CLEAN FUEL MOVEMENT: For youth; Activist Billy Parish leaves Manhattan’s glamour to mobilize N.D. youth.

About 40 percent of North Dakota students leave the state after graduation, unofficial studies estimate. Only Iowa loses more homegrown college grads.

In case of young Billy Parish, this seems to be the other way around.

Leaving behind the glamorous lifestyle of Manhattan, where he was born and raised in the same block as Steve Martin and Leonard Nimoy, Parish, 23, has decided to move to Grand Forks, at least temporarily, with a message for the youth of North Dakota.

His mission is to mobilize North Dakota youth for a national clean-fuel movement that he wants to launch here, said Parish, who Aug. 31 arrived in Grand Forks driving his 1991 GMC Blue Bird bus. It runs on bio-diesel and waste vegetable oil.

“My message is clear,” Parish said. “Do not run away after graduating. Stay. Wind (energy development) is on the march and there is not anything that can stop it. Join the wind rush! You can get rich and do the right thing for the earth. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Against North Dakota’s potential to generate 410,000 megawatts of wind energy, more than any other state, there is only 66 megawatts of installed wind energy, he said. Tapping this potential could change the face of the nation and North Dakota, he said.

On a 2½-year leave from Yale University, Parish is executive director of Energy Action, the largest student environment coalition in the country that represents 30,000 students from about 1,500 colleges.

At his young age, he already has won numerous national environmental awards and will be profiled in Rolling Stone magazine in October as one of 25 American “Climate Heroes.”

Reaching out to the students and youth through his first press conference Thursday morning at UND, Parish said: “The destiny of North Dakota, and in many ways this whole country, is in your hands. No more excuses. Take the bull by its horns.”

“If you can’t find a job,” he said, “become an entrepreneur and create your own job. If the energy company won’t build wind farms, build them yourselves. If politicians won’t pass forward thinking energy policy for the state, run for office.”

With glitter in his eyes, Parish said he hoped his efforts in the coming months would motivate students to stay here after graduation. Energy Action is here to help young people take the state’s future into their own hands, he said.

Selling students the dream of making every one a millionaire in the state, Parish said North Dakota was on the verge of a multi-trillion industry if “we do it right.” It is the land of endless opportunity, he said.

Parish said he would hold a series of meetings with the student community in coming weeks.

“We plan to build a network of young farmers, engineers, poets, musicians, teachers and entrepreneurs, and share ideas, build sustainable local communities and start new businesses,” he said.

Parish said Energy Action was organizing a statewide summit in November to bring together students around North Dakota to meet emerging leaders in the wind industry and to figure out how to drive wind development in the state.

Having lived in San Francisco, Washington D.C., Buenos Aires and New Delhi, besides his home town New York, Parish said he had never been so excited as when he moved to Grand Forks.

“The choices we make here in North Dakota have an impact on the whole world,” he said. “Faced with rapidly increasing energy prices and a global climate crisis, most recently on display with Hurricane Katrina, we need to make a rapid switch to clean energy sources.”