I’ve always pictured extreme air pollution as something that only happens in China, where coal power plants, manufacturing, and insane car traffic create suffocating smog. Not until I was diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma in 2013 did I consider the role of air pollution and air quality in my personal health. Inhalers help me manage my […]
Despite many being under the legal voting age, a contingent of high school youth gathered at Governor Dayton’s office on Friday November 21st to deliver over 1,000 public comments and photo petitions in support of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan before the December 1 comment deadline. The students, part of the Will Steger Foundation’s YEA! […]
At noon on Sunday, March 3, 2014 I used a plastic zip-tie to lock myself onto the fence in front of the White House and remained there for nearly six hours in protest of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. Alongside me, 304 fellow young people did the same thing, while another 70 or […]
Hello, our names are Sophia Showalter and Elayna Shapiro, and we are Steering Committee members for Youth Environmental Activists of Minnesota (YEA! MN), a program of the Will Steger Foundation, and both students at Hopkins High School. Last weekend, we had the amazing opportunity to travel to Pittsburgh to attend Power Shift, a youth environmental conference that brought […]
Just in case our 5 years of swarming state capitals decked out in green hard hats, running campaigns calling for more jobs in clean energy, and vowing to only vote for candidates who support renewable energy companies hasn’t made it clear — youth really want more green jobs.
One year ago today, a team of intelligent and dynamic Midwest youth were preparing for an expedition that would impact their lives forever. These twelve young leaders, hailing from seven different states set aside their studies, their work, and their personal lives for an intense immersion experience in the COP15 UNFCCC international climate negotiations, as […]