0:00

This is Climate One. I'm

0:02

Greg Dalton. And I'm Arianna Brocious.

0:04

Human-caused climate disruption is a collective

0:07

crisis and one that compounds

0:09

the longer we don't address the root causes

0:11

of it.

0:12

But for so long we've thought of it as

0:14

a future problem, one that the next generation

0:16

will solve. Totally. I've been covering climate

0:19

for close to two decades and it's only the

0:21

fires, floods, and heat of the last few

0:23

years that have caused climate to be perceived

0:26

as a problem now, not often

0:28

the future.

0:29

And let's face it, laying our hope for

0:31

climate solutions at the feet of young people is

0:33

not only unrealistic, it's completely unfair.

0:36

Absolutely. From its earliest days,

0:39

children and youth have been active in the climate

0:41

movement, pushing older people in positions

0:43

of power to admit they caused a

0:45

problem and work to fix it.

0:48

No one has made this point better than young

0:50

activist Greta Thunberg, who calls

0:52

out older generations for failing hers

0:55

and not owning up to the problem they created,

0:58

while actively worsening the climate crisis

1:00

through their inaction.

1:02

Greta's frank and passionate critiques

1:04

and weekly climate protests made her famous.

1:07

She was preceded by other youth activists

1:09

like Slater Jewel Kempker.

1:10

We need to address as human

1:13

beings our sense of responsibility

1:15

and we need to address our selfishness. We

1:17

need to rethink how

1:19

we actually live and engage with each other

1:22

and live with this planet because this is how

1:24

we've gotten into this monumental

1:27

problem.

1:27

As we'll hear about on today's show, years of

1:30

tireless efforts fighting for change

1:32

frequently leads to unrealistic expectations

1:35

and even depression and burnout.

1:37

I look back at it now and there is a part

1:39

of me that is angry that the

1:41

narrative encouraged

1:44

me as a child to

1:46

believe that I could fix

1:49

the world's problems.

1:57

Alec Lourdes was a celebrated youth climate

1:59

activist

1:59

years before anyone heard of Greta Thunberg.

2:02

Starting from the time he was 12 years old,

2:05

he dedicated his life to traveling all across

2:07

the United States, educating other

2:09

young people on the climate crisis and

2:12

inspiring them to take action through his organization,

2:15

Kids vs. Global Warming. But

2:17

at the age of 18, he fell into a

2:19

deep depression and withdrew from

2:21

the movement.

2:23

His story is not uncommon. So

2:25

many activists have burned out along the

2:27

way, frustrated by participating

2:29

in actions that very rarely lead to

2:31

meaningful and lasting change.

2:34

The emotional cost of seeing so

2:37

little payoff for years spent fighting

2:39

can be agonizing at any age, but

2:42

perhaps more for young people who put

2:44

so much of themselves into the effort.

2:46

That said, some youth activists

2:49

develop strategies for pushing through the

2:51

burnout or avoiding it altogether.

2:54

We'll talk to a couple of them later in the show.

2:56

I met Alec Lures in 2011

2:59

when I interviewed him on the Climate One stage.

3:01

I often wondered over the years what happened to him

3:04

after he dropped out of the public eye. So

3:06

I looked him up and I asked him to come back on the program

3:09

to share the journey he's been on since that time

3:11

and how he views the climate movement today.

3:14

So Alec, thanks for coming

3:16

back. When you were 12 years old,

3:19

you watched an inconvenient truth

3:21

with your mom. Of course, you were both

3:24

profoundly impacted. She went up

3:26

to bed. What happened for you?

3:28

Well, I was blown away. I

3:30

watched the whole movie again and

3:33

all the special features and everything. I

3:35

had never felt

3:37

something like that, where I felt almost

3:39

like a sense of calling to participate

3:42

in raising awareness around this issue.

3:44

And I felt a need to communicate with young people

3:46

because we are the ones

3:49

most affected. I do still say

3:51

we, even though I'm almost 30.

3:54

But that was my initial spark. I saw the movie,

3:57

ended up doing more research, started getting

3:59

into it. invited to speak at events and it kind

4:01

of took off. That was when I was 12. By

4:04

the time I was 14, I was trained by Al Gore's

4:06

program to give a version of his slideshow.

4:09

The youngest person ever at that point, which that

4:12

title has now been usurped several times,

4:14

which I'm very glad about.

4:16

And then yeah, through my teens,

4:19

I had this really crazy lifestyle of traveling and

4:22

speaking at conferences and doing

4:25

interviews and all of this stuff, which

4:28

was not what I expected. I didn't start

4:30

out trying to be a well-known public

4:32

speaker or anything, I just wanted to

4:34

share the news with members

4:37

of my generation. Well, you had

4:39

a calling after watching the movie, you kind of launched

4:41

into this. And at the age of 12, you

4:44

did become something of a rock star

4:46

in the then very small climate

4:49

movement. Here's a clip of you

4:51

at age 13.

4:53

I went to a big environmental conference and

4:55

while everyone was listening to all these important people speak,

4:58

they set up a youth tent for all the youth to go.

5:01

But that's not what we wanted, is it? It's not

5:03

enough to be saying, yeah, let's ride bikes and

5:05

change our roads. No, we

5:08

want to be in there with everyone else.

5:10

What's it like to hear your 12-year-old self

5:13

today? Man, it's a

5:15

bit of a trip. That was early,

5:17

that was one of

5:18

my first big speeches. And

5:21

it's wild because I still agree with that

5:23

point. Everyone wants like a top 10 list

5:25

of what are the simple actions we can take to stop

5:28

global warming? And it's never gonna be that

5:30

simple. It's even a tactic

5:32

of the fossil fuel industry to put the onus

5:35

on

5:35

consumers saying that it's our consumption

5:38

that's the problem. When really our

5:39

entire society is addicted to fossil

5:42

fuels at every scale. And

5:44

it's gonna be worse and worse for us the longer

5:46

we take to actually start

5:48

easing away from that. Most

5:50

12-year-olds don't build their own PowerPoints

5:53

and take to the national stage as you

5:55

did. What was driving you then and

5:57

what kept you going during those years?

5:59

when many people are just figuring out their

6:02

identity, doing school?

6:05

Yeah, I mean, it definitely was

6:07

interesting to be engaged in this through

6:10

my adolescence. I think it sort of

6:12

took its toll on the way my identity

6:14

was

6:16

developing. And at the same time,

6:18

I

6:19

did it because I felt like I

6:21

needed to almost, that there was a need

6:24

within the world for people to be having this conversation

6:26

and for a young person to be the one bringing,

6:29

bringing the science back again.

6:31

And I really, I guess I would go back to that sense of calling.

6:34

It's something that

6:35

stuck with me throughout the entire time and

6:37

I still feel. And that's not something where I'm trying

6:39

to say that I specifically have a calling

6:42

to engage in the solution to

6:44

climate change or whatever. And my point is that everyone

6:47

is called to participate in this transition

6:49

in some way, in their own way. And

6:52

that feeling is powerful. It's something

6:54

where I just started, I felt

6:57

like I couldn't not do something.

6:59

And I still feel like that. I haven't quite been

7:01

out there on stage in at least 10

7:04

years, but my activism

7:06

has taken a different form.

7:08

And we'll get to that, but that level

7:10

of notoriety and fame, and

7:12

this is for people to remember, this is kind of, social

7:14

media was in a very different place at

7:17

that time. And a lot of child

7:19

actors that get famous young, they

7:22

have real difficulty sort of navigating beyond

7:24

that young cute phase of their life into

7:26

adolescence and what's next. For

7:29

you to kind of navigate that notoriety.

7:32

It was difficult,

7:33

especially in my later teens, by the time I was 17, 18,

7:37

I started feeling this sense of, like

7:40

there was a rift within my identity. There was

7:42

the version of me that went on stage and spoke

7:44

to an audience and was the climate

7:46

change kid. And then I felt

7:48

like my real self was something else that people

7:50

didn't see. And I wasn't invited to share

7:52

on stage. And I would

7:55

like post things about music on my Facebook

7:57

and get people saying, hey, what are you doing posting

7:59

about music? This is not important. You're a climate change

8:01

kid. They wanted you to be a certain way,

8:04

right?

8:04

Exactly. Because of the expectations of

8:06

you that they've been put on you. For

8:09

sure. And I think that even taps into

8:11

our culture's

8:13

obsession with the hero's journey as

8:16

an archetype of story, where

8:18

a single individual hero goes out and discovers

8:21

something and brings it back and is a hero.

8:23

I think the culture is shifting away from that. I don't

8:26

believe that that is the predominant myth

8:28

for us right now. Or at least it's falling

8:30

apart and something else is emerging, which has to do

8:33

with collectivity. The fact

8:35

that we're all in this together. It's not ever gonna be

8:37

one person coming to save the world that

8:39

we have to save the world together. We have to work

8:41

towards that. Some of the articles

8:43

written about me back

8:45

in the day, we're very much just sort

8:47

of like, he's the next Al Gore, he's gonna

8:49

save us. Which

8:51

my ego loved to hear, but

8:53

at a certain point it started feeling like,

8:57

that's not what this is about.

8:58

That's gotta be quite a burden to have that thrust

9:01

on you. You and I last talked,

9:04

you were 16. You said

9:06

then that when you were 12, you jumped right

9:08

into action and that dread and despair

9:10

of climate was just starting to hit you. Let's

9:13

listen back to that moment from 12 years ago.

9:16

When I first heard about climate change,

9:18

when I first heard about this stuff, I

9:21

just went straight to kind of doing something about it and

9:23

taking action and I skipped over, despair

9:25

and denial and stuff. And it's just kind of

9:27

taken till the last couple months to kind of hit that

9:30

space and then struggling

9:32

with it a little bit.

9:33

So what was that going on? What would your struggle then? Yeah,

9:36

last couple of months, that is interesting to hear.

9:40

16, I

9:42

think that was the point when

9:45

I started maybe becoming a little bit cynical about

9:47

the

9:48

tactics of the mainstream climate movement.

9:51

And I'd only been engaged for

9:53

several years, but just talking to people who'd been part

9:56

of this movement for decades leading up to them and

9:58

just this realization that... Like,

10:00

my God, what are we doing? We're trying the same tactics

10:02

over and over and over again, expecting different

10:05

results.

10:06

And at the same time, I realized

10:08

that it's,

10:10

what else are we gonna do?

10:11

I think a lot of people within the climate space know

10:14

that

10:15

continuing to do marches and writing petitions

10:17

and writing a letter to your congressman and stuff, it's

10:19

like, if that was gonna work, it would have

10:21

worked by now.

10:22

Sure, so yeah, and since

10:24

we last talked, I've learned from Renee

10:27

Lertzman, who's a psychologist who works on

10:29

eco-anxiety, that people try to push

10:31

their feelings aside and then act because

10:34

they feel the urgency of climate. Those feelings

10:36

don't go away. They just grow and fester

10:39

and then come back and grab

10:41

you by the ankles or the throat sometime

10:43

later. But a lot of people, I think, what

10:46

you were talking about there is, don't feel,

10:48

just jump in, do, because the

10:50

planets are homes on fire, do something.

10:52

And some people think that that activity

10:55

will, yeah, make the despair go away, but

10:57

it sounds like it did a little bit for you.

11:00

I was able to not go there, I think for the first

11:03

several years, even though I knew how

11:05

treacherous of a situation it was,

11:07

I just sort of was able to focus in on, okay, I'm

11:09

doing what I can and it's gonna be okay. I

11:12

think definitely in the

11:14

years since then, as I've reflected, it's my

11:17

perspective now is probably a little bit different. I feel

11:20

like those emotions are extremely

11:22

important

11:23

to express and to work with.

11:26

And the fact that

11:27

eco-anxiety is like a term

11:30

now, I think speaks to the fact that so many people are

11:32

feeling this sense of dread,

11:35

especially right now. This is a poignant

11:37

time to be having this conversation because the

11:39

climate has been in the news this last couple of weeks.

11:42

I'm in Ontario right now and up here in Canada.

11:45

The wildfires have been

11:47

on another level. 23 million

11:50

acres have burned this year. And the

11:52

previous record was 13 million acres.

11:55

And the season really is

11:57

still picking up steam. So it's... It's

12:00

clear that the type of stuff that we were

12:02

warning about 15 years ago are starting

12:04

to arrive

12:05

and

12:07

they will keep getting worse. This

12:09

is

12:10

depressing and scary.

12:13

I think we need to be talking about that because

12:17

we're going to just go crazy. We're going to lose

12:19

our sanity if we don't. By the time

12:21

you were 18, you wanted a new identity.

12:24

You said you started to get cynical about the movement,

12:26

got depressed, the progress wasn't happening,

12:29

same tactics being tried. You moved to a new

12:31

school in British Columbia. Tell

12:33

us about that kind to step away and

12:36

reinvent yourself.

12:38

Yeah. I reached a point

12:40

when I was 18 where I was kind of just done

12:42

with that world. It was just

12:45

exhausting and so difficult for my

12:48

internal self to be mostly

12:50

just the travel was so intense. Certain

12:53

months I was traveling for three weeks

12:55

out of the month. There was one Earth Day where I

12:57

spoke in 11 different cities, took

12:59

a flight in between each one within a single week. There

13:03

were always film crews coming to our house and just

13:05

sort of always another event to prepare for.

13:09

That was part of it and the

13:11

cynicism about the movement was part of it too. This

13:14

sort of sense of, okay, this isn't

13:16

working. I don't know if

13:19

it's worth trying to convince everyone else that we should try

13:21

something else so I'm going to just try something else. For

13:23

me, what that looked like was just stepping aside,

13:26

taking a big step back. I

13:28

moved

13:29

to Canada, went to school in PC, made

13:32

a new Facebook page that

13:34

I invited new friends to and didn't

13:36

mention anything about my climate background. I

13:38

felt wounded by that and so I kind of just wanted

13:41

to

13:41

let it go. It's like you shed

13:43

a skin. Yeah,

13:45

a little bit.

13:47

That became its own sort of difficulty

13:49

of just connecting with friends and

13:51

then only never

13:53

telling them about the thing and someone would randomly

13:55

come across an old TEDx talk that I did

13:57

and be like, what? You did

13:59

this? and

14:01

just this feeling of like that sense of

14:04

calling never actually went away. The feeling

14:06

that I needed to do something about this maybe

14:09

even intensified. And

14:11

that sort of came to a head in 2014 after

14:14

I'd been at that school for two years. The

14:17

campus was up in the mountains in British

14:19

Columbia, north of Vancouver, surrounded by like

14:21

old growth forests with a river

14:23

running through it in a waterfall and just gorgeous.

14:26

And that spring, 2014, the

14:28

gravel company that owned the land came

14:31

and started clear-cutting the forest in

14:33

a really brutal way. And like I went out there and watched

14:36

it

14:38

and was just heartbroken. And

14:41

just as bad was the fact that none

14:43

of the other people at the school really seemed to care

14:46

that much. There wasn't really any

14:48

sort of a sense that this wasn't okay, where

14:51

for me it was gut-wrenchingly

14:54

not okay. And just

14:56

the realization that like, my God, now that I've witnessed

14:59

it, I could visualize so much more

15:02

vividly what's going on in the Amazon, what's

15:04

going on throughout Canada. The

15:06

last we're being in forests are being

15:08

cut for profit.

15:11

So anyway, that was really intense. That's

15:13

sort of one of the things that kicked off my summer

15:15

of the deepest depression. I

15:17

sort of ended up taking another step back that

15:20

year, went and traveled across

15:22

the country, worked on organic farms as

15:25

a way to disconnect with the land.

15:28

And that

15:29

ended up becoming my main focus. By 2016, I

15:31

had settled in Olympia, Washington.

15:36

Over the next couple of years, I started spending more and

15:38

more time with shorelines and parks and

15:40

places that were wild and alive. In 2018, I

15:43

discovered a stretch

15:44

of

15:46

shoreline in Olympia, Washington

15:49

that I literally fell in love with.

15:51

I went out there with my cameras

15:53

doing time-lapse photography, and I would stay

15:56

out there for eight hours straight or 12 hours some days.

15:58

I would go early in the morning. morning and

16:00

stay till dusk, time-lapsing

16:02

and writing and being there and witnessing

16:05

birds and animals and watching the tide lower

16:07

and rise and had some really significant encounters

16:10

with wild creatures

16:12

that I'm working on writing out as stories

16:14

because

16:16

my sense throughout that whole time was that it's not just

16:19

for me that I'm not just trying to go and have fun

16:21

at a pretty place. This is an act

16:23

of reconnecting with the wildness that

16:25

has been so devastated

16:28

by

16:29

human civilization and

16:31

trying to learn how to listen,

16:34

how to hear those voices, how to see these

16:37

places of the beings who inhabit them as alive

16:39

and intelligent and worthy of

16:42

being valued and even

16:44

entering into conversation with.

16:46

They don't speak in words but they're still speaking.

16:48

So nature, you connected

16:51

with nature and that healed you.

16:54

Yes and I deeply

16:57

believe that that is the only way we are

16:59

going to get out of this mess is by returning

17:01

to the greater world and

17:04

realizing that all the answers are out there. The

17:06

earth knows how to stay in balance. We just need to

17:09

find a way to align with that balance.

17:12

You're listening to a Climate One conversation

17:15

with youth climate activists. Please

17:17

help us get people talking more about climate by giving

17:19

us a rating or review. You can do it right now

17:22

on your device. You can also help by sending

17:24

a link to this episode to our friend on

17:26

our new website. You can create and share playlists

17:29

focused on any topic. Coming

17:31

up, Alec Lure is on the value of connection

17:34

he's learned living close to nature and

17:36

how that applies to the climate crisis.

17:39

Something that's given me a lot of hope for the future

17:41

is the idea of permaculture, the idea

17:43

that we can build a human presence

17:46

that is enduring and that is integrated

17:48

with the wider landscape.

17:50

That's up next when Climate One continues.

19:59

hearts, our children

20:01

from the reality that is coming, that

20:03

is here, that we are

20:05

in, but I'm not sure how helpful

20:08

that

20:08

is.

20:11

Along the way, Victoria and Alec formed an

20:13

organization to help inspire and

20:15

activate more youth in the climate movement.

20:18

Youth like the young Swede Greta Thunberg,

20:20

who rose to prominence years later by calling

20:22

out hypocrisy and inaction at

20:24

the United Nations.

20:26

This is all wrong. I

20:29

shouldn't be up here. I

20:32

should be back in school, on the other

20:34

side of the ocean. Yet

20:37

you all come to us young people for

20:39

hope. How dare you?

20:42

You have stolen my

20:45

dreams and my childhood with

20:47

your empty words. And

20:49

yet I'm one of the lucky ones.

20:53

People are suffering. People

20:55

are dying. Their

20:58

ecosystems are collapsing.

21:01

We are in the beginning of a mass

21:03

extinction. And all you can talk

21:05

about is money and fairy

21:07

tales of eternal economic

21:09

growth. How dare you? Alec

21:13

was never like Greta, where she'll just

21:15

name it and just say, you know, you guys

21:17

screwed up and we're stuck with it. Like, he would

21:19

never say that. This is not his heart. His

21:22

heart is much more collaborative

21:23

and understanding where people are coming from.

21:26

But those same feelings did resonate for

21:28

Alec, Victoria says, after

21:30

he started to become disillusioned with the lack

21:33

of progress on climate and the scale

21:35

of the crisis.

21:36

When he went to Iceland

21:39

and actually saw how much

21:41

the glaciers had receded,

21:44

he could feel it in his body

21:47

and the grief began. That was really, I think,

21:49

a turning point for him, when he could actually feel

21:51

it and it wasn't just a message.

21:53

Victoria went on to found the Center for Wild

21:55

Spirituality and write a book entitled

21:58

Church of the Wild.

21:59

invites us into the sacred. She

22:02

has this advice for parents of other youth

22:05

activists.

22:06

I would say listen, honor them. Almost

22:10

makes me cry. They

22:12

know why they're here. They know this is important.

22:16

You can support them. You know, diminishing

22:18

this doesn't help, exaggerating

22:21

it doesn't help, giving them ways to be

22:23

active,

22:23

learning from them. In

22:27

a way, they're closer to the earth. They haven't

22:29

forgotten as much as we have. So

22:32

that's what I would say. Be

22:35

present with them. They're

22:37

going to need you.

22:44

In talking with adult Alec Lures,

22:47

I asked him if he felt any guilt after stepping

22:49

back from the climate movement when he was younger.

22:52

A little bit. It's sort

22:55

of complicated within myself because I

22:57

was just so

22:59

ready to be done with it when I initially stepped

23:01

back. But I guess

23:03

you could call it guilt. This sense that

23:05

started building of the longer that

23:07

I stayed away, it sort of was like,

23:11

yeah, I guess there was a bit of a disappointment

23:14

in myself. And at the same time, there

23:16

was a sense of I'm still searching for what

23:19

the actual answers are. I haven't

23:21

actually stepped back. Really. I've

23:23

stepped back from public speaking and doing interviews

23:25

and stuff, but it's still

23:29

almost obsessively what I think about all the time

23:31

is climate change.

23:33

Do you miss this public spotlight in any way?

23:37

I don't miss being put on a pedestal and

23:40

talked about as the hero. What

23:42

I do miss is being on stage

23:45

speaking to an audience who is vibing

23:47

with what I'm saying to feel that sense of

23:50

connection with people who are getting

23:53

something for the first time that I recently

23:55

got for the first time and just being able to share

23:58

it with people and feeling that connection.

23:59

with people in the audience.

24:03

When you were 12, the world was on track

24:05

for maybe five or six degrees of Celsius

24:08

of warming. You were really affected by NASA

24:11

scientist James Hansen saying that we had

24:13

only five years to make significant

24:15

progress. And a lot of progress has

24:17

been made. We're now on track for

24:19

two and a half, maybe a little more degrees of warming

24:22

since the Industrial Revolution. Still

24:24

bad, but not as bad as it was,

24:26

say, a decade ago. How do you think about

24:29

the progress that has been made, the

24:31

good news?

24:32

It is good news. I'm

24:34

trying to hold back my cynicism.

24:36

So I don't know if I truly believe that we're

24:38

on track for two and a half to three degrees

24:41

Celsius. But even if we are,

24:43

that's still a really scary world. And I think we

24:45

have to be prepared for the types of weather

24:49

disasters that we've been seeing just to intensify

24:51

and become more common and more prolonged and more

24:53

intense. But I'm

24:55

trying to find a way to hold both, of

24:57

feeling this sense of progress is being

25:00

made.

25:01

The right types of conversations

25:03

are happening at a high level, at least the

25:06

beginning stages of those conversations. And

25:08

there does seem to be a commitment

25:10

within countries to actually address

25:12

this problem. I don't know if the actual

25:15

tactics that are being discussed are actually going

25:17

to fully

25:19

get us out of this mess. And it's

25:21

also one thing to commit to something, and it's a whole other

25:23

thing to actually do it. Nations have

25:25

been committing to climate targets for at

25:27

least 20 years and consistently

25:30

not reaching them. So something

25:32

still has to kick into gear

25:34

at that higher political level. And partly

25:38

my perspective now is that we shouldn't wait

25:40

until the politicians and UN people

25:43

figure this out for us, that it takes addressing

25:46

this in all of our own ways.

25:48

And so how do you describe your life now?

25:51

Well, at this point, I'm living

25:53

on a former farm in

25:56

southern Ontario. In 2021, I

25:58

moved out here from Washington.

25:59

in the state to be with Slater

26:02

Jewel Kemker, who is now my wife. We

26:04

got married last year.

26:06

She was involved in the climate movement back when I was,

26:09

and we almost met so many times back

26:11

in the day, but we only connected in 2019. So

26:14

we've been living together for the last two years, and

26:16

we planted a food forest with some

26:18

friends who live close by. We've got

26:20

probably 20 different garden spaces doing

26:23

a lot of work generating

26:26

the soil, building up biomass, as

26:28

I've learned more, agriculture

26:31

is a huge part of the difficulty of

26:33

the situation we're in. I think the longer

26:35

that we stick to the modern sort of monocrop

26:37

industrial agriculture, the more difficult

26:40

it's going to be to actually feed everyone properly.

26:43

And I think so many people are longing to return

26:45

to the land in this way, to grow our own food,

26:47

to make our own energy, to be

26:50

in community. That's what we're striving

26:52

for here. And actually something that's given me a lot

26:54

of hope for the future is the idea of permaculture.

26:57

The idea that we can build a human

27:00

presence that is enduring and that

27:02

is integrated with the wider landscape,

27:04

rather than making a farm by clearing

27:07

away what's there and planting a bunch of corn.

27:10

We can only get through this together. We're past

27:12

the phase of individual people being

27:15

the solution. And I think it

27:17

doesn't have to be the other extreme of like mass movement

27:19

type stuff. I do still think there's

27:22

a space for that, especially

27:24

if it can be coordinated in a higher level

27:26

way, rather than like, this group's going to do a march

27:28

and then it's over. This group does a march and then it's done.

27:31

Like, I think we as a movement need to be

27:33

having this conversation of how do we integrate our

27:35

efforts and find like an overarching

27:38

strategy that is common, but

27:40

then decentralized organizing

27:43

within that. I think that's the type of thing

27:45

that that's going to be really powerful as

27:47

it

27:48

as it's

27:49

explored more and more throughout the next few

27:51

years.

27:52

Alec Lures is a climate activist,

27:54

writer and photographer. I interviewed

27:57

more than a decade ago when you were 12.

27:59

Thank you for coming back and sharing your story

28:02

so candidly and openly and vulnerably,

28:05

Alec. I think a lot of people can relate. Thank

28:07

you for sharing that. Thank you so much for

28:09

having me back on. It's a pleasure. You're

28:12

listening to a conversation about youth climate

28:14

activists

28:15

coming up how one young person

28:17

found her place in the climate movement

28:19

by documenting it. Okay,

28:21

I'm not going to be the kid necessarily who goes

28:23

and chains himself

28:26

to a reactor fence. I'm not

28:28

going to be the kid who goes and

28:31

like stages some crazy publicity

28:34

stunt, but I can be the person who goes and

28:36

filmed them because no one was paying

28:38

attention to kids at that time. No

28:40

one was taking them

28:42

seriously.

28:43

That's up next.

28:55

This is Climate One. I'm Ariana Brocious. A

28:58

powerful way to experience the life of

29:01

a youth climate activist is to watch the

29:03

documentary Youth Unstoppable. It

29:05

was produced by Slater Jewel Kemker, who

29:08

spent more than a decade filming and

29:10

documenting the work of youth climate activists

29:13

while being one herself. Like

29:15

her now husband Alec Lures, Slater

29:17

stepped away from the movement and has found

29:19

a new sense of peace investing

29:21

in her life focused on permaculture and

29:24

sustainable living in rural Ontario.

29:26

I grew up in Los Angeles, California,

29:30

and my parents were in the film industry.

29:33

Most of their friends and the people in our

29:35

life were involved in media

29:38

or arts, but with a very specific

29:40

bent of wanting to make the world

29:42

a better place. One of our dear friends, Jeannie

29:44

Meyer, started this organization called the

29:46

My Hero Project in the very

29:49

kind of infancy of the internet because she wanted

29:51

her kids to have somewhere to go

29:53

online that was safe and inspiring

29:56

and made

29:56

humanity feel a little bit more

29:58

worth saving.

29:59

even at that time. And

30:02

when I was little, a friend

30:05

of ours, Kathy Elden, she was going to

30:08

go interview the peace activist

30:10

Ron Kovik for my hero.

30:12

And I went along with my

30:14

mom, and he would only give an interview

30:17

to me. So I was five years old

30:20

and holding this camera, and he

30:22

put me on his lap and wheeled me around

30:24

his apartment and showed me all of his anti-war,

30:27

pro-peace artworks and

30:29

told me about his experiences. And

30:32

I think it just clicked.

30:35

Something in my brain clicked at that young age

30:37

of, oh, this is normal. I can

30:40

talk to anyone I want. I

30:42

can ask them questions

30:45

because it's always know until

30:47

you ask. And it just

30:49

felt like that was something that I could do in my life. No

30:52

one had told me that, oh, you're five

30:54

years old. You can't just go and interview people. So

30:57

I think that just stuck with me. So

31:00

you had an early interest in filmmaking.

31:02

You had role models in your life that were filmmakers.

31:05

But why choose to do something documenting climate

31:08

activists?

31:09

When I was about nine years old, I

31:11

moved up with my family to a farm

31:14

in Southern Ontario, in

31:16

Canada, and going from

31:19

a

31:19

very small

31:21

house and yard in the

31:24

valley in Los Angeles to fields and

31:28

woods and rivers and

31:30

fireflies and animals and

31:32

just this magic sense of wonder really

31:35

reprogrammed my brain as to what

31:37

joy was in my life, as to what

31:41

safety felt. And this

31:43

made me

31:44

get more and more interested in the environment

31:47

because it was something that people were talking about and

31:49

writing articles about and something

31:52

was going wrong.

31:54

And through the My Hero Project

31:57

and my parents and my

31:59

love of filmmaking and newfound

32:02

interest in the environment. I was

32:04

given the opportunity to interview Jean-Michel

32:07

Cousteau, the son of Jacques

32:09

Cousteau, the renowned marine

32:11

biologist. And

32:14

it was the first time in my life that I spoke

32:16

to an adult of that level,

32:19

of that immense wisdom

32:21

and knowledge and like

32:24

social standing in the world who fully

32:26

communicated with me.

32:28

Even though I was a kid, even though

32:30

I wasn't anywhere near his level

32:33

of

32:34

knowledge on the subject, he

32:36

spoke to me as a fellow human being and

32:38

that

32:39

I felt like my questions to him mattered,

32:42

that he genuinely wanted

32:44

to interact with me and he

32:46

was so kind and lovely and

32:49

was really the one who, I guess,

32:51

kind of inspired me to go on this journey.

32:54

He literally passed me

32:56

a baton and said, it's

32:58

your job now. And I feel

33:01

like a lot of kids would say, I

33:03

maybe wouldn't run with that, maybe wouldn't take it seriously,

33:06

but I took it very seriously because

33:08

this person respected me and I respected

33:10

them and I felt like

33:13

I could do something. No one had told me at that

33:15

point yet that I couldn't. So

33:18

I started getting more involved and that

33:20

led me to representing Canada as

33:23

a youth delegate

33:24

at the Environmental

33:26

G8 Summit in Japan in 2008. I'd

33:30

like to jump in there because there's a

33:32

moment in your film where you talk about

33:34

this, where you felt like

33:36

for the first time, kids weren't being taken seriously.

33:39

And I want to hear this moment from you. You're 15

33:41

years old or at the G8 Summit in Japan. This

33:44

is in 2008. It

33:46

was just really surreal going on the stage

33:49

because I felt like we

33:50

were acts and when they

33:52

called out the country's names, some of the ministers

33:55

cheered and stuff. And

33:57

it made

33:58

me feel like they were just doing that. to

34:00

seem like they were buddy-buddy with the youth

34:02

of tomorrow. I

34:05

felt like we were just like the photo op

34:07

kids.

34:10

So what were you feeling

34:12

in that moment? Explain that feeling of

34:14

sort of being used as props and was that

34:17

something that became common as you continued

34:19

to be a youth climate activist? Wow,

34:22

it's been a minute since I've heard that scene. I

34:24

was 15 years old.

34:27

I

34:29

was in this very small, intense

34:32

period of time

34:34

where

34:37

there were about 100 other young people from

34:39

around the world. And we were all

34:42

in this space working together because

34:44

we were there

34:45

under the impression that we would

34:48

be actually collaborating and working with

34:51

our environmental ministers and with our leaders and

34:53

that we would have a

34:55

say in our own lives that we would

34:57

be able to actually influence

35:00

policy and participate

35:02

in a meaningful way. And some

35:05

of the stuff that when I think about it now

35:08

that we were talking about, even now is still,

35:10

I guess, kind of radical but hits right

35:13

to the point of this climate

35:16

crisis, of this existential crisis of,

35:20

okay, we need to address as

35:22

human beings our sense of responsibility

35:24

and we need to address our selfishness. We

35:27

need to rethink how

35:29

we actually live and engage with each other

35:31

and live with this planet because this is how

35:34

we've gotten into this monumental

35:36

problem. This is what is killing people every

35:39

year and impacting all of our lives. And

35:41

I was so proud and so inspired

35:44

by these other kids

35:46

who were also my friends. We became

35:48

such fast friends. My friend,

35:51

Abraar from Bangladesh, and

35:53

I remember him telling me about how the floods

35:56

in his country had been getting worse every

35:58

year, every year.

35:59

that he would be walking through the city

36:02

streets, waist deep

36:04

or higher in water and how you'd

36:07

have to just keep going about your day and trying

36:09

to be okay. And when

36:11

this moment happened, when we were finally, we're going

36:13

to be interacting with our ministers, it

36:16

really was just a photo op. And at

36:19

the time, it was the first time

36:21

of my realizing that, oh, these leaders,

36:24

these ministers aren't necessarily these

36:26

gods of morality who want

36:29

to make everything okay and have our

36:31

best interests at heart, that they

36:33

too are human beings with flaws and

36:36

with preconceived notions. And very

36:39

much only viewed us as eye candy

36:43

to be used for their benefit.

36:44

Our words were stripped down, they were made

36:46

stupid. It was

36:49

incredibly shocking, I couldn't believe

36:51

it. And it was only the kids from the G8 countries

36:54

who actually got to go and interact

36:56

with their ministers. So,

36:58

Breyer didn't go, my friend from Indonesia

37:00

didn't go, my friend from Nepal didn't go. So

37:02

basically all the countries from the global south

37:05

were not represented or there at all. And

37:07

it just, it felt gross

37:09

to me. And I think

37:11

I've become a little bit more slightly

37:13

jaded with time because

37:15

that just kept happening again and again and again

37:18

and again. And

37:20

that was what got me on this journey of this documentary.

37:22

That's what got me on this journey of being

37:25

a climate activist was that I felt like,

37:28

okay, I'm not gonna be the kid necessarily who

37:30

goes and

37:32

chains himself to a reactor

37:34

fence. I'm not gonna be the kid

37:36

who goes and stages some

37:39

crazy publicity stunt. But

37:43

I can be the person who goes and filmed them because

37:46

no one was paying attention to kids at that time. No

37:49

one was

37:50

taking them seriously. And I felt like,

37:52

I'm here, I'm willing, I'm

37:55

gonna just do it.

37:57

And it must've been frustrating to feel that. sort

38:00

of lack of power,

38:02

lack of agency, especially after having this

38:04

really profound interaction

38:07

with Cousteau who had sort of given

38:09

you the license to pursue question

38:11

asking and pursuit of the truth.

38:14

And I'm wondering how you sort of handled

38:16

that feeling in the moment and how

38:18

much that inspired you to continue

38:20

this project of this evolving documentary that you

38:22

had started.

38:24

Being in that moment in Japan of seeing

38:27

my new friends who were, even

38:28

though they were young,

38:31

were the smartest people in the room. Were the most

38:34

empathetic, kind, and thoughtful

38:36

people in the room not

38:38

being listened to. It made me extremely

38:40

angry. At first I was very depressed and

38:43

sad, but it then changed

38:45

into this deep anger and this

38:47

sense of astonishment

38:49

that

38:51

these kids who

38:53

are going to be inheriting this world from our leaders

38:57

were not being taken seriously. They weren't even

38:59

listening to them. And

39:02

I took that anger and I

39:05

decided that,

39:07

I needed to go find these other

39:09

kids who were as impassioned as I was, because

39:11

even though this was such a meaningful experience, pretty

39:13

much my friend, Abraar, and I were

39:16

maybe some of the only ones who kept going

39:19

because it was so unsettling

39:22

to go and put your heart and soul

39:24

into something and work so hard and then to not be taken

39:26

seriously. So many kids just backed away. And

39:29

that became a cycle that I saw again and again

39:31

over the years going to UN climate talks of

39:34

kids going in wholehearted

39:37

and optimistic and

39:39

young and happy and not

39:41

being able to deal with it, with the rejection.

39:44

Roughly what percentage would you say of

39:46

the people within that cohort that you started

39:48

and with in the early 2000s, 2010s are

39:50

still activists today?

39:55

Maybe 10%, 15%. So

39:59

what does that say? say that there's a high rate of burnout?

40:01

It definitely says that there's

40:04

a high rate of burnout because when

40:06

you take a step back and you look at

40:09

what we're actually dealing with, we've

40:11

been having these climate

40:14

change conferences since

40:16

the first one took place

40:18

three days before it was born. And

40:22

there is this overwhelming

40:24

sense of urgency and need that

40:26

has been there, but

40:29

maybe kicked to the side over the decades.

40:31

And young people feel it more, I think,

40:34

than a lot of other

40:36

parties feel it more than their leaders

40:39

because this is very much going to be

40:41

impacting their world and their future and their

40:43

life. Maybe we thought at the time

40:46

it was going to impact our kids or

40:48

our grandkids more, and we're now very

40:50

well aware that it's impacting our lives too.

40:53

But

40:54

when you go to these spaces,

40:57

usually they take place where all of the leaders

40:59

and presidents and whatnot are, it's very

41:02

opulent and separate and

41:05

refined. And until

41:07

Paris, all of the youth climate

41:09

activists and NGOs and

41:12

other parties were relegated to

41:15

a random warehouse type environment

41:17

that was nearby but not too close. And

41:20

it could be really dehumanizing

41:22

to be in those spaces where

41:24

you're talking

41:26

about the very fundamentals of life,

41:29

of what it means to be a human, of what it means

41:31

to

41:33

have a community, to

41:35

have an identity that is being threatened

41:37

by climate

41:40

change, particularly if you're in the global

41:42

south of having ancestors who are buried

41:44

in this place and have been for centuries and

41:47

you won't be able to live there anymore, you'll have to

41:49

leave.

41:50

The US or powerful countries coming in

41:52

with 300 negotiators who can be

41:55

at every single meeting they want to be at, and

41:57

then you have the real stakeholders only have

41:59

one negotiation.

41:59

because that's all they can afford. And

42:02

they get easily overwhelmed

42:04

and can only go to certain ones and so they aren't

42:06

really there with a voice. And

42:10

so it's incredibly depressing to see that

42:12

year after year without fail, the one

42:14

thing that you can count on is that the climate crisis

42:16

is getting worse, that we're seeing it

42:18

more and more, that people are dying,

42:21

that people are losing their livelihoods.

42:24

And it feels like the

42:26

people in charge who have the power to make

42:28

real change are in a completely different reality.

42:31

And it's

42:34

very difficult. It's very hard.

42:37

And then you come home and most people

42:39

have never heard of

42:40

a COP or the UN Climate Change Conferences

42:43

and you feel like you're in this weird sense

42:46

of like, am I just screaming at

42:48

a wall? Am I screaming into the void? Like,

42:50

can no one else see this? Am I

42:52

insane? It's

42:54

hard when the

42:56

people that you love don't necessarily understand

42:58

what you're doing. It's hard to

43:01

see how everything that you thought was going to

43:04

happen is coming to pass like

43:06

some horrible

43:07

prophecy and

43:10

people are still coming up with the same ideologies

43:14

and ideas and ways forward and

43:16

solutions as they were 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago.

43:20

That is why there is a huge rate of burnout.

43:23

Well, what is your relationship

43:26

with climate activism now?

43:33

I like to think that I

43:35

can be a person who can go

43:38

to the current kind of crop of

43:40

youth climate activists and help them

43:43

in this hard time and remind them of where

43:45

they came from. That

43:49

it really truly is another

43:53

example of you're able to do what you're

43:55

doing because of 30 years of

43:58

other youth climate activists fighting.

43:59

to even be able to be allowed

44:02

to speak at the UN, of being

44:04

in these positions, of being the first

44:07

one to sue the US government, of being

44:10

like

44:10

all these kids have

44:13

been fighting this fight. Oh,

44:15

like I always think of Severn Kalisizuki at 12

44:18

years old in 1992 in Rio. You

44:21

teach us to not

44:24

to fight with others, to

44:26

work things out, to respect

44:28

others, to clean up our mess,

44:31

not to hurt other creatures, to

44:33

share, not be greedy. Then

44:36

why do you go out and do the things you

44:38

tell us not to do? Do

44:42

not forget why you're

44:44

attending these conferences. Who

44:46

you're doing this for? We

44:48

are your own children. You

44:52

are deciding what kind of a world we are growing

44:54

up in. I still get that video

44:56

sent to me like, oh wow, look at this

44:58

girl, we have to support her. And it's like, this is from 30

45:01

years ago. So I think

45:04

particularly with this documentary and

45:06

my experiences of way

45:08

too many burnt out nights of the soul,

45:12

I feel like I have something

45:14

to offer when I meet with

45:16

young people and I meet with kids who are starting

45:19

out at the same age I did and telling

45:21

them that it's okay to not be a

45:23

crazy activist robot.

45:25

When I was a youth climate activist, I

45:27

was embarrassed that I felt burnt

45:30

out. I was embarrassed that I

45:33

was feeling overwhelmed when really

45:35

what I should have been doing was looking towards

45:37

my friends and my community and

45:40

talking to them about it. But I felt like

45:42

if I took a step away, I was letting down the movement.

45:45

And then I realized years later that everyone

45:47

else felt the same way. What would

45:49

you say to the younger you in

45:52

this climate activism space? Oh,

45:55

well, I think if

45:58

I was to talk to the younger me. uh,

46:00

one of the most important things that I could say

46:02

would be to, and I understand

46:05

saying this, that there is a certain

46:08

degree of privilege, but to

46:10

say, to not,

46:13

um,

46:13

to not be so hard on myself. I

46:17

look back at it now and there is a part of me that

46:19

is angry that

46:20

the narrative

46:22

encouraged me as a child

46:25

to believe that

46:27

I could fix the world's problems. And

46:30

that led

46:33

to years of struggling with

46:36

anxiety and depression and

46:39

perfectionism and wondering,

46:42

you know, I was putting my all in, why wasn't,

46:45

why weren't things getting better? I was

46:47

just not working hard enough.

46:50

And I

46:51

grieve for my child's self thinking

46:54

that

46:55

I could make it all better, but

46:58

it is a fallacy to think

47:01

that a child can

47:03

fix this problem when we're looking at

47:05

hundreds of years of

47:08

systemic injustice and hundreds

47:10

of years of

47:12

convenience and consumerism over the

47:14

health of people in the planet and, and

47:17

money. I think

47:20

there needs to be a lot more kindness. There needs to be

47:22

a lot more, uh, empathy and compassion

47:24

and listening. And I think

47:27

we need to acknowledge that maybe

47:30

we can't

47:31

win the climate battle

47:33

the way that we thought we could, the way that we were told

47:35

that we could, it actually is

47:37

really

47:38

meaningful

47:40

to try to change your community and where you

47:42

live and where you are, that

47:43

that does

47:45

make a difference.

47:46

I think even if it's just for

47:50

people to feel like

47:51

they are maybe living in a better way,

47:54

I've really come to this place in my

47:56

life where I feel like that is also important.

48:00

Slater Jule Kimker is a filmmaker and

48:02

climate activist. Thank you so much for sharing

48:04

your story with us on Climate One. It's

48:07

my pleasure. Thank you so much. Abrar

48:10

Anwar has experienced the impacts of climate

48:12

disruption his whole life.

48:14

A US citizen, he grew up in

48:16

Bangladesh, a country he describes

48:18

as unbelievably beautiful, but

48:20

beset by climate-induced severe storms,

48:23

flooding, tidal surges, and

48:25

more. I was around 11 or 12

48:28

years old, and we were going to renew my passport.

48:32

And the top of our car went underwater

48:35

as we approached the embassy. We

48:37

had to get out, we had to wade through

48:40

almost hip-high water and get there.

48:42

And right next to the US embassy, like, say

48:45

the end of the same street, there was one of the

48:47

largest slums in the area. And

48:50

you got to the embassy and you saw all these cars pulling

48:52

up into this lovely dry space. And

48:54

you would look around

48:55

and you would see people having to pull

48:57

their belongings, their clothes onto floating

49:00

pieces of wood and

49:02

pull it out of the slum uphill

49:04

towards somewhere where it's drier. He

49:07

got into the climate movement when he was 16, thanks

49:09

to his involvement in his school's debate team. There

49:12

was a debate competition about the environment.

49:15

And so to prep for this debate,

49:17

I started doing my research on

49:19

environmental problems in Bangladesh and

49:22

what I found shocked and horrified

49:24

me to my core. From then

49:26

on, I've been trying to

49:29

get my voice heard in as many places

49:31

as possible. And luckily, I got

49:34

to go to the G8 climate summit

49:36

by the time I was almost 18 and actually

49:40

saw how vast

49:43

and amazing the youth climate movement was and

49:45

how dedicated these children were, me being

49:48

a child myself at the time. It

49:51

really gave me hope and pushed me a lot further

49:54

into becoming a climate

49:56

activist. So I returned

49:59

from Japan. very inspired and

50:01

I participated in two or three environmental

50:03

groups here to help in

50:06

cleanups and in organizing

50:10

some more sustainable electricity sources

50:12

for people in the villages and

50:14

helped my friend start the Lal Shahbouj Foundation,

50:17

which to this day they're heavy

50:19

into the environmental activism seen here

50:22

doing cleanups, road cleanups,

50:24

tree planting,

50:25

marches, conferences

50:28

and everything. And it's entirely youth

50:30

led.

50:30

So we phase out as we grow older.

50:33

Those of us that live in industrialized wealthy

50:35

countries know sort of intellectually

50:38

that there are people in developing nations

50:40

that are being hit now have been hit

50:43

first and worst by climate disasters. But

50:45

it's still another thing to actually see it

50:47

and then yet another to live it or experience

50:49

it personally. How do you make this

50:51

crisis real for people who aren't living

50:54

it the way you are?

50:55

We're a more interconnected

50:57

society today than we

50:59

were 20 years ago. We

51:02

saw in the war in Ukraine for the first time

51:04

that people could go live on the ground

51:07

in affected areas and show us what

51:10

their lives are like. And it

51:12

really woke a lot of people up. People who had

51:14

no investment or stake started

51:17

helping out. The climate movement,

51:19

while it has been leveraging that, I

51:21

think people in affected areas themselves

51:23

need to be reaching out more

51:25

instead of

51:27

news channels broadcasting it for their

51:29

audience. There need to be

51:31

live streams from our government. There

51:33

need to be people going into affected areas

51:36

across the world to show everyone

51:39

exactly what's happening here. And I think a look at

51:41

the ground level view of how people are living

51:44

through these climate disasters

51:46

would actually open a lot of other

51:48

people's eyes. So you transitioned

51:51

from climate activism to working in sustainable

51:53

tech. Do you think you've avoided

51:55

the burnout that so many of your peers

51:57

experienced

51:58

from being youth climate activists? activists? To

52:01

an extent, yes. Now, there

52:03

are times I'm still on the ground, especially

52:06

because I'm in a country where this kind

52:08

of disasters are happening regularly, so

52:10

you can never really count yourself out. But

52:13

I have definitely seen the

52:16

burnout from not being heard, screaming

52:18

and speaking to the same policymakers over

52:21

and over again, the transition

52:23

from being youth to being an adult and still

52:26

not being heard,

52:27

and still fighting in the same movement. In the same

52:29

movement and not knowing whether you've gained

52:32

an inch or not. It's been

52:34

a really big burnout on a lot of my friends that I know.

52:36

How do you think you avoided that? I'm

52:39

not saying I did, but to an extent, being

52:42

a father helps. Because

52:44

giving up at that point is

52:46

not an option.

52:47

The next generation is here. Like we

52:50

were the youth climate activists, there is

52:52

a new generation of them now. We've

52:54

got kids of our own that are inheriting

52:56

the world next. I think that

52:59

really helped with me staying

53:01

focused, but I wouldn't say I've avoided

53:03

the burnout. I felt the depression, I

53:05

felt the crash. I've seen my friends

53:07

get arrested and hosed down and

53:10

taken away by cops and have

53:13

had to bail some of them out

53:16

or shelter some of them through issues like that.

53:19

And it's definitely taken a toll.

53:22

There were days where getting

53:24

up and working didn't seem like an option. And

53:27

I have to say, maybe it's just taking

53:29

a deep breath and realizing the world is still

53:31

incredibly beautiful. Like we

53:34

have not lost everything we're fighting to

53:36

save. And there's very beautiful

53:38

people out there. We're trying to make it a better place even

53:40

now. I think eventually when you see

53:43

what everyone else is doing, you yourself come

53:45

back into it.

53:46

And it helps you

53:48

get back on your feet and go, no, every

53:50

little bit still does count. Everyone's

53:52

still trying. spoke

54:00

with Kyle Gracie, another youth activist

54:02

highlighted in Slater Jewel Kemker's film

54:05

Youth Unstoppable.

54:06

I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania

54:09

that was sort of coal country and my

54:11

family had worked in coal. So that was

54:13

my first exposure to fossil fuels. But

54:16

what happened in, I think it was around

54:19

high school, is they started building

54:21

wind turbines in the

54:24

county next to me. And

54:26

so those started becoming a thing that people

54:28

were talking about. And there were

54:30

literally places up in the hills

54:32

in Pennsylvania where you could look one direction

54:35

and see wind turbines and look behind

54:37

you and

54:38

see coal mines.

54:40

And so it was just this kind of wild

54:42

visual of sort of the past and the future

54:44

of energy. And

54:47

so around that time, as

54:49

I was learning about that, I was also learning about this thing

54:51

called climate change and

54:54

just making the connections between those

54:56

two and getting concerned about it.

54:58

I'd like to play a moment of this clip

55:00

from you. This was filmed at COP15,

55:03

the United Nations climate negotiations

55:05

in Copenhagen in 2009 when

55:08

you were 24.

55:08

So right here, we're basically trying

55:11

to ensure that a really strong deal comes out of the

55:13

climate negotiations, working with a lot of international

55:15

youth from around the world in solidarity

55:17

on the same issues and trying to push for strong

55:19

climate action. I just want to share the passion

55:22

of youth and understand that we're here, we're

55:24

ready, we're involved, and we're just going

55:26

to get bigger. We're not just here to say that

55:29

when we get older that we tried. We think

55:31

that we can have an impact and we

55:33

won't stop until we see the clean

55:35

energy future that we all want.

55:37

So that was nearly 15 years ago, and

55:39

that particular COP was notoriously a bit of a

55:41

bust. There was not a strong deal that

55:44

resulted from those negotiations.

55:46

What is it like to hear that now?

55:49

I think it still tracks for me the

55:52

focus on not just being

55:54

there, either as a

55:57

spectator, like some people were, or just

55:59

one person.

55:59

wanting to try, but actually really being

56:02

focused and believing that we

56:04

could have an impact. Copenhagen

56:07

wasn't much of a success, but

56:09

over the longer period of time, we have had successes.

56:12

Young people around the world have been successful

56:15

in moving the needle on

56:18

climate action.

56:19

What I

56:20

aspired to do at that moment

56:23

is what we actually went on to do, to bring

56:26

the power of young people to

56:28

the climate negotiations, to

56:31

influence decision makers, to be

56:34

more future focused and future

56:36

generations focused, and to take

56:38

the entire issue more seriously

56:41

with their actions and their words

56:43

than I think they otherwise would have.

56:45

You said in that clip, we won't stop until

56:48

we see the clean energy future that we want. Did

56:50

you stop? Did you face burnout?

56:54

I did not stop. I continued

56:57

to work in climate. I still work

56:59

in climate for at least part of my work today.

57:02

I didn't personally experience

57:05

burnout, but I was definitely around

57:07

lots of folks who went through different

57:09

periods of burnout, many of them actually

57:12

because of Copenhagen. There was a lot

57:14

of burnout right after Copenhagen, but

57:17

fortunately I was able to avoid

57:19

that and keep the momentum going for

57:21

myself long after that.

57:24

Tell me what tools and strategies

57:26

you used to help yourself cope

57:28

and not

57:30

maybe experience the same level that

57:32

some of your peers did.

57:34

One is I tried to be realistic about what

57:36

the potential outcomes could

57:39

be. Some of the reasons that people got burned out of Copenhagen

57:41

was because there was this big narrative built

57:43

out that it was going to be the solution

57:46

to the climate crisis. When

57:48

that didn't happen and when it failed

57:51

so spectacularly, people

57:53

were just disillusioned because they had expected

57:55

that that was going to be everything. I

57:58

never expected it. I expected that. that

58:00

it would be at best, you know, incremental

58:02

progress, and at worst, no progress.

58:05

And it was some, ended up being somewhere in between, I

58:08

try to have kind of a healthy level of

58:11

making change, but recognizing that change

58:13

can take a long time. So that's been the biggest

58:15

one. And then, you know, just taking

58:18

care of myself, good self-care, you know, eating

58:20

well, exercising, sleeping, all the things that people

58:22

talk about for maintaining

58:24

good resilience. And then just

58:26

thinking carefully about why

58:29

I got into this in the first place and being

58:31

focused on that action orientation,

58:34

being focused on creating change, and remembering

58:36

that that's why I'm here and that

58:39

I'm planning to do that my whole life. And

58:41

so if I have to focus on this issue my whole

58:43

life to get there, that's fine. And

58:46

if I get there sooner than that, that's great. There's lots

58:48

of other challenges in the world that I can work on too.

58:51

Kyle Gracie is a strategy consultant with

58:53

Future Matters. Kyle, thank you so much

58:55

for joining us on Climate One. Thank

58:57

you. We've

59:02

heard a range of perspectives today from youth climate

59:04

activists who are now young adults. We

59:07

asked each of them to share their advice to

59:09

the youth getting involved in climate today. My

59:12

advice would be to be a little

59:14

more radical than we have been. Try

59:17

and shake up the system.

59:19

Governments don't like disruption.

59:22

Shut down the road in front of your parliament.

59:24

Organize marches. But not just that,

59:26

get yourself into positions of power.

59:29

Aim for places where you can stand

59:31

toe to toe with lobbyists, with policymakers,

59:33

with people who are influencing big

59:36

oil, big energy. Get yourself

59:38

in a position to be heard.

59:39

And making sure once you're in that position you don't

59:41

back down and you don't change your opinions

59:44

based on the pressure you will be feeling from

59:47

your peers at the time.

59:48

You are going to feel depressed.

59:50

You are going to feel overwhelmed and it's okay

59:53

to take a step back and to heal because

59:56

you won't be able to continue this work if you

59:58

just keep pushing on.

1:00:00

My biggest advice is to build

1:00:02

community. We are not

1:00:04

going to solve any of these problems

1:00:07

by ourselves. These are

1:00:09

complex, interconnected challenges,

1:00:13

and

1:00:14

we need an entire society of people

1:00:16

to do that effectively. So,

1:00:19

creating connections among other

1:00:21

people, working together on

1:00:23

this, and what we sort of call never

1:00:26

worrying alone, never being

1:00:28

stuck, thinking that you're the only person

1:00:30

who's taking on this challenge, and recognizing

1:00:32

that the reason it feels hard is because it is hard.

1:00:35

It's a big, complex thing that we're trying

1:00:37

to shift in the world, but it

1:00:39

can be done. People have changed the

1:00:41

world before, and young people have changed the world

1:00:43

before, and they can do it again.

1:00:45

Trust your authority as a

1:00:48

young person who will be impacted by this

1:00:50

crisis. And

1:00:53

remember that it's not about you,

1:00:55

that this is something collective. We

1:00:57

are tapping into something that's bigger than us with

1:00:59

having these conversations and engaging in

1:01:02

this work.

1:01:03

That was Abrar Anwar, Slater Joel

1:01:05

Kemker, Kyle Gracie, and Alec

1:01:08

Lors.

1:01:12

Climate One's empowering conversations connect

1:01:14

all aspects of the climate emergency. Talking

1:01:17

about climate can be hard, as we heard today, and

1:01:19

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1:01:21

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1:01:38

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1:01:41

Brad Marshland

1:01:42

is our Senior Producer. Our Managing

1:01:44

Director is Jenny Park. Ariana

1:01:46

Brocious is Co-host, Editor, and Producer. Austin

1:01:49

Colon is Producer and Editor. Megan

1:01:51

Basile is our Production Manager. Winsy Shada

1:01:54

is our Development Manager. Ben Testani

1:01:57

is our Communications Manager. Our theme music was

1:01:59

created by... composed by George Young and

1:02:01

arranged by Matt Wilcox. Gloria

1:02:03

Duffy is CEO of the Commonwealth Club of

1:02:05

California, the nonprofit and nonpartisan

1:02:08

forum where our program originates. I'm

1:02:10

Greg Dalton.