Teen ‘all in’ for planet
The 15-year-old climate change activist and UConn freshman is determined to protect the planet
Sena Wazer, a 15-year-old UConn freshman from Mansfield, says she’s “all in” as she brings attention to climate change.
Sena Wazer is a 15-year-old from Mansfield who, like many other young people around the world, is growing increasingly frightened and angry about what unchecked climate change could do to their future.
The difference between Wazer and many of those frustrated teenagers is that this articulate and determined first-year student at the University of Connecticut has no doubts about what to do next to protect her planet.
“I’m just going all in,” Wazer said. “I have to push hard. What other choice do I have?”
Although Wazer probably isn’t yet on the political radar screens of Gov. Ned Lamont and top legislative leaders, that may soon change.
Wazer was one of the organizers who helped bring hundreds of protestors to the state Capitol in September for a Climate Action Strike to demand that Lamont declare a climate change emergency in Connecticut.
In Wazer’s opinion, Lamont’s response to the demonstrators’ demands for swift action “was not satisfactory.” She’s now helping to put together another climate demonstration for Dec. 6 to remind the governor that this issue isn’t going to fade away.
“I think we have to keep coming,” Wazer said, “and keep saying that we’re still here.”
She is also working on plans for a major lobbying campaign during the 2020 General Assembly session, aiming to convince lawmakers to pass bills to halt fossil fuel infrastructure spending in Connecticut, expand energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, and to require climate education in schools.
Despite her youth, Wazer has been involved in environmental activism for a decade. She’s lobbied Congress to preserve protections for marine mammals. For years, she’s been giving public presentations on the plight of the world’s whales. She regularly speaks at schools on the need for climate action, including an appearance last week at Windsor High School.
Major environmental organizations that include the Natural Resources Defense Council and Clean Water
Action have praised her work or given Wazer awards. She has been interviewed on National Public Radio and by other media outlets.
Aside from all that publicity and her organizing abilities, there’s another reason why Connecticut’s political elites may want to keep an eye on this young woman: she has some deadly serious political ambitions.
“Maybe town politics to start, then state, hopefully federal,” Wazer said, with a matter-of-fact sort of smile.
“I don’t want to be just on the outside. You need people in the inside if you really want to make big changes.”
Wazer’s youth, her commitment to doing something about climate change and her ability to communicate her passion remind a lot of people of 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
While Wazer admires Thunberg’s international efforts on the issue, she flinches a bit when asked about the “Connecticut’s Greta Thunberg” comments.
“I get it all the time,” Wazer said. “I think what she’s doing is amazing. … She’s inspired youth all over the world, and that’s very powerful.
“I’d prefer not to be called somebody else. … But people mean it in a nice way.”
Wazer has the sort of quiet self-confidence that’s rare in someone her age.
Some of that may come from being a second-degree black belt in karate, a sport she’s been involved in for more than five years and now enjoys teaching to kids.
“I like doing physical activity,” Wazer said. “I like pushing myself. … And it’s a place for me to get away from climate change.”
Wazer grew up on her parent’s small farm not far from the UConn campus and was home-schooled until she started classes at Manchester Community College when she was 13.
Her parents weren’t big environmentalists, according to Wazer. Both educated as engineers, Wazer’s father now works as director of a research lab for an organization affiliated with UConn, and her mother is a teacher at E.O. Smith High School in Storrs. She also has a younger sister,
Aiyana.
Starting at a major university hasn’t been a problem academically for Wazer, but she admits that she does “have a hard time making friends” at UConn. Part of that may be from her age, part from the fact she is still living at home, but also because she spends so much time on her climate change work.
Wazer’s involvement in environmental causes started at age 5. Her father brought her a book about a young whale entangled in fishing nets. Although that story ends with the whale being freed, Wazer was shocked to learn in an author’s note that most whales caught in fishing nets never get free.
“I started crying and whining,” Wazer recalled. After several days of hearing her complaints, Wazer said, her dad told her that, if she felt that bad, she should do something about it.
“I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life focused on whales and whale conservation,” Wazer said.
It wasn’t until she read the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2015 that the magnitude of the problems facing the planet really struck home, according to Wazer. She eventually decided her focus had to shift from simply saving the whales to saving the planet.
Wazer says she finds it a lot easier to convince young people of the need for swift action to curb climate change than to get older folks to understand.
“I think a lot of high school students get it,” Wazer said. “Because we’re young, it’s easier for us to change.”
Some of the students she’s encountered at UConn look at the facts surrounding global warming and the difficulty of getting government to act and simply say, “We’re doomed,” according to Wazer.
“I don’t like that mindset,” she said. But she added that she is also frustrated by the slow-motion reactions of state and federal government to what Wazer and most climate experts warn is an urgent situation.
Wazer said she feels she is being heard by most people when she talks about the need for urgency in dealing with climate change. “Recent research has shocked a lot of people out of apathy,” she said.
“I am hopeful,” Wazer said of the campaign to do something about climate change before it’s too late. “I’m hopeful, but I’m also scared.
“I fear for my future. I fear for my generation’s future.”
“I’m just going all in. … I have to push hard. What other choice do I have?”
— Sena Wazer, Connecticut climate activist