During the recent Northeast Ohio Youth Climate Summit, students made one thing clear: They are going to keep fighting in the face of climate change, and they are going to do so through joy and community.
Hannah Rosenfeld from Laurel School addressed more than 500 of her peers from across the region: “While fear and uncertainty still exist, there is tremendous joy to be found in the future we imagine for ourselves. So I encourage you to lead with that joy today.”
Climate activist Leah Thomas delivered a keynote speech that charted her path to becoming a climate activist, providing inspiration and guidance to the youth climate leaders from 28 schools across Northeast Ohio gathered at the Huntington Convention Center in Cleveland.
When Thomas was coming onto the climate activism scene, she leveraged social media to build a platform for intersectional environmentalism. And while social media is still a great tool, she believes community is the current way forward in the climate movement. “We need to act local, think global, and really build resilient communities. So some of the best ways that we can show up is becoming rooted in community,” Thomas said.
Students participated in breakout sessions led by their peers and climate and environment professionals from across the region. Sessions included topics such as cleaning up Ohio’s waterways, connecting air quality and Lake Erie water quality, the side effects of fast fashion, how to reduce waste by hang-drying laundry, the ripple effects of microplastics and the power of youth perspectives for the Great Lakes.
Students Daniel Yuhas, Michael Cacioli and Aiden Yu from Gilmour Academy presented information on how air quality and water quality are connected, while leading their peers to think of new ways to reduce both air and water pollution.
See You at the Top, a nonprofit promoting safe, accessible outdoor recreation, led a session on the power of youth perspectives for the Great Lakes Region. Directors Erika and Ebony Hood encouraged students to think about the climate impacts they inherited, as well as the impacts they have control over. Many students wrote about legacy pollution from the industrial and energy sectors, reliance on single-use plastics, overconsumption and pollution in the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie.
When asked to write things their generation could be doing that contribute to climate change and environmental harm, students wrote about their reliance on AI, overconsumption and their dependence on technology.
Students left the summit with a laundry list of daily actions they could bring into their homes, schools and communities, even some as small as the way they actually do their laundry. One session taught students the environmental benefits of hanging laundry out to dry instead of putting clothes through the dryer.
Students raced to hang a hamper of clothes onto a drying rack, seeing just how little time this new habit eats up. “My mom is gonna love it when I tell her about this,” one student joked.