Two eighth graders wearing aprons and laboratory goggles stood in Pacific Crest Middle School’s outdoor courtyard holding full bottles of water on a recent frigid, sunny afternoon. Their shivering classmates surrounded them.

Three Bend High School students — Sydney Dedrick, Kira Gilbert and Galen Genevieve “GG” Johnson — explained that one of the eighth graders held a heated water bottle, and the other had a chilled bottle. Dedrick told the teens to shake the bottles and twist open the caps. The warm water bottle immediately fizzed up and sprayed all over the courtyard like a shaken-up soda. The crowd of eighth graders erupted with excitement, squealing and shouting.

The experiment demonstrated how global warming is heating ocean water, triggering the release of more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

“Imagine if those bottles were the ocean, and imagine a warm ocean,” Dedrick said. “You’ve got a ton of carbon (dioxide) coming out. But when the ocean’s cold, it’s able to keep all that carbon inside.”

Dedrick, Gilbert and Johnson are part of a worldwide movement of teen climate activists. The visit to Pacific Crest Middle School is one of many ways the trio of 17-year-old juniors — co-presidents of Bend High School’s environmental club — have taken steps to address climate change.

Teen activists are making a more concerted effort to have their voices heard on the subject of climate change for two primary reasons. First, many of them can’t vote yet, so activism is a way to take action, said Ella Shriner, a 17-year-old Portland climate activist from Grant High School. Furthermore, the vast majority of kids and teens will outlive the politicians and adults now making decisions about their future.

“So many things affect us, and we can’t always vote,” she said. “It’s important to show our leaders that they need to be representing us, too.”

Johnson agrees. “We’re the generation that’s going to be most affected by what’s happening now,” she said. “And our legislators and everyone that’s in power don’t seem to understand that (their decisions) are not just affecting them, but it’s affecting our futures.”

Worldwide, youth climate activists have left an impact. After Autumn Peltier confronted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about water conservation and indigenous water rights in 2016, many long-term water advisories were lifted throughout the country. A group of 21 American teens and young adults — many of whom are from the Pacific Northwest — sued the U.S. government in 2015, claiming that it was violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property through actions that sped up climate change. Los Angeles teen Nalleli Cobo has led numerous fights against the oil industry in her area for about a decade.

Bend summit is set

In Central Oregon, the Bend High School climate activists, along with two High Desert Museum curators, are planning the upcoming Youth Earth Optimism Summit, taking place at the High Desert Museum on Saturday. The event — funded in part by the Smithsonian Institution, a government-run group of research centers and museums — is one of 12 simultaneous teen-run climate summits being held around the U.S.

At the Bend summit, about 100 local teens will gather to discuss solutions for climate change and listen to keynote speeches from local teen climate activists, along with Bend City Councilor Gena Goodman-Campbell and non-profit founder and photographer Brown Cannon III.

Dedrick, Gilbert and Johnson, along with Bend High School students Grace Bengtson, Scout Gesuale and Olive Nye have led planning for the summit.

Louise Shirley, a curator at the High Desert Museum, said she asked the local teens to plan the summit after interviewing them for content for a renewable energy exhibit the museum displayed in the fall. So far, the partnership has been a success, she said.

“It’s been really inspiring to work with this group of teens,” Shirley said. “Their passion, their dedication is great to experience.”

The trio of activists said they were excited to see the summit in action.

“It’s all coming together, and I’m excited to see what happens,” Gilbert said.

Brian Coyle, who works in education outreach for the Smithsonian Institution and is helping organize the Earth Optimism summits around the country, said teenagers are uniquely qualified to lead these events.

“The climate and environmental emergency is the greatest threat humanity has faced, and … they’re the ones most impacted by this,” Coyle said. “I think it’s clear that they’re really mobilizing on a global scale in a way no other community is.”

Personal accountability

While these large events are important for the broader conversation, Dedrick, Gilbert and Johnson have taken many small, personal actions to shrink their carbon footprints. Dedrick is a vegetarian, and all three said they try to limit driving and buy sustainable products whenever possible.

The students’ environmental club at Bend High School has also organized many school-wide events. Efforts during Earth Week 2019 included a full week of eco-friendly activities and culminated in a walkout. More than 300 students participated.

“I think that brought a lot of awareness to (climate change),” Gilbert said.

Dedrick, Gilbert and Johnson have also waded into politics. At another climate-themed school walkout in fall 2019, they had students fill out postcards addressed to local Republican politicians — state Sen. Tim Knopp and state Reps. Cheri Helt and Jack Zika — asking them to take action to combat climate change, Gilbert said.

A year ago, Dedrick and Gilbert traveled to Salem to testify in favor of the controversial cap-and-trade bill. They said it was a great experience — but when Oregon Senate Republicans walked out of the Legislature later that spring, killing the bill, they were disappointed.

“When the Republicans walked out, I was like, ‘Wow, these people don’t represent me,’” Dedrick said. “Not just because they don’t share my views, but because I don’t think they’re respecting democracy by evading their jobs.”

Although he didn’t join that walkout, Knopp was, and still is, publicly against proposed cap-and-trade bills. The Bend teen activists said they hope he and other Oregon Republicans can eventually come to a compromise with Democrats for some version of that legislation.

“Climate shouldn’t be partisan, it affects everyone,” Gilbert said.

Knopp said he agrees with the teens that climate change is an important issue, but he felt the cap-and-trade bill’s carbon reduction goals weren’t realistic given existing technology.

“I think it’s incredibly important for people passionate on an issue to turn that passion into action, and I think that’s what these students are doing,” Knopp said. “I applaud their efforts and their enthusiasm, and it’s my hope that we can find some consensus on this issue.”

Gilbert, Dedrick and Johnson each said Swedish 17-year-old Greta Thunberg inspired them to take stronger activism roles.

Named Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2019, Thunberg gained followers by skipping school and sitting in front of the Swedish Parliament in August 2018 to draw attention to climate change. This kicked off a global teen climate movement, #FridaysForFuture, where teens are encouraged to walk out of class and hold strikes on Fridays to fight for climate change policies. The youth-led movement has held more than 100,000 strike events in 228 countries around the world, with about 13 million teens participating, according to #FridaysForFuture.

Shriner, the Portland teen climate activist, started getting involved in climate activism in eighth grade, she said. She and other activists — students and adults — successfully pressured the Portland City Council to pass a resolution to ban the construction of bulk fossil fuel terminals in 2016.

Two years later, during her sophomore year of high school, Shriner founded the Portland Youth Climate Council, a group of students that advise the Portland City Council on climate issues.

She said the worldwide scope of the teen climate activist movement gives her a sense of optimism for the planet’s future.

“I think it’s really amazing to see, especially the #FridaysForFuture movement taking off, and seeing how powerful of a force we can be globally,” Shriner said. “It’s in almost every major city in the world, and it’s all youth-led.”