Making a change: Young people get involved in the climate change crisis

Seventeen-year-old Ada Ovitt has lived in New Mexico her whole life and feels a connection to the beautiful mountains and desert. She doesn’t want to see climate change take that away.

She’s trying to put together a Youth Climate Leadership Council to do more to address the warming globe. The council’s first meeting is Saturday and all high school students are welcome.

She’s not the only student trying to help find solutions to climate change. College students who have lived through natural disasters brought on by a warming atmosphere are studying new programs and majors dedicated to climate change, according to the Associated Press.

More and more schools are offering these sorts of climate-based pathways. Public colleges in New Mexico, like the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University, often have specific climate change courses but not entire majors dedicated solely to climate change.

Ovitt, who will be a junior in the upcoming school year at Albuquerque Academy, said she was really scared of and stressed by climate change when she was younger but didn’t know what she could do about it.

“It’s really important for young people to have a place where they can both learn about it and also work together and have their own voices heard,” she said.

Ovitt said she doesn’t have a concrete idea of what the new youth council will look like or what it will do; she wants all the students involved to decide how to confront climate change.

“There’s so many different ways of approaching it, like through activism, through science, through policy and government and lobbying,” she said.

For her part, Ovitt is interested in the policy side, and she eventually wants to pursue environmental science in college, then go to law school. She said if she ends up leaving New Mexico for school, she’ll come back later in life.

“I just feel at home here,” she said.

‘It’ll affect us’

Ovitt said she wants to see young people take more of an active stance on global warming.

“It’s an issue that’s primarily going to affect us, but it’s something that’s mostly being dealt with at the moment by older generations and older people,” she said.

John Ross is the interim director of Talking Talons, a youth organization in New Mexico that’s helping Ovitt organize the Youth Climate Leadership Council, specifically to provide logistical support for the Council until the students can fully take over on their own.

“Our job is to empower them to take over,” he said. “I really kind of see this as a revolution.”

Ross, 74, said his generation “blew it” in the 1970s, and macro-level issues have still yet to be addressed, like moving away from the oil and gas industry.

“We’re kind of in a pickle where climate change is accelerating and we’re really not doing anything,” he said.

Ovitt said it can be easy to ignore climate change when it’s not affecting your future, using certain policymakers as an example.

“They’re not bearing the brunt of the effects. I think it’s really easy for them to just look at the short term — like what’s good for them — but not really the long term,” she said. “But I feel like young people are better at looking at the long term because we know that it’ll affect us.”

She added that young people can bring fresh perspectives to the matter. Ross agreed.

“They’re going to be the ones taking over,” he said.

Ross encouraged students who want to tackle climate change to build relationships with like-minded people and learn as much as possible.

“Trust your instincts that something isn’t right, and don’t let people talk you out of that,” he said.