Who Will Lead?: Youth!

Thank you so much. Uh, okay. So, um, as many of you know, the Climate Reality Project trains grassroots activists all around the world. Uh, we've had tremendous trainings already this year in Paris and in uh, Nairobi and we're on the way next week to Mongolia and then we'll be back uh, in Brazil and everywhere around the world. I am so impressed especially by the young people uh who joined this effort. And for our next conversation, I'm very happy to introduce two very impressive young climate leaders from our climate reality network. And I'd like to invite to the stage uh Lily Morse is an environmental justice organizer and researcher who co-founded the climate reality projects green schools campaign. You'll hear more about that in just a moment. Uh and uh V Victoria Horsch uh is a Brazilian climate and gender equality specialist focused on resilience schools and inclusive youthled climate education. She's also a youth fellow with the UN climate champions team supporting global initiatives toward COP 30. Uh thank you both for being here, Lily and Victoria. Uh thank you very much for joining us and welcome uh to the stage and to uh climate week. Uh let me begin for a question uh with a question for both of you. In your experience, what unique role do young people play in leading on climate action and why is it so important for youth voices to be lifted up? Victoria, why don't you begin? — Okay. Hi everyone. Um it's really nice to be here with Lily and thank you so much sir. So you know I think um the unique role of youth is that we are turning our lived experiences into solutions. I think everybody calls us the future leaders of the like next generation but I think right now we are the protagonists of this decade. We're the ones that are going to face the hardest impacts of climate change in the future and are facing now because we know that climate change is happening. Um, you know, uh, I'm a part of Empire KMA. We are a youthled genderled, women led organization from Brazil and we focus on, you know, the intersectionality of gender, race and climate. And one of our projects is called impodis which is Imperat schools. Uh we go to public schools around Brazil and give like workshops on gender transformative climate education uh to public schools and then I'm going to extend to private schools in Brazil focusing on uh climate risk and climate affected areas. Um just so you know according to the World Bank 12,000 schools in Brazil are in climate risk areas and um you know we work with teacher activists and students from these schools to turn you know the climate science and social justice so talk about you know what is climate justice and we help you know these students who are the next generation as myself and Lily to take their ideas from the classrooms to their communities. Um, so I think that's what we need to do and that's the unique role of youth. We have ideas but we need the support to put them in practice. So you know I think this is why youth leadership is so important. we you know if we are given a space at the table and if you're given uh power and opportunities we do have a lot to do and we have a lot of ideas um we bring courage we bring uh innovation we bring urgency because we are being affected as well but we're not being heard so I think this is a unique role of youth we are turning what we experience into action and you know with the support we can do a lot. — Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Lily. — Yeah. Hi, everyone. Um, and thank you guys so much for having me again. I know this is our second time meeting. We spoke in Las Vegas and it's an honor to be here again. Um, but I mean, I think everyone in this know this room knows the climate crisis is here. Earlier today, I'm from Los Angeles and we saw Los Angeles burn. And I stood in the ashes of Altadena with youth who lost their homes in that fire and it was terrible and horrifying to see. And you

know I think we as young people today are going to live with the impacts of the decision makers of today for the next I mean I'm 20 so like hopefully 70 years of my life. So these impacts are going to last a long time. Um, and but I think like in regards to like what youth role, the role that youth play, um, I mean I can only speak to my own perspective as a young person in this movement, but I think our like kind of freshness with the world can bring a lot of like hope and perspective and kind of fresh perspectives. And I think a lot of us have this kind of form of kind of radical imagination to kind of imagine what we want our futures to look like and imagine like what the world we could look like if we build that. Um and then I think also in just in the eyes of decision makers um they can we can be really instrumental in kind of expressing the urgency of this crisis um and pushing to make change. At least in my work um I lead an organization called the green schools campaign which recently became a part of climate reality formally. Um and we basically work with high school students to kind of train them up and seed campaigns in their school districts to transition their schools to renewable energy. Um, and this is intergenerational effort led usually by students with in conjunction with adult allies and um, decision makers in the school district. And I think in a lot of the in the case of our campaigns, a lot of the time administrations are interested in sustainability. They're interested in renewable energy because honestly it's cheaper. Like um, but they rarely take action on this. Um, a lot of the times they'll talk about it but they won't actually do it. And so we've seen over and over again with our successful campaigns that when like a large group of passionate youth comes together to demand action from their school districts on a local level, they actually end up taking action. We've passed resolutions across the country towards renewable energy because youth have been there pushing these school boards forward um and really making those world those words and promises a reality. — Yeah. Well, thank good job. Thank you very much. Now, Lily, you talked about uh what it was like to live in a city that had those horrendous uh fires. Uh I just realized both of you come from homes that have been affected dramatically. And Victoria, if I'm not mistaken, you are from the souththeastern state of Rio Grande Doul. And uh tell us about what happened there. — Yeah. Um, so as um, Vice President Gore mentioned, I'm from Hugen Dulu. The little translation be big river from the south. It's not as beautiful as in Portuguese, but so um, in May of last year, we faced the worst floods in our history. Um, the whole state was basically underwater. We had more than 600,000 people displaced. students without schools. Uh 90% more than 19% of the cities in the state were affected in some way. Um you know when talking about education which is the area that I work on um of these 600,000 students they stayed more than 20 days without schools. And you know many schools in our state were either affected by the floods or they turned into shelters. So you know they stopped because of either way. So it was a pretty chaotic situation. But I think turning point for the state to start thinking about — adaptation and mitigation but especially how to adapt our state to the impacts of climate change. — Yeah. I you know seeing the pictures and the videos uh I've included it in uh many of my slideshows since then but it was really extraordinary. That was the worst flooding in the history of Brazil. How did it affect your activism? So I think as I mentioned it was a turning point for a lot of people and it was a horrible situation but it opened a lot of eyes. Of course, it gave us you know the grassroots organizations more support from the government because you know even if they don't believe you have the you know power of the civil society asking questions why are you doing anything? Why we were impacted? because of course we had huge rains and um uh of course lots of water but we also were more affected than we would have if it wasn't for the infrastructure. So a lot of the infrastructure that we had that failed and you know some neighborhoods that weren't even close to the water were affected and were flooded because the infrastructure wasn't you know uh implemented right or it was so old and the governments weren't paying

attention to it. So I think — and also if I could interrupt we see this in regions around the world infrastructure uh that was designed for what the rainfall extremes used to be. They'll tell the engineers, okay, in the last hundred years this is the most uh rainfall we've ever had. So, build the drainage systems and the dams and the sewers and so forth. Uh, strong enough to accommodate the worst thing we've had in the past. But now all of those statistics are out of date because we've raised we we're trapping so much heat that the whole water cycle is disrupted and the amount of water vapor going into the sky is greatly increased and the warmer air holds so much water vapor. Atmospheric rivers were really first designated uh named by a distinguished Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Norre. And the average atmospheric river now has as much water content as three Amazon rivers, the biggest river in the world. And so when conditions trigger a downpour, we get these rain bombs that overwhelm the infrastructure that was designed for completely different conditions. And so 600,000 people displaced from their homes. That's incredible. — Yeah. And that's you mentioned the infrastructure wasn't up to date. So, uh, a lot of neighbors because the infrastructure wasn't up to date, they I'm not sure how it's called in English, but the bomb bus the they put the water they broke and you know in minutes many people had to leave certain neighborhoods because the water was coming. So, they didn't have any advice. is they weren't told by the government to leave their homes because it happened so fast and many people just you know left their animals and the clothes they had on their bodies and went to schools went to you know sports clubs to get shelter and you know but you mentioned how that affected my activism so the first time we did the Imperas scholars was in September of last year and it September in my state is also a rain uh month and at the time of the our first workshop it rained a lot and we were supposed to have like 15 50 students and we had 20 because most of them didn't come to school because they were scared to leave their homes — because at the time as I mentioned it was happening so fast some of them miss uh their homes they missed their homes they lost their home sorry um they were in contact with their families so they were scared but at the same time the ones that were there they were so open to talk to us and they wanted to understand more to understand why that happened and how they could help. They had so many questions and so many ideas. So — it was really nice to talk to them and to give them an insight on how they can take their ideas to their communities. And you know I work as um uh as a um technical adviser at the state department of education because at that time you know as I mentioned the state noticed that they needed to do something so a plan was created a law was created to adapt the state and the state department created something called Brazilian schools. So it's a program to you know map the risks of the impacts of climate change around all the schools in our state. So only the state public schools already 2,000. So in total we have 10,000 schools in my state. Um so we are mapping all of the schools around the state to understand their risks not only the floods but any type of climate risk. uh also creating contingency plans for the schools to know what to do when a disaster uh hits. And at the same time as well, you know, teaching the students and also these teachers and the whole u school community uh what is climate change, what is climate justice, how we can help them. And you know it has been really amazing because they've been so so supportive and will be able to support these schools with the you know knowledge that they need to you know support their community has been really amazing. — Well thank you and u continuing on the theme of schools Lily you have been the leader of this green schools program tell us how that came about and what's going on there. — Yeah thank you so much for asking about that. I love talking about Green School's campaign. Um, so when I was in middle school, I was struggling a lot with like climate anxiety and kind of like existential kind of crisis about

what was happening. And um, I really wanted to take action, but I wasn't sure how. I was at the time I was like 13 or 14 and there wasn't a ton of ways for people that young to kind of engage in a meaningful way in a local level on climate. And so I ended up getting trained with climate reality project in 2020 um online because of COVID. But through that training I connected with other young people like myself who wanted to take action but weren't really sure how. And so through that training we um I mean you helped us like understand like what the climate crisis looked like and how we could take action on it and how could we could like effectively communicate to people um why we needed to take action. And so through that training, I also got connected with the Climate Reality Los Angeles chapter that had just passed resolutions with the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Los Angeles Community College School District to commit them to renewable energy. Um, and so kind of working with those leaders from the Los Angeles chapter, we launched the green schools campaign. Um, and we basically like created the space that we had wanted when we tried to join the movement as high schoolers, a way to get trained up and to take action in a tangible way in our communities. Um, and so we continued to kind of like seed campaigns across the US. So many people reached out to us wanting to start campaigns. Um, and then in 2022, we had our first big win with the Long Beach Green Schools campaign, which successfully passed a resolution to transition to renewable energy. And especially after that win, we had so much interest from people across the US and across the world who wanted to plug in, wanted to run a green schools campaign and take action and engage their community. Um, but we actually got so much interest we couldn't really keep up with it. And so at the time we were operating Green School's campaign as an all volunteer team of a bunch of teenagers in our free time from our homework and our extracurricular activities just because we cared about it. And so during that time we approached Climate Reality Project to take green schools campaign under their wing. And so we joined with climate reality project which helped us give like which helped us provide the staffing and the expertise and the resources and the infrastructure to support these schools at a mass scale. Um and so since we joined climate reality project we've continued expanding to an ever growing number of high school students and community members and leaders um to start campaigns and we really want to like keep expanding to support them. And so we're always looking for people to plug in, people to help us with resources, continue expanding this campaign nationally and then I personally think we could expand internationally too, but that's a whole another thing. Um, but Green School's campaign has such had such a radical impact in my life. It has shaped me as a leader, as an activist, as a person. I mean, I've been in this campaign and doing climate work since I was 13 and I'm almost 20 now. And so, um, it has really made me who I am today. And so I'm very thankful to Green School's campaign and to climate reality for the ongoing support of our activism. — Oh, good for you. That's fantastic. Here's a question. And I here's a question that what wasn't previewed to either one of you, but you talked about how u you were a little bit down about not being able to do anything and what you don't you think there are there aren't there a lot of young people today who look at this uh climate crisis and it and feel a huge impact from it. Back in the 1960s, Joan Bayz was the first to say the antidote for despair is action. And the antidote for climate despair is climate action. But do you hear from your fellow young people? Do you hear this a lot? Uh and how do you respond to it when people say, "Oh my gosh, this is more than I can handle. " — No, I can go. Sorry. Um yes. And we have, you know, we call it climate anxiety. It happens a lot. Um, and a great example that I gave before is these students that were impacted somehow and now when they see rain, they don't want to leave their homes. You know, some before it was, you know, a homey feeling. Oh my god, rain is coming. I'm going to stay home under the sheets and watch TV. And now you look outside like, okay, rain is coming. What am I going to do? lose my home? M — um and — they were traumatized by what happened before. — Exactly. And I think uh at least, you know, talking about my community, we talk about that a lot. We help each other a lot. And at the same time, it's that feeling that I'm so anxious. I don't want to be here because I feel like we talk and we do nothing. But at the same time, if I'm not here, I'm missing something. What if

I can be just a voice of the youth and, you know, be there to pressure the global leaders to do something? And I think a great example is, you know, I mentioned what happened in my state with the public schools and the um the uh Brazilian schools program and something that happened is when we were now that we are supporting all these students in my state, a lot of them were like we want to do something. We understand we understood that we needed to support them but they also wanted to lead. So um we created a um climate leader position for them in our state. So we have we selected seven young people, seven students from public schools around the state to be our youth leaders. And with them we created a mini cop in the state was the first ever mini cop for public schools in Brazil. And we got together with them and — now hold on a second. You created a mini cop? Yeah, — for young people. — Yeah. — Okay, keep going. It was um an event that uh the state department helped support with these seven students where we got together with all these different students from all over the state to discuss different thematics from climate justice to uh city resilience, the school resilience and they created a um youth uh declaration for climate action of hugen dou And they were able to read this declaration for our secret secretary or of education. and with you know actions that they want the state to take for adaptation and for mitigation and with that now they have this declaration written and we are supporting them to take them to COP 30 so they can you know meet other youth international youth exchange information for them to also present uh their lived experiences with the floods and also engage with other global leaders and you know show them their declaration and their needs. So, and it's been really exciting. They are so eager to learn. And I think this is a great example when, you know, we give youth a space at the table. They just we don't just engage like we lead. And it's been like an amazing process to see that. And so they turned something that it was a trauma for them into a declaration, youth declaration of actions that they want our government to do. You know, it's been really amazing. — Well, good for you. That's really fantastic. Lily, you want to answer the same question? Yeah. — Yeah, for sure. Um, I mean, as I spoke on before, I myself and I know a lot of other people I've worked with in the movement have felt really intense dread and despair and anxiety and even like depression around the climate because like growing up today, you're seeing these climate disasters. You may be like directly experiencing these climate disasters and these impacts and it's honestly terrifying and overwhelming. And like what you said, I think really the only way to combat that is by taking action. I know at least personally, I'm doing the most I can right now to fight for our climate. And so I feel like that really helps me um personally. And then another thing that kind of helped me shift my mind is honestly when I was especially in like early high school, late middle school, I felt really angry — about the climate crisis that like the leaders of today and like yesterday had put us in this situation where like it was our burden to like figure this all out and that really made me angry. Um and I ended up reading this book called All We Can Save that ended up really kind of shifting my perspective. M — um one of the essays was about instead of being kind of angry and feeling the burden of the climate crisis and needing to fix it today as a young person, seeing it as like an opportunity to shape the world of tomorrow and kind of like we are at this massive turning point where all of this stuff is going to change and we have the opportunity to kind of like shape that future and build that future that we imagine as young people today. And so that's kind of that perspective has been really helpful, at least for me, to kind of maintain hope and kind of um just feel more optimistic about this whole process because it's exhausting. It's tiring. It's a lot of work. You guys all know. Um but yeah, that's kind of how I've set myself up. — Yeah. Uh well, I feel that same uh emotion when you hear the inspirational commitment that you guys have. And then you look at uh older people who are now in positions of leadership and they're just, you know, getting the campaign money from the fossil fuel polluters and keeping things comfortable for themselves and uh ignoring all of the disasters and ignoring the fact that

they're telling your generation that they don't really care. That's the message that they So, when you encounter um your own generation, if you run into somebody that um doesn't feel the way you do and you're trying to convince them to get involved and be a part of this effort, how do you I'm sure you run into some people who just don't want to deal, don't want to hear about it, or are actually equipped with talking points from the polluters. How do you deal with them? — I mean, that's a really good question. Um, — I mean, I think a lot of people come to me wanting to take action but not knowing how. And so, I think having like campaigns structured like Green School's campaign, like Climate Reality, like other organizations that are engaging people on like a mass grassroots level is like — a really great way to kind of just like — allow give them a very clear pathway to take action. And then I also think like a lot of the times we're taught that like we can't change anything and we just like continue to get beaten down by like the state of the world right now cuz honestly it can be depressing. Like it's there's a lot of crazy things happening in the world right now. And but I think especially at least for me seeing the kind of mass resistance movements across the world has been really incredible. I mean, even in Los Angeles, the response to the LA, I saw people turn out who I never would have expected to turn out for climate disaster. And then I mean like the resistance against ICE in Los Angeles. Um, and just the student protests across the US and so many other movements across the world that are taking action and making a huge change. Um I mean I think about like how we p we um passed the inflation reduction act which I know is under scrutiny right now but um I don't know I mean I think that was because I think that got passed because mass movements of young people including Sunrise Movement which I'm a part of were turning out for um climate justice and I think like those past successes make me really hopeful that we can turn it around and we can make a change. — I agree. Victoria, how would you how do you deal with that situation? — Uh, I think Lily spoke really well. Um, so I come from I think in Brazil a pretty privileged place where you know most of my friends they don't didn't really pay attention to climate change and the talks of climate change before I start talking to them about it. they all what all the conversations that happen I sometimes always bring climate change and something that's happening like okay she here she goes again and I'm like you know you're privileged right now but you're going to face the climate change some point you know — um and I think uh sometimes people like Lily said don't know how to engage and they see what's happened especially on social media and they be like okay but it's not going to happen to me and then it happens to you — for example As I mentioned the floods in my state, you know, it didn't happen to them until it did. And then uh we saw a lot of movements as well of all the civil society coming together to help everyone. And because for some days we didn't hear from the government. And then a lot of people start to know I have a boat in my home. I'm going to take out and know go to this neighborhood that you can only access through a boat and take people. You know, I'm going to I have like a few clothes here. I'm going to go take to the shelter. Like the supermarkets didn't have any water because people were buying all the water to go to give to the shelters. Not because they're like stocking the water, but because they're going to give to the shelters, you know. So, we had a sense of community. It was of course an alarming time, but a sense of community. And I think that changed a lot of people and they understood that, you know, — you don't need permission to lead, especially young people. take the lead, you know, but at the same time, you cannot do it alone. We have like this is not a um is we are not isolated voices. we need to build alliances — and um I think because of social media we're also able to find easier a lot of NOS's and grassroots organizations online and then you don't need to of course it's important to do it in person but a lot of people are also doing it on social media that that's been really good and for example I did my um climate reality course online because it happened during COVID so I So like this year it happened in Hu Janeu in person but I was really grateful that I was able to do it online because if happened maybe in person I wouldn't have been able to go because I probably had no to pay to go. So I was given an opportunity that's been really amazing. So yeah, I think um people are scared to take the

lead and they do need to be you know even if you start small in your classroom in your community it can change it can turn into you know a national impact or global impact and even if it doesn't you know a small impact is still an impact so it doesn't matter. Yeah, you know I sometimes get the same question that I asked you guys just now. How do you if you're tempted to feel, oh my gosh, this is just overwhelming. How do you deal with that? You know what my answer always is? I get inspiration and a recharge for my batteries from the young people who are so energetic and committed and enthusiastic. Before I turn it back over to Phyllis, I just want to ask all of you to join me in thanking these two extraordinary young leaders. Thank you all so much. Over to you, Ph. So before we close uh for today, I just wanna express thanks again and uh a few closing remarks. Um so first and foremost, I want to double down on what the vice president said and you know, thanks to all of our speakers here today. they are, you know, blazing paths to solutions, whether or not it's barnstorming the world and working with other governments and submitting NDCs that are ambitious or it's greening schools and organizing mini cops and ensuring we have gender and climate education in schools. So amazing all of them and women too. Always love to see powerful women on a panel. So thank you. Thanks to our speakers. So, there were a few moments that I just want to recognize today um that our speakers talked about. One is the is um going to be happening later today when the United uh nation secretary general and the COP president pulled together nations to reveal and discuss their NDCs. This is going to be a really important moment for all of us to understand the delta between ambition of the Paris agreement that 195 or as Rachel Kite reminded us 194 countries signed up to. So what is that delta of ambition and reality and that will be an important assessment going in of course to COP and BM when you know we know that we need progress and leadership on transitioning away from fossil fuels and the energy sector in protecting the world's forest and of course providing the finance needed to fuel the clean energy revolution that was also discussed um here today. So those are things that we're pushing for and certainly um watching very carefully. And then in BM and beyond, we talked a lot about the influence of the fossil fuel industry. We're working very closely with others in civil society to try to undercut and push back on the influence of the fossil fuel industry, particularly in these multilateral convenings. So, as I said, work with other members of civil society trying to pressure the UNF C, the COP presidency, host countries, and all the parties to finally address conflicts of interests and the pervasive and distorting influence of the fossil fuel industry. So that's our job as civil society and as leaders, trained climate reality leaders or other kinds of leaders. So I'd like to invite you to join with us. There is a QR code on the screen. So please um you know join us and take action and uh stay tuned also for an exciting lineup of climate reality trainings next year. We'll be announcing something later, but we'd love to have you join us. So, thanks again for coming today and again for your work and interest in solving the climate crisis. Thank you very much.