AZ Students Learn: Their Legislators Don't Care Unless It's Meaningless; Certainly Not On Climate

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Young activists’ issues with the Legislature extend beyond school safety. Teens who say their generation will be most affected by the negative impacts of climate change say they’ve struggled to be taken seriously.

Aditi Narayanan, a 16-year-old junior at BASIS Phoenix, helped organize a student group, AZ Youth Climate Strike, that urged legislative action on climate change. She and other members of the group spent time at the Capitol this session talking to lawmakers about bills on water conservation, solar power and fracking. “A lot of legislators are just like ‘Oh, my God, you guys are 16, that’s so cute,’ and they don’t think we actually understand the issues,” Narayanan said. “We’ve had representatives that refused to speak to us.”

Some lawmakers said they were too busy to speak, or directed the students to talk to interns instead, Narayanan said. The students left feeling disheartened. “I noticed that state lawmakers make a lot of laws that primarily affect young people, and they were so surprised when young people came to the Capitol,” Narayanan said. “There are a lot more bills that we should be working on before lemonade.”

Legislation the Youth Climate Strike organizers supported didn’t go anywhere this year, so students are redirecting their attention to local government and education. Another national youth environmental group with Arizona chapters, the Sunrise Movement, already does most of its organizing on the local level, organizer Jess Bristow said. The group’s members spent a lot of this session focused on Arizona’s drought contingency plan, which they said didn’t do enough to conserve water.

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https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2019/05/17/teens-lack-juice-at-legislature-unless-its-lemonade/