CLIMATE SUMMIT
Annual Capital Region youth event empowers students ‘to do something in their communities’
MALTA, N.Y. » Laura West and Dane Andersen have become familiar with creating climate action plans.
The seniors at Ballston Spa High School have attended youth climate summits in Tupper Lake at The Wild Center in consecutive years. Last year, each attended the first ever Capital Region Youth Climate Summit. The Summit, which lasts two days, returned Tuesday at HVCC TEC-SMART with seven schools involved.
“You are trying to empower students to do something in their communities,” Andersen explained. “This is a worldwide movement, and you really do have to get to the political level, but it has to start somewhere.
“It has to start from those grass root movements that students start, that students lead. And that’s what we are trying to do here.”
The Summit is organized and coordinated by students and teachers from the Ballston Spa Central School District, the Clean
Technologies & Sustainable Industries ECHS, Schuylerville Central School District and The Wild Center in Tupper Lake.
West said the summits at Tupper Lake have been great.
“Just being in the Wild Center, seeing how much you just wanted to preserve, how much is out there that’s beautiful and we’re just destroying it,” West said.
West will attend SUNY ESF to be a forest resource manager with an emphasis on policy. Eventually, she wants to get her masters in environmental law.
She spoke about the importance of the Summit.
“It’s incredibly amazing to have the influence on several different kids to show several different ways that you can create solution, because there’s not just one path to one thing,” West said. “[To be able to] open eyes to what the reality is that there’s limited time, you see people leaving with mind sets in the place we want them to be.”
Over the course of two days, teenagers will develop a Climate Action Plan to help the environment in any way possible.
“I wanted people to leave with ideas. I want people to leave with a plan,” West said. “The framework and the center of everything that we do is the Climate Action Plan, and there’s plans for everything you can think of: water management, waste management, composting, recycling, the whole nine yards, and we show people how much there is to improve.”
Before the Climate Action Plan can be created, students cycle through various workshops to help lay the foundation.
“We are trying to get students to understand that this enthusiasm has to be driven somewhere, and we are just trying to give them that specific groundwork, so that they can take this and go do something with it,” Andersen said.
Andersen will attend Colorado College where he plans to major in anthropology while studying environmental science.
Jared Snyder, Deputy Commissioner of Air Resources, Climate Change and Energy for New York State, began festivities Tuesday with remarks about climate change.
Sunrise Movement then presented on how the youth can impact the climate. Andersen and West heard Sunrise Movement talk at Tupper Lake, which is why they invited them to speak Tuesday morning.
“The movements have to come from somewhere. We are just trying to empower the youth to be that change,” said Andersen. “Youth really do have a voice, and they can make a difference. We just have to bring these ideas and our enthusiasm to the local government and to the state government and to the federal government, just so that we can make the largest impact that we can make.”