(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) - Welcome to Connect the Bay Youth Climate Activism.

I'm NorCal Public Media Producer, Hannah Lee, and we're here at CreaTV's studio with a live audience.

(audience applauding) Thinking about the many challenges that come with our changing climate can be overwhelming, especially for young people whose futures will be most impacted by its consequences.

How are they coping, and what are they doing about it?

We at NorCal Public Media have been exploring this urgent question for quite some time.

- No more coal, no more oil.

Keep your carbon in the soil!

- [Hannah] Our Center for Environmental Reporting has been covering youth involved in climate work for several years now.

- Do you guys have a minute to talk about climate change?

- I know of climate change.

- Well, I guess I'm not entirely sure.

- Do you know what climate change is?

- Young people we've met have been taking different approaches to address the many aspects of this critical challenge.

Three of them are with us today, each bringing their own experiences and interests to the task.

(gentle music) - Today, I find myself deeply invested in this work, whether it is through research around hyperscale data centers that are in vulnerable communities, or part of lawsuit cases, or organizing around climate.

I am hopeful with the students that are advocating with me and just the organizers that I get to talk to on a day-to-day basis who are working toward change.

- I see there is a lot of passion and a lot of care, and a lot of interest in climate action.

So once young people bring that passion and that care that they already have, and are paired with mentorship, education, it really unlocks a lot of potential to be part of climate solutions.

- When I think about climate change, and when I think about how anxiety-inducing and overwhelming it is, it's important for me to center hope and solutions in the way I think about it, and also the way I talk about it with my community.

What are the solutions?

And how can I be a part of implementing that solution?

- Please welcome our incredible panel of youth climate activists.

(audience applauding) Welcome, welcome.

Thank you all so much for being here.

To start, would you mind please introducing yourselves, and telling us a little bit about your work in the climate space?

- Yeah, of course.

My name is Ariela Lara.

I am a current student at UC Berkeley.

One of the things I have done so far has been working on undergraduate research at the Human Rights Center, where we're working on understanding hyperscale data centers and the effects that they have on vulnerable communities, especially with water and as well as the air and the pollution that comes from them.

- Thank you.

- That's it, yeah.

- Good evening.

My name is Mani Bekele, and I'm a junior in high school from here in downtown San Jose.

And I am a part of a student-led organization called Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action, where I'm Policy Officer and Co-Lead for our San Jose Action Team.

And I'm also part of our city government's Climate Advisory Commission.

So in all of these roles, I work to try and bring together many other young people to take effective action on climate change starting from the local level with our city councils, our county governments and local policy.

- Hi everyone.

I'm Padma.

I'm a high school senior from Fremont.

Really excited to be here with my lovely co-panelists today.

I lead the regional organization, Bay Area Youth Climate Summit.

We're dedicated to building a community here for youth in the Bay Area, and we're entirely youth-run.

And I also work with Mani's organization, Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action, on really local policy and climate literacy efforts in Fremont.

And in addition to that, I'm a student journalist, really interested in exploring how young people are facing environmental disparities and building change in their communities.

- Such important work.

Thank you all again for being here today.

So I'd love to know what first got you interested in this work, and what drives you to continue it today?

- I think it really does start off with just my time growing up in the pueblo of San Martin Huamelulpam Oaxaca, which is where my mom is also from and I visit family there and they face intense storms during the summer, which really kind of washes out their entire agriculture and the way they really survive.

And it's something that I think really stays with me because I really do see how the community has to really rebuild from the bottom up without the government funding them.

And just going back home I come back to wildfires, and smoke pollution that affects me immensely as someone who has asthma.

But also, I can see how it affects my loved ones.

I have family members that developed cancer because of fossil fuel sites that are right by their homes.

And what the common thread of this is, is how fossil fuels, industries, companies like ExxonMobil, Lockheed Martin, Chevron, have extracted from vulnerable communities, especially Black, Brown, Indigenous communities.

And these ties are something that a lot of the public isn't aware of to know that a lot of the ways we've seen the climate crisis harm us is due to money that comes from an industry that is polluting our water, our air.

And I think that this is a problem that has stayed with me since I was 14, trying to figure out ways in which I can really ensure that we are understanding this environmental injustice, and how I can, whether it's knocking on a door, talking to a neighbor, advocating for policy, being part of a lawsuit case, I feel like I've been able to ensure that I'm speaking to my experiences and advocating for my community.

- Yeah, I think I, like many people of our generation, grew up never not knowing about climate change, never not knowing it of something to be anxious about.

But this sense of anxiety, I think, like for many people around the Bay Area and the world, was really turned into action starting in 2019 and 2020.

In 2019, the Fridays for Future Movement and all of the allied youth-led mobilizing around the world really brought to attention the climate injustices that Ariela is talking about, and the complicity of our governments in those injustices, and the inaction that has been taken on the climate crisis.

So that mobilized many people around the world to start taking action, and I was part of that.

Just 10 years old, I was, joined my first of any sort of civic action or climate work in the climate strike at San Jose City Hall in September 2019.

And that was the birth of my work as a climate advocate and the whole organization that I'm part of now, Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action.

- Yeah, like Mani, I really never knew a time when climate change was not an issue.

Growing up, it was always this threat looming over my head, looming over my future specifically.

And now I could sit and talk all about how fossil fuels perpetrated climate change, how industries caused this crisis that we now have to deal with.

But back then, when I knew I cared about climate change as a kid, that's not what the conversation was about.

It was about recycling, zero waste.

I decided really impulsively to join this group I found on the Internet called the Bay Area Youth Climate Summit.

And so I strolled up to my first event in-person, all the way in San Francisco, in a complete group of strangers, expecting myself to find out this wasn't for me, but the exact opposite happened.

That day I had conversations with other young people in a room where for the first time, everyone there cared about climate change just as much as I did.

And I left for the first time not feeling despair or anxiety, but hope and community.

- This question comes from the audience, and I'd like to chat about this for a little bit.

So after climate's popularity among youth from 2018 to 2021, how do you think we can galvanize young people again?

- The direction I think the movement is heading in is to recognize that climate change is not one separate issue.

It is embedded within, and intersects with literally everything.

You can think about this from a science lens, because what climate change is doing is it's not bringing in something new.

It's making what we already have much, much worse.

Our weather systems worse, our natural disasters worse.

The same thing applies to our human systems.

The people who are already facing the impacts of every crisis we have will face even more impacts from climate change and climate change will exacerbate every single crisis that we already have.

- Yes, there are so many pressing, pressing issues that are distracting attention away from climate change right now, but these are not entirely new.

They're not new at all.

They are the culmination of many of the things that we are seeing building up at that time period in that first wave of climate action between 2017 and 2021 approximately.

And so climate change is not just connected to all of the problems that we experience in our society today.

It's also intricately connected to all of the solutions to those problems.

So as we try to rebuild something better out of this chaotic situation, so much more can be done for climate change.

As we take power back to the people from some of the wealthiest and most powerful elites and billionaires and corporations, we can make polluters pay for the consequences they have caused to our communities, and rebuild communities destroyed by their impacts.

And in so many other ways, these solutions to climate change and other societal ills are an incredibly important way to move forward.

- Absolutely.

I would also say it's very intense to be a young person right now with everything that we're having to endure with what we're seeing in the news.

I will say I feel like, for myself, I've faced such a burnout, like coming into college, and trying to see myself within these spaces and movements and being out in protest.

I can see how it can become very disheartening.

And I will say that a lot of the times to kind of bring back the hope and galvanization of young people has been because of just the solidarity we feel and the sense of hopelessness, and knowing that we have each other in this just crazy time because as communities are being attempted to be torn apart, we know that we are not alone, and we know that our power is stronger than these companies and politicians that are not in our best interest.

But knowing that we are not alone, and that we are all angry, we're all mad, gives me hope in knowing that we will also just, we'll be energized.

- Absolutely.

I'm curious to know what strengths you think that young people have that maybe they themselves might not be aware of.

- I think for me, the first thing that comes to mind is that young people can connect with other young people.

They can talk to any teenager and they'll tell you how much they hate when adults come in and tell them what to do, how to feel, and how to think.

Because we as young people have the autonomy to do that for ourselves.

And we also have the autonomy to galvanize other young people and build a movement ourselves.

Build a community that is by youth for youth, because ultimately, that is the most effective way to reach other young people.

And so to be able to cut through that despair to instead lead with hope and community is a powerful thing that only young people can provide for each other.

- Yes, young people have a very clear sense of urgency, and a direct impact about how we will be affected by the crisis of climate change into the future, and those even younger than us.

We are the ones who are going to live during the time that's talked about in the climate studies when we'll determine whether or not we will experience catastrophic effects.

And so because of all of that, when we have input, and influence on policymaking decision-making about climate change, we bring that urgency, and we make sure that policies are taken that are transformative in nature.

They are big policies that are hard.

They are not politically convenient.

They are not what policymakers would first want to put forward.

But without young people driving that forward, we would not have the transformative change that is necessary.

- Yeah, I'll also say, I've seen the effects of just young people being able to speak to not only just their experiences, but also the knowledge that we carry in regards to all these issues, and the amount that we've put into research of climate policy that will ensure that we are implementing renewable energy in our campuses or making our campuses just, yeah, fully clean energy.

Like all of that has been through our need to understand all of the things that will drive us into a green economy.

And that does not happen in a classroom where we're learning about it.

It happens because of our will and need to research and go above and beyond.

- Our panelists' work is both impressive and inspiring.

Now let's take a look at what other dedicated eco-activists at San Jose State have been doing to engage their fellow students around our current environmental crisis.

- [Speaker] The Environmental Resource Center is a part of San Jose State University under the Environmental Studies Department.

- [Speaker 1] After you get your two hours- - What the ERC hopes to accomplish is to promote sustainability and environmental awareness to other students on campus.

It is really important that we focus on that right now just because of everything going on in the world.

- Another thing, today we're going to be doing a lot of miscellaneous tasks to prepare for Earth Day.

- In the classes before Earth Day, we plan on organizing the event through basically facilitating those organizational bags or planning what needs to go where the day of the event.

(gentle music) - The Earth Day event is a really large resource fair at its core.

The ERC starts preparing three hours beforehand.

We make sure our sound system, our stage is all set up.

But once all of the hard part is done, the event runs pretty smoothly.

We have our tabler check-in, so basically all of our partner organizations, they start coming in.

We invite over 35 different local organizations from around the community to share their sustainability efforts.

(bright music) We have cultural performances from groups on campus, guest speakers, and then we also have our sustainable fashion show that we run every year.

- What does sustainable fashion mean to you?

- [Speaker 2] Sustainable fashion to me means not throwing clothes away.

- Students who don't know about sustainability, the message is how this issue can apply to them eventually and what they can do to get involved, if they're not directly involved already.

- At its core, the Environmental Resource Center wants people to care about the environment.

(bright music) (audience applauding) - The ERC students have clearly put a lot of dedication and passion into the Earth Day Fair, as well as other events throughout the year.

This kind of outreach is one way to create change, but it's not the only method.

So is there one right way to do climate activism?

I'd be curious to hear what the three of you think.

- Yeah, I feel like there are, again, so many different ways in how we navigate the climate crisis.

For me, I've been able to be part of my student Environmental Resource Center, as well as a Community Resilience Associate educating students around colonialism and its ties to environmental justice work.

And that for me has been so educational for me in developing curriculum and being able to have such beautiful conversations around how we as students can advocate for climate communities but also understanding the ties that the climate crisis has had on Black, Brown, Indigenous communities here in the Bay Area and across the country and internationally.

It's been such a big opportunity for me to be able to talk about climate, but I also see it in protesting.

I see in our community organizing.

When we go to elected officials asking them to advocate for climate literacy and pass legislation that will further push climate initiatives, as well as being able to see it in the lawsuits that I'm able to participate in, in federal court.

- Yes, there is no one right form of activism in climate or anything else.

It's whatever best enables you and the people around you to strongly express your voice for what you think our society needs to change, particularly in climate solutions.

But one form of advocacy that I'd like to put a little spotlight on is local climate policy work.

Because a lot of the government policies that have the biggest role in shaping our everyday lives and our impacts on the environment are at the local level.

So if we organize many young people around us to aggressively advocate at the local level for climate change to be a top priority as local governments have the ability and the responsibility to take effective action, that is incredibly impactful.

- The hard thing about climate change is that it will touch and impact everything.

But the beauty about climate action is that everyone has a role and a niche in the climate movement.

Everyone has something that they care about, and something that they can care about advocating for in the climate movement.

And I always tell people I think the best thing you can do is just sit down and talk about climate change at the dinner table with their friends.

You find a tangible way to connect this to your life and show that to other people.

Because the more and more we can think about climate change as not this huge, overarching, unsolvable issue, but as something that impacts our daily lives, that means we can find a way to solve it in our daily lives.

- So this question comes from our audience tonight.

What are you most hopeful about when considering the future of the environmental movement?

- So we have the tools right now to fix climate change with primarily renewable energy, and that gives me a huge amount of hope.

But that will not be fast enough.

It will not be full enough, and it will not be complete enough without the continuing advocacy of people in the climate movement, especially young people.

The passionate work of young people and others in the climate movement who are not allowing this to fade away and who are making sure that whatever the adversity facing the climate movement, we limit the backsliding and we push further than we were even on track to before.

- So we really have to just reframe the way we think about climate change to put even more emphasis on the positive things that are happening.

And especially the local, on the ground solutions.

Whatever people are doing in Washington right now, we have to focus on what's right here locally.

When I see one more person being added to this number of young people, especially at my school or in my community, or in some proximity to me, that gives me so much hope, probably more than it should.

But I think it's a reminder of the ripple effect that our actions can have.

- When I sit down with my mom even, I feel like a lot of the language is just so inaccessible to Spanish speakers, or people who speak other languages.

So it sparks a lot of hope in knowing that this work can become more accessible to people.

A lot of our movements are for the front people of these movements are Black, Brown, Indigenous people that have been affected the most.

And I think that this is, it's not about whether how can, I mean, we make this something that people feel more energized about.

It's, there are people out there.

The numbers that are seen online, it doesn't really showcase the actuality of our movements and how they've actually, we've seen the largest protest that we've ever seen in people on the streets now more than ever, especially with the oppression that we're seeing from our current administration.

This work, it's something that we are experiencing every single day, and people are upset, people are mad.

And knowing that my mom is like someone who is now out there on the streets with me and protesting because she knows the gravity of the climate crisis, also tells me that there are hundreds, hundreds of more where a lot of this work can be more accessible in terms of language, but also in how they can get further involved.

- I want to close off with this question just briefly.

What advice do you have for folks, especially young people who are interested in getting involved in the movement?

- Join other young people.

We need to keep joining and accelerating these organizations and groups and movements that we already have.

And joining any community of young people around climate change is integral to the movement.

Becoming part of that community and building again that community in your daily lives with anything as small as talking about climate change to people you wouldn't normally talk about climate change with.

- There are a lot of different movements to join, whether it's the labor movement, whether it's just your local student organization.

There are different ways to ensure that we're advocating for our rights, our workers, because we're the ones that are experiencing the worst of the climate crisis.

And I will say also to like, yeah, to young people, I feel like your stories, all of them, are so incredibly impactful.

Our stories just do have such an impact to so many people because they could feel resonated to what we have to say and we could also be uplifting the communities that we're representing.

- My advice for other young people starts with thinking about what really motivates you, what you care about.

And from there, do a little bit of research.

Start to understand it more deeply.

I think it's really helpful to build sort of a stronger understanding about how climate change is happening and what its solutions are.

And then especially how the systems operate that make the decisions about what actions our society takes about it.

Our local governments, systems like that.

We are much more capable than we think right off the bat.

- Beautiful.

Thank you so much.

That is all the time that we have for tonight.

So thank you again to our phenomenal panelists for being here.

And thank you audience members for joining us tonight for Connect the Bay Youth Climate Activism.

To learn more, visit the Center for Environmental Reporting's webpage, where you can watch, listen, and read all things climate and environment.

Keep an eye out for our next Connect the Bay on the issues that matter most to our community.

Until then, let's stay connected.

(bright music) (audience applauding) - But the beauty about climate action is that everyone has a role and a niche in the climate movement.

- So young people, even if we don't always know where to put that energy, we have that energy.

- It can be so easy to get bogged down by all of the bad climate news that's out there, and there is a lot of it.

- That for me shows that there are so many ways in which you can really tap into this work.

- People power is the most valuable resource to the climate movement.

(bright music)