Alongside the live stream, the rally was also meant to bring awareness to the United Nations conference on climate change to be held in Paris, France between Nov. 30 and Dec. 11.

Alex Mannix, a linguistics and international studies graduate and head of the Climate Reality Project at MSU, led off the event by highlighting the main consequences of climate change and imploring students to get involved before introducing the two main speakers for the rally: Alec Manaia and Jackie Zarzycki.

“I’m mostly here because I’ve had an incredible experience with Citizens Climate Lobby, an organization that I volunteer for, and wanted to share a couple things about why they’re a remarkable organization,” Alec Manaia, an interdisciplinary studies in social science junior, said.

Citizens Climate Lobby, or CCL, is a national lobbying organization with a particular focus on promoting its Carbon Fee and Dividend policy and implementing it at the federal level. 

Jackie Zarzycki, an environmental economics and policy sophomore  was present as a representative from MSU Greenpeace.

“Climate change is one of the greatest threats that is facing us today. It’s important for us to act because those in government will not do it themselves, but if we speak up they can’t ignore us,” Zarzycki said.

Though brief, Mannix believes the event was an overall success.

“I think it went really well, we worked really hard to get those two really awesome speakers and we’ve been working together, I’m sure as Jackie said, in collaboration so we were really excited to have them speak,” she said.