A group performed a yoga sunrise salutation to kick off the program at Fullerton College. UCLA marked the day with panel discussions and art displays.
Caltech students used food to make their point, while Loyola Marymount University students dumped plastic bottles onto the lawn outside the library.
And at Santa Monica College, along with speeches from politicians, students invoked Dr. Seuss to teach kindergartners about protecting the environment.
The five colleges were among more than 1,500 schools and 300 other organizations that held events Thursday for Focus the Nation, a grass-roots effort to promote environmental protection.
The initiative was scheduled with an eye toward Super Tuesday next week, when 24 states are to hold presidential caucuses or primaries, in order to get voters and candidates thinking about global warming, organizers said.
Focus the Nation was founded in September 2006 by Eban Goodstein, a professor of economics at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore., who said he was alarmed that his 16- and 19-year-old daughters were growing up amid an environment that seemed to be deteriorating.
"The sense of urgency kept getting ramped up," Goodstein said in a phone interview between events Thursday in New York. "Americans get that global warming is real, but very few people recognize the critical nature of the decisions that'll be made in the next few years."
Goodstein said Focus the Nation is less about individual "green" habits than it is about a national push to pass laws stemming fossil fuel use and about encouraging investment in energy-saving technology. But at some events Thursday, some organizers said they were having trouble just persuading students to pay attention.
Attendance was sparse at tables set up outside UCLA's student union that featured organic cotton T-shirts, laptops set up to calculate carbon footprints and free granola samples.
But inside the building at a session about the economy of global warming, about 50 people listened to a panel of professors and analysts discuss tradable carbon permits and the federal Energy Star power efficiency program.
At Loyola Marymount, a mound of plastic bottles from nearly 40 large recycling bins filled a pen the size of a small car, a representation of plastic waste created by students there each week.
Most students glanced at the display and kept walking, though several stopped to toss in bottles and ask questions.
