solved by capitalism, we still have the obligation to challenge the system radically.