We’re four weeks into the quarter, and you can get so caught up in fast-paced, day-to-day routine at Stanford that sometimes you lose sight of the bigger picture. The Stanford bubble casts away much of what is going on around it. And on a large campus, with so many unique and talented students, sometimes you don’t think that you, alone, have the power to leave a lasting influence on your surroundings. Sure, you can join a club, post flier or organize events, but will it actually change anything? And how often do things come around that are important and influential enough to truly engage you?

This November, each and every student who shows up to vote can help decide how they want their world to look by voting on Proposition 23. The campaign is one of the most exciting and powerful environmental campaigns in the last few years, and all you have to do to be involved is come out on Nov. 2 and vote. You can make a lasting difference.

California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, also known as AB 32, called for the state to cut carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. It established the first-ever mandatory reporting guidelines for global warming pollution and set a limit on carbon emissions. This limit was put into practice by establishing a price for carbon in addition to tailpipe-emissions standards, a low-carbon fuel standard, building energy-efficiency standards and a statewide renewable electricity standard of 33 percent by 2020. It spurred the rapid growth of renewable energy industry in California and created hundreds of thousands of new jobs. According to the environmental website Climate Progress, AB 32 was a vehicle that drove billions of dollars in private-sector investment in clean energy and created new businesses, jobs and technologies.

Proposition 23 would suspend the AB 32 law until the unemployment rate falls bellow 5.5 percent for four quarters, which has only happened three times in the last 40 years of California history. Proposition 23 is funded by the huge oil companies such as Tesoro and Valero, who have framed it as a “employment” initiative and blame the Global Warming Solutions Act for recent job losses. But while the oil companies are framing Proposition 23 as a project to help the economy, in actuality it only helps them and harms the environment. Pollution would skyrocket, with no limit, and the proposition would ruin many of the new businesses and jobs created after AB 32. According to Climate Progress, it would suspend the crucial price signal that makes clean energy more profitable than dirty energy, which would damage the emerging clean tech industries.

The Global Warming Solutions act is a revolutionary piece of environmental legislation. In the Copenhagen talks last December, President Obama promised that the United States would lead the world in a fight to reduce carbon emission and other harmful pollution. California set an example for the United States and, by extension, the world. But if California passes Proposition 23, all of this progress will be lost.

College is meant to prepare you for your professional life. Going to Stanford is an investment in your future. But what prospects do we have without an environment to live in? And what future do we have if we do not own our future and make our own decisions? The time to start shaping our fate and protecting our environment is right now. Vote no on Proposition 23 and invest in your future.

Maya Kornberg ‘14

Daily Fellow