Climate change spares no part of the Earth. But for young climate activists, learning to adapt and reform their local community has helped ease a sense of panic — and lessen the burden of a changing planet.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Jan Ellen Spiegel to discuss her article, “Climate change and the young generations: In New Haven, think global, go local,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short.
WSHU: Hello, Jan. You've done some research into how climate change is affecting young people, and you spent some time with a group called the New Haven Climate Movement. What is the New Haven Climate Movement?
JES: The New Haven Climate Movement is a group that a number of people directed me towards when I was looking around for young people, teenagers in particular, who were sort of taking matters into their own hands, regarding climate change, and not just out there whining about it, but actually doing something. So that's how I got to the New Haven Climate Movement in the first place.
They were an offshoot of another organization that had a small climate component, but was mostly adult at the time. It was a sister city operation in New Haven and getting adults out to deal with some of the climate issues that related to the sister city thing, they couldn't count on him, so the guy who was running at the time decided, said well, let's get some young people. And those guys turned out to be really reliable, and the New Haven Climate Movement as a young person's organization really grew from that point. This was around 2019, this is not all that new.
WSHU: Mainly they were recruited from high school students?
JES: It's mainly high school, yes. And the many things that struck me about this group was that the bulk of them were high school students. Some over the years since 2019, have gone on to college. A couple have even finished college and did manage to stick with it, but they were not just an organization, like oh, let's run around, make untenable demands, make big signs, scream at the alders in New Haven for 20 minutes and go home. That is not what they do.
WSHU: What exactly were they doing differently?
JES: They were doing all the hard work, and they were doing policy ideas, super well researched policy ideas, coming up with very sophisticated suggestions. And different types of requests to both the New Haven alders and to the school board in New Haven asking for very specific climate type actions, both educationally and citywide, in terms of cutting back emissions of the school and what was taught in school, getting money to fund certain positions. They were testifying constantly, either before the Board of Alders or with the Education Department. They had a fairly sophisticated structure within the overall structure, in that there was an education committee and there were a couple of broader committees, and as different initiatives ran their course, they would move on to something else.
WSHU: How did they get to be taken seriously by the board? Because it seemed as if initially, the feeling was that they'd just be blown off, because, you know, they’re kids; what do they know?
JES: Well, I hear it two different ways. One, I mean that was what I expected, and I sat in on a couple of meetings with Board of Education folks and listened to them. They were not blown off, that's for sure. And what I hear from both the young people and the superintendent of schools even is that we want to hear from kids. These are the people who are in the schools. You know, we will take them seriously, and they were not presenting completely high in the sky type demands. These were well thought out, well researched proposals. I'll give you an example. The Board of Alders approved a climate resolution back in 2019 and then the school department did an education-based one in 2022. I'll give you two examples, really, one in there was looking at educational components and how climate change is taught. And was also trying to get some additional positions, and the money to fund those positions, the money is not there to fund those positions, but it looks like they will get one of the three positions they wanted, which was a grant writer.
Now these kids were like, yeah, let's get the grant writer, because the grant writer is going to get the money and we can do more, and they're willing to take that as a step ahead and work with that, and that is just a very level headed, sophisticated way of making arguments. I'll give you another example, the education group again, and to some degree, the larger organization, has really refocused on how transportation fits into climate, and one of the things the education group really wants is free bus passes for students. There's a little bit of money from the state coming to New Haven and Hartford for high school kids, and free bus passes.
WSHU: The state actually had a free bus program during COVID, right?
JES: And it was very successful. The buses were packed, and as soon as it ended, the buses weren't packed. And you know, transportation is the biggest source of carbon pollution for the state, largely for the country as well, in terms of its impact on climate change. But they went in and did the research and said, 'Look, we know this is going to cost money to do, but in the long run, it's going to save you money here. It's going to change the paradigm there.' They did that research. They looked at what other cities were doing. They are collaborating with the folks who are getting the money up in Hartford to see if they can trade ideas. They are talking to larger transportation groups within the state for help doing this.
These are, for the most part, high school students with a lot on their plate, a lot on their mind. Many of them have applied to and gotten into college in the process of doing all this, which is not nothing that's that takes a lot of work. And the other thing that I found really interesting about the group was that, yeah, these are high school kids, and they are going to move on, and they're going to need to be replaced. And there seems to be this organic process of getting the next level of young person in there to run these various committees. So the education committee, for instance, the person who had been running it, just graduated. She is going on to college, but the next person is already taking over. She is going to be a junior, so she'll have a couple of years there. These are all volunteers. There's not some system or anything. It's just this organic process of really interested young people who are willing to do the kind of legwork that I don't think young people of that age are necessarily willing to do. And to me, that was just incredibly impressive.
WSHU: Well, that's wonderful. Jan Ellen, so you're very optimistic as an environmental reporter, you sound that way.
JES: I'm optimistic about what these young people are doing, but remember, they are a small cog in a bigger wheel, and they get that. They realize that they are dealing with a worldwide intractable problem. How does the world solve it, ever mind a small group of young people in New Haven, and they're good with that. They understand that their best shot is to make a dent at the local level. And again, that is a very sophisticated point of view, if you ask me, they're not throwing up their hands and saying, oh my god, we'll never solve this. Why should we even bother? They're doing the hard work and they're getting the work done.
WSHU: So basically, think globally, but act locally.
JES: That's pretty much it.
