BLACKSBURG -- College students in the New River Valley will don green clothes and windmill and smokestack costumes this week to call attention to global warming as part of a national event to find solutions to the problem.

Focus the Nation, an effort taking place at more than 1,500 universities this week, will include students from across Virginia, including Virginia Tech and Radford University.

"I think one of the key points about Focus the Nation is it's global warming solutions, not just global warming awareness," said Jackie Pontious, a Tech junior, "because most people by now hopefully know about global warming but ... most people don't really realize how in reach our solutions can be."

The event's national leader, Eban Goodstein, told Tech students about Focus the Nation when he visited campus last year. An economics professor at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore., he has focused his research on the relationship between economics and the environment.

The effort has gained momentum in the past year, with politicians and celebrities joining the cause. Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama mentioned the importance of Focus the Nation at a speech last week at Clemson University, and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has endorsed it.

Pontious and Bryce Carter, co-coordinators of the event at Tech, said they've noticed increased interest on campus in issues such as sustainability and global warming. Tech's Environmental Coalition, the student group sponsoring Focus the Nation at Tech, has seen increased attendance at its meetings this year, they said. Last year students organized events including the Campus Climate Challenge and Tech held a dean's forum on the environment.

The university has responded to the talk with action in the past year, increasing recycling on campus and embarking on projects to become more energy efficient. But Carter, a sophomore, said more can be done.

"We still have a coal power plant on campus, we still have more efficiencies that can be worked on," Carter said. "I think there's still a variety of issues we can address."

Radford University and its Green Team are doing the usual stuff to promote awareness about climate change: showing films; swapping old light bulbs for new; staging fights between smokestacks and windmills.

That's right; sometime between 5 and 5:30 p.m. today somewhere between Muse and Heth, windmills and smokestacks will square off over the future of electricity generation in the United States.

The light bulb swap, sponsored by RU Facilities Management and the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, goes on at the Bonnie Hurlburt Student Center from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. through Friday. They are swapping old-style incandescent bulbs for energy-efficient compact florescent bulbs and recycling the old bulbs. There's a display of green building materials on McGuffey's second floor through Feb. 6.

The events at Tech will kick off Wednesday night with a live webcast in Tech's Torgersen Hall of "The 2% Solution," an interactive discussion involving climate scientists and students from all over the country. Thursday will feature lectures throughout the morning followed by events on the Drillfield and a forum in Haymarket Theater in the Squires Student Center.

Carter said the idea that turning back global warming is impossible is refuted by scientists' conclusions that annual decreases of 2 percent in carbon emissions between now and 2050 -- the 2 percent solution -- can do just that.

John Chermak, a geosciences instructor at Tech and one of the lecturers, said he has been teaching students about global warming for the past five years. His focus has shifted from convincing students that it's happening to showing them that something can be done about it, he said.

Students will close out Thursday's Drillfield activities with "The Green Effect." The event will feature students dressed in green to call attention to their cause and will include short speeches on global warming. Pontious and Carter said they would also like the gathering to be punctuated by Tech President Charles Steger's announcing that he will sign the Presidents Climate Commitment.

In December the environmental coalition asked Steger to sign the pledge to reduce emission of greenhouse gases on campus and take other measures to encourage sustainability. It has already been signed by nearly 500 university presidents.

Carter said Steger did not commit to signing the document but seemed receptive to the environmental coalition's ideas.

Staff writer Tim Thornton contributed to this report.