Ocean acidification, offshore oil controversy, and invasive plant species. These are pressing climate issues, but how do you talk about them?
To figure it out, students at UC Santa Barbara teamed up with 20 high school activists from across the country during a retreat to Santa Cruz Island late last month. It was a workshop in climate leadership and literacy, to learn the best modes of communication for California’s — and the globe’s — most relevant climate dilemmas.
It marked the beginning of a summer chock-full of lessons for future climate leaders.
“Climate Science Communications is really important to me, and I think it should really be an emphasis for a lot of our youth,” said Lotus Vermeer, the UCSB Bren School of Environmental Science’s assistant dean of development and partnerships.
The trip was made possible through the nonprofit Bluedot Institute’s Climate Leadership Program, which fundraised for the retreat, paid Vermeer’s PhD students, and provided the climate leadership curriculum, which was designed and led by Sarah Ream, former head of the Drama Department at Phillips Exeter Academy.
When Victoria Riskin founded her eco-minded media company, Bluedot Living, she said she wanted to make sure she also created a pathway to mentor young people to support their climate communication and leadership skills.
The Climate Leadership Program works with high school students around the country. It connects them through zoom meetings and residential retreats like the recent program on Santa Cruz Island, facilitated with the help of the Bren School.
“Kids are acutely aware of the threats to the planet they are facing and many want to make a difference,” Riskin said. “For the Santa Cruz program, my Bluedot teammates, Leigh Anne Neal and Graciela Montgomery, recruited students from public and private schools in the region and from the East.”
The Bluedot team and Vermeer camped at the UCSB Santa Cruz Island Reserve alongside the students for the four-day trip immersed in one of the Central Coast’s most unique environments.
“Last year our Climate Leadership Retreat for youth was at the MIT Media Lab in Boston, a fantastic place, but Santa Cruz Island was unique … a place of rare beauty … and little cell phone service. We trundled around in beaten up old trucks, and went to waterfalls,” Riskin said. “It was great. For me, too.”
On top of leadership and communications training, students engaged in layered activities all around the island — exploring, learning about the island’s environmental challenges and conservation issues, and talking through the transformation of the Channel Islands over the years, such as the removal of invasive pigs and sheep.
“The PhD students come from very different backgrounds, so they have very different perspectives and areas of research that they can share with the students,” Vermeer said.
What Vermeer is looking forward to now is an upcoming partnership with Safe Passage Youth, which takes kids from low-income families and trains them in restoration work, such as creating wildfire buffers and planting native plants and trees, and pays them for their work. These kids will be joining Vermeer’s PhD students to complete restoration work on Santa Cruz Island this summer.
The recent trip laid a foundation for more of these initiatives, for both Riskin and Vermeer.
“I was with kids that had never been out to Santa Cruz Island before,” Vermeer said. “Most of them, including the kids from our own backyard, didn’t even know there was this remote island right out there, only a stone’s throw away from us here in Santa Barbara.”
The kids got to see the real impact of habitat restoration on the island. At the end of the trip, each of the students completed a presentation on a climate issue that interests them.
“It was very moving … just thinking, ‘Okay, this, this is starting to work,’” Vermeer continued. “This actually can maybe help make a difference. We’re starting to build our future of environmental leadership and climate activism.”
Riskin agreed. “These real life experiences have an impact for a lifetime.”
The Bluedot Institute raised the funds for the program including scholarships for most of the kids and stipends for the Bren students from just a handful of donors, Riskin said. “I go around with my begging cup,” she grinned. “And we finally get there!”
In addition to a year-around writing program for youth, the Institute’s next residential retreat will be on Martha’s Vineyard for another 20 kids this summer in mid-July, with scholarships based on need, Riskin said.
“We’re looking forward to another retreat in partnership with Bren next year, this time at the Sedgwick Preserve in Santa Ynez,” she continued. “We’re building a solid foundation for collaboration and like Rick famously says in the movie Casablanca; ‘I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’”
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