'We're just getting started.' Climate Champion #5 is leading Sacramento youth movement
Moiz Mir started college at Sacramento State thinking he’d be a computer science major, but he quickly changed direction.
“I took one course and realized that I was just learning a skill, and I didn’t think that was the most useful I could be in affecting the change I wanted to see,” Mir said. “The environment, to me, was the thing I thought was the most important and needed the most attention.”
Mir, 22, went on to serve as president of the Environmental Student Organization at Sac State. He graduated in May 2019 with a BS in Environmental Studies and is working as an intern in Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s office.
Mir belongs to a growing network of young environmentalists in Sacramento that is pushing climate change to the forefront of the political conversation. Through his work in organizing environmentally-focused events at Sac State, Moiz got involved with the Mayors’ Commission on Climate Change as one of the two organizers and hosts of the University Student Summit on Climate Change.
In Mayor Steinberg’s office, he organized the High School Student Climate Change Summit in October. He is also involved in engaging youth in environmental activism and working with nonprofit organizations, including 350 Sacramento and the Sacramento chapter of the Sunrise Movement.
Mir’s first experience working on an environmental project was as a student in the International Baccalaureate Program at Mira Loma High School. As part of a biology class, he was required to help monitor the encroachment of invasive, non-native plants along Arcade Creek, whose restoration was an ongoing school project.
“ In order for anything to get better it’ll take not just someone, but a lot of us, to care a whole awful lot. I think the 7 million people that participated in the global climate strike satisfy that condition, and we’re just getting started.”
“It was an experience that gave me an appreciation for habitat restoration and botany,” he said.
While working as a student research assistant for the Restoration Ecology class at Sac State, he found the experiment that would develop into his senior thesis through the Bushy Lake Restoration Project. In the Spring of 2019 Moiz entered his work on the Bushy Lake Restoration Project into the University’s Student Research Competition, winning first place in his category at Sac State. He went on to take second place in his category at the statewide competition including all 23 CSU campuses.
