Webinar: Teen Earth Optimism – How Young People Are Tackling Climate Change
Aired June 16, 2020
Meaghan Cuddy:
All right. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. Welcome to everyone. Thank you for joining our program. My name is Meaghan Cuddy, and I'm a museum educator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. While our museum is closed, we are coming to you all live from our homes and connecting you with our scientists, museum staff, and other experts all over the world. Thank you so much for joining us for today's Teen Tuesday Earth Optimism Program.
Before we begin today's program though, we would like to take a moment to acknowledge current events and let you know that the National Museum of Natural History stands with the Secretary of the Smithsonian, Dr. Lonnie Bunch, in expressing our deepest sympathy to families and communities that have been impacted by discrimination and violence. Today we are sharing our secretary's response and a resource in the Q&A, Talking About Race, that has been developed by our colleagues at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
This resource is full of tools and guidance to empower your journey and inspire conversation about race. During these times, I thank you very much for choosing to join us for today's program, and I hope that the Smithsonian can continue to be a valuable learning resource for you and your loved ones. Thank you so much for joining us today for Teen Tuesday. As I said, my name is Meaghan, and while everyone is joining, you can use the Q&A button that's at the bottom of your screen to let us know where you're joining us from.
That's the button that has two speech bubbles, and I'm joining you from my family home in New Jersey, and we'd love to know where you're joining us from, as well, so feel free to write in and let us know where you're from. Hello to Ursel from Atlanta, Tina from Seattle, Cora from Connecticut, Sophie from Derby, England. Hi, Sophie. Hello to everyone else. As you're joining and letting us know where you're from, I'd like to point out some of the additional features of this program.
You can use the Q&A box that you're writing into right now to ask your questions to our expert today. You can submit your questions at any point during the program, but we're going to be asking them during the second half of the program, so make sure you stick around to get your questions answered. Hello to everyone else who is joining us. Nathan from California, Hillary from Long Lake, Max from Virginia, Robert from Miami. Hi, everyone. Marion from D.C. Nice to see you all.
As you get acquainted with that chat box or that Q&A box, rather, that's also the box that we're going to be using to ask questions to you. Please keep in mind that during the program when we ask you questions, we'd really appreciate if you can keep them on topic as they're only going to be visible to Smithsonian staff. All right. Looks like just about everyone is here. Hello, Luke from Brooklyn. All right. We're going to get started.
As I said, welcome to Teen Tuesday. Today we're going to be talking about Earth optimism. As you might be familiar, our planet and many of the organisms that live here are facing lots of different stresses right now from lots of different human behaviors, including climate change. But a lot of people and people of all ages are working really, really hard in a variety of fields to make positive changes, including things like science, education, activism, policy.
I'm really excited today to introduce our guest, Jen Kretser, from The Wild Center to dig into some of this with us. Jen, hi, how are you?
Jen Kretser:
Good. How are you, Meaghan? Thanks for having me.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Thank you so much for being here. It's great to see you.
Jen Kretser:
Great to see you too. Thanks everyone who joined today. I definitely see some familiar names on there, so thanks for tuning in.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is awesome. We are so glad to know that some Wild Center fans are joining us today as well. Jen, where are you actually joining us from?
Jen Kretser:
I am actually joining you from The Wild Center, which is a science museum in Upstate New York, and I'm just going to share my screen so-
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome.
Jen Kretser:
... you can see where I am joining you all from today.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Cool.
Jen Kretser:
Give me one second.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Thank you for taking some time to talk with us today.
Jen Kretser:
Sure. I'm super excited to be here at The Wild Center. We're actually here on campus today, and we are a science center that is located in the Adirondack Park, which is a big park in Northern New York State. If you look at the inset in the corner, you can see the outline of the park. We're almost the size of Vermont, and there's lots of lakes and trees and mountains. And our museum, it's a mashup between a science center, a natural history museum, an aquarium and a nature center. It's a new kind of science museum, and we're focused on the natural history of the Adirondacks.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is so cool. That is absolutely beautiful. I am very jealous that that is the view that you guys get every day up there.
Jen Kretser:
I know. It is really pretty sweet.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Jen, at The Wild Center, you are the director of climate initiatives. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do in that role and what your job is like?
Jen Kretser:
Sure. My job is pretty dynamic. I love my job so much. I can't imagine being anywhere else. Well, I definitely do a lot of emailing and chatting with people, but I primarily am really focused on connecting people to nature and to the natural world, and helping right now through my work on climate change education, to work with young people around the globe to teach about climate change solutions, to learn about impacts, and to help us, particularly young people, have a voice in the future.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is awesome. What a really cool and inspiring job that must be.
Jen Kretser:
Yeah, it's pretty awesome.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Well, since you have this really cool career, I have to ask, how on Earth did you end up there? Or have you always been interested in working with young people or working on climate? What's your story?
Jen Kretser:
Well, my story is I actually grew up not far from here, and I live there now in the town of Saranac Lake, it's about 20 minutes away. I often take a hike early in the morning with my sister up to the top of a small mountain called Baker Mountain in Saranac Lake. So I guess I was always connected to the woods when I was a kid, and this is Baby Jen at like seven or eight years old.
My dad was a wildlife rehabilitator, so that meant that he would take home injured and orphaned wildlife, so I grew up with this menagerie of animals. So I really, really loved animals. I grew up fishing, and hiking, and exploring the region. Then, after college, my first job was at the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio. I'm here with one of the cheetahs, I think that was Maya and my still very good friend, Jen.
That was where I really fell in love with the idea of connecting people and nature. Also, for myself, I learned a lot more about the impacts that people were having on nature. Once I had that job at the zoo, I never looked back and followed my passion in the field of environmental education, and did a lot of work traveling around the world and worked at a lot of different types of environmental centers, and zoos, and nature centers, but ended up really wanting to be back here in the Adirondacks. So I've been working at The Wild Center for almost 14 years.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is so cool. I know your work now centers a lot on climate change, which is something that we've talked about in this program a lot, and we've covered in a number of our programs, the human mechanisms driving climate change. Just to review for our audience, climate change is caused when humans burn fossil fuels like gas and petroleum to heat our buildings and power our energy and transportation systems.
As we burn those fossil fuels, we emit greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into our atmosphere in really big quantities. That carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere, acting like a heat-trapping blanket, and then warming our planet. Jen, we know that this is happening and we know that it's stressing our planet a lot, but what are some of the actual impacts that we're seeing on our planet, and particularly in the Adirondacks?
Jen Kretser:
Yeah. Well, there's a lot of different impacts and thanks, Meaghan, for explaining the global impacts that many of us might be aware of, the rising oceans, and retreating ice in the polar regions, and some of those warming temperatures. But really, climate change impacts different areas in different ways. This is some information from my friend, Dr. Curt Stager, who's a climate scientist here in the Adirondacks. He looks at what's happening locally.
I think that when you understand what's happening locally, it's easier to talk about climate change because the people around you can connect on it. For instance, the lakes here don't freeze as much. You can see the little stars on the graph mean that the lake did not freeze at all. Look at how that increased from 1810 all the way to the year 2000, and that continues to rise.
We also see a shift in the blooming season and when animals like yellow-spotted salamanders start to emerge. That's another thing that happens. Buds are coming out earlier and that really might not sound like a big impact, but it really impacts the creatures that depend on them. It can have big impacts on industries like the maple sugaring season, when the sugaring season might start too early and then it freezes. That can have a big impact.
We also are seeing bigger storms, and this is true for a lot of places around the world. We're seeing bigger storms that are carrying more precipitation, so that's either raining or snowing a lot more. We had a huge storm in ... It was a number of years ago, 2011, called Hurricane Irene. Because we're like ... I think you saw that photo at the beginning of Saranac Lake, we're lots of big mountains and just tiny little towns with one road maybe leading in and out.
So when something like this happens, people can be cut off from emergency services, or from getting to the hospital, or getting to their jobs, or getting to their kids. This really has a big impact. Then you really start to see the human impacts. We've also seen an increase in ticks which can result in Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses. It's really important to go out and really understand what's happening here. I'm wondering if any of the folks listening have noticed changes in their own cities or neighborhoods.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, me too. We were having these local impacts of climate change and we'd like to throw this question to our viewers. What are some impacts of climate change that you have seen in your community or area? You can type into the Q&A box and let us know how climate change is impacting your community where you live. Jen, that is a great photo. I love that.
Jen Kretser:
Yeah. One of the things that our kids really care about up here, is winter. We have a lot of winter. It starts in October and ends sometimes at the end of April, though I think we had snow on Mother's Day this year, so it tends to really vary. We have kids that really care, and not just kids, but we depend a lot on the winter tourism industry.
We had a number of students a number of years ago that got really interested in how to talk to skiers at ski centers like this one, Whiteface Mountain, which is one of the biggest ones in New York State, about the impacts of climate change. Really talking about people and making it relevant to what they care about.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, absolutely. It seems like it makes a lot of sense for your area. We do have some of our viewers who are telling us about what's going on in their area. Sophie says that there are less snowy days where she lives, and Alakora says that a pond behind her house floods now much more than it used to three years ago. What do you think of what our viewers are seeing in their communities?
Jen Kretser:
Well, I think it's really interesting and I think there's so many ways that you can track on that. It's called phenology, when you study the rhythms of nature. That's how scientists really understand what's happening, so that's how we know that, for instance, the buds are coming out earlier. Or maybe the frogs are singing earlier, if you're in a place where you can see frogs. You also want to understand things like maybe it's getting hotter.
You're in a city and the heat, it's much hotter and the heat island effect that can increase. That's essentially when you have a lot of pavement and the pavement absorbs heat and makes it a lot hotter, so you might notice things like temperature increases a lot more. Or wildfires, particularly in the western United States can be really, really devastating. It's really important to understand the climate impacts where you live, so it's awesome to hear about that.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. Yeah. Another one of viewers says that they notice less toads in their area and someone else says that they notice longer heatwaves. Really tracking these things and noticing things is really acting like a scientist, which is pretty impressive and pretty cool for our viewers.
Jen Kretser:
Definitely.
Meaghan Cuddy:
I know that this issue can be really, really overwhelming. It's this global, big problem. It can be really overwhelming, especially for young people, but your job at The Wild Center is to work really closely with young people who are interested in combating climate change and learning how it impacts their own communities and how to implement solutions in their communities. Can you tell us a little bit about how you actually do that?
Jen Kretser:
Sure. About 12 years ago, we ... No, even more than that now. I lose track of time. 13 or 14 years ago, we actually started our Youth Climate Program. That program, as I said, has been going on the last 14 years. The goal of our program is to connect young people to the impacts of climate change in their communities, to understand the science of climate change, and then to actually do something about it in their schools or communities through creating climate action plans.
We catalyze all this through our youth climate summits. Those summits can be one or two days in length and they bring together anywhere from 50 to 250 young people, generally high school students but we also work with younger kids that are in middle school, we even had an elementary school summit, and also colleges, to work together to learn about what's happening in their communities.
To hear from community groups, to hear from scientists, to hear from innovators, all sorts of different people that are doing work in the climate sector. Then we really help them and support them to create climate action plans. I just want to share a few images from our summits and some of our local green teams. This is inside The Wild Center a couple of years ago at our Adirondack Youth Climate Summit.
We use something called the Science on a Sphere, which I know you have at the Smithsonian too, which helps to visualize what those global impacts look like. We also work to have workshops such as energy efficiency, where students can understand what makes what types of energy, where do we get our energy, what types of energy we can tap into that can be more efficient, what types of light bulbs you might be able to use.
How to spot vampires, you'll have to look that up, in your home around energy. We also help connect kids and projects. Throughout our youth climate summit, we make sure that young people can share what they're doing, get ideas from other students and other schools, and have a chance to really learn from each other. That's really important. Of course, we also have fun.
We really work, again, around the globe on our youth climate summits to make sure that the young people that are coming are having a really good time and are feeling super inspired and hopeful.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is so cool. It sounds like a really, really amazing opportunity and a really amazing project. I think it's so cool how you not only focus on learning about climate and learning about, especially these local impacts, but also local solutions and how you can harness everyone's passion and creativity to get involved in this issue and help them make sustainable change in their communities.
I know you have a lot of stories to tell about projects that the teens that you've worked with have implemented that are so impressive. To get us started, I'd like to ask all of our viewers what they're interested in. You'll see a poll come up on your screen and we'd like to know, what climate topics are you most passionate about or interested in learning about?
Jen is going to tell us a little bit about some projects that some teens in her community are working on related to what you are all interested in. Jen, I'm really curious to see what everyone is interested in.
Jen Kretser:
I know, me too. I'm watching the bar like it's ... Yeah.
Meaghan Cuddy:
I know, it's always very exciting.
Jen Kretser:
Renewable resources going for the win.
Meaghan Cuddy:
I know.
Jen Kretser:
Oh, climate policy. Oh, who's it going to be?
Meaghan Cuddy:
It looks like renewable resources is taking the lead.
Jen Kretser:
I agree.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Do you want to tell us a little bit about some projects related to renewable resource that the young people you work with have implemented in their communities?
Jen Kretser:
I'd be happy to. One of the core parts of our youth climate summits is the climate action planning. That's a student-driven process where young people come up with the ideas. I don't tell them, "You should do this, or you should do that." They take those ideas from all the different workshops and speakers that they heard throughout their time at our youth climate summits, and they basically create a plan to bring back to their schools.
This image actually, this was taken in at our youth climate summit in Sri Lanka a couple years ago, and they did the exact same thing as we do here in the Adirondacks, thinking about what are they passionate about and how can they create that action. I'm going to just move forward to the energy and we can go back and look at some of the other ones if you'd like-
Meaghan Cuddy:
Cool.
Jen Kretser:
... you have time. Some schools we've had really explore renewable energy and for instance get solar panels on their schools or create solar power recharging stations such at a school in Plattsburgh, New York, did that. They also look at how they can reduce waste. Along the same lines and thinking about like this school here created a water bottle refilling station and got water bottles for all of their classmates so that they could greatly reduce water usage and plastic bottle ... Or not greatly reduce water usage, but greatly reduce plastic bottle usage in their school.
That was super successful. This is a permanent part of their school now. These students really had a lasting legacy on their school. Another one just because I love this story. I'm going to go back here and tell you a little bit about Morren. Morren was a student from Lake Placid and this is a story about food sustainability. She really cared about food waste. So she worked with a local farm and collected over 200 pounds of tomatoes at the end of the season that were going to get just turned under.
She decided her project was to create tomato sauce. She went and collected the tomatoes, she brought it back to the school kitchen, they created all these containers of tomato sauce and they basically created a backpack dinner and all of that food went to students that were food-insecure. Students that didn't have enough to eat over the weekend.
She was really, as I like to say, feeding two birds with one seed, really trying to think about the food insecurity and food waste. That became a real focus at that school. This is also from that school, they went full circle and they now have this huge composting system where they had won a high-volume compost system, high drum. This thing is like 40 feet in length and it's like a giant culvert that's been engineered to high-volume composter.
That dirt coming out on the right-hand side, that is now compost, is super rich and the students are actually creating a business to sell that in their local community. It's full-cycle with the food and the food-insecure, and then also using any leftover food waste that would go into here. The students are making money to sustain their environmental clubs. It's a really nice story.
Let's see, I have another story. Certainly recycling is a big one. The cool thing about the climate action projects is that students can enter and schools can enter wherever they're at. You don't have to write a grant to get a $60,000 drum-compost system. You can start with simple projects that might be more about recycling. You learn about project management. You learn how to communicate with your classmates and with maybe your school board and your teachers and do education campaigns.
We had another student that got really excited through attending one of our youth leadership retreats and started her own youth climate summit in the Bronx, a virtual one, that was the very first virtual youth climate summit that happened on May 16th, which was super cool, all run by students. That was their project. We've also had students that have gone on to do a lot of leadership work.
The student here on the right, last September during the climate strikes worked across multiple communities to get resolutions passed supporting youth voice in the climate movement. Then on the left, the students on either side of me had the opportunity to go to the White House a number of years ago to again talk about the importance of youth in the climate change movement. Leadership comes in many, many different ways.
It's cool to see what students are doing and where their passions are and really lifting that up and helping them to follow it. Finally, I want to share another one of my favorite examples of a group of students from Homer, New York, and I think Andrew might be on the call today, thought I saw his name. He's amazing young person that helped to get the community of Homer to become a climate-smart community.
New York State has this program through their Office of Climate Change where communities can sign up to be a climate-smart community. Once they do that, they can receive tools and resources and materials and sometimes funding through a grants program to help make their community more climate-resilient.
Andrew and also this other young woman in the flowered shirt, Shaniqua, heard a presentation from the Office of Climate Change at our youth climate summit and called up the mayor and said, "Hey, do we have one of these climate-smart community things happening in the town of Homer?" They really didn't. Andrew and Shaniqua made it happen, and now they co-lead the task force and they're working on their certification.
There's really no limit to what young people can do. Closer to home or closer to the museum, this is our hometown team of Tupper Lake that did the same thing here in Tupper, getting the town of Tupper to sign on to be a climate-smart community. Again, not only working and having a dialogue with those village officials and mayors and village planners and business and community leaders, but also participating in it.
Having a role, having a voice, learning how to do things like greenhouse gas inventories or, in the town of Saranac Lake the students are running the town social media stories and campaign right now to educate the public about climate change and creating opportunities for listening sessions for the public to learn more about how to green their community and what these task forces are doing.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is so incredible. It's really amazing to hear from you, Jen, about just how much action is being taken and how there really is a role for everyone and every voice has a space. Whether you're passionate about food or business or media or policy or working in your school, there really is something for everyone to do and you guys really provide the resources to make that happen, which I think is incredible.
I know that this isn't just something that you guys are doing in Upstate New York. Can you tell us a little about how the Youth Climate Summit has grown beyond just your own backyard?
Jen Kretser:
Sure. A number of years ago, I think it was 2011, we realized after doing the Youth Climate Summit for a couple of years, we started, the first one was in 2009, that we were getting a lot of interest in youth climate summits. Our first summit, other than at The Wild Center was actually in Finland. We had a partnership and a relationship with a museum in Finland and so they decided to do a youth climate summit and all of a sudden we were like, "Oh, we can really grow this."
We've been working with communities and nonprofits and science centers and zoos and schools and youth all around the globe. As of this month, we've done over 80 summits in 40 different communities globally. They all look different and they're all led by an incredible team of people and partners in those communities. It's been really exciting to see those iterations. We have a free online toolkit and I'll share the link for that at the end.
We've been working with those groups for years to help support them getting students engaged to getting ... I'm going to go back here and show you our values. In our toolkit, which you'll see if you take a moment to just download that, we came up with a series of six values, a suite of six values for all summits that we want them to have in common.
Thinking about again, that place-based, wanting people to understand what's happening in their place, whether you're in the Adirondacks or you're in D.C. or England or Sri Lanka or wherever you are, that you can learn about the science and the impacts of climate change that's happening in your place. We really focus on being youth-driven. Most of the summits that we see happen, including the one here at The Wild Center, are organized by a team of students with our support, so in partnership with adults and they help to drive what's happening in those summits.
Who are the speakers? What are the tracks? What kind of activities can we do? How can we highlight youth voice? How do we make this creative? Let's do some videos or social media. They really drive it. That's been an incredible thing to see that happen. They're also very action-oriented. While yes, we want to make sure everyone understands the science, we really want to focus on solutions. How can we put a real focus on solutions and what can we do?
What can we do in our schools? What can we do in our communities? What can we do in our homes? What we can do as individuals, but also that collective action is really important. Again, having that solutions focus. We've also, especially over the last few years, recognized that we need to be equitable and we need to understand that climate change impacts people in different ways.
People of color and frontline communities are often severely disproportionately impacted by climate change. So how can we make sure that there's a social justice element and that we focus on climate justice? Because climate justice and social justice go hand in hand and understand that we want to make sure everyone is involved with the solutions and can be part of those solutions and then part of building a just and sustainable future.
Of course, we want to be hopeful because it's hard to get behind something that can oftentimes seem really depressing and maybe unwieldy or you're like, "I can't do anything to impact climate change." You actually can because we're all this force of nature. I mean, we all are. All of you are that are watching today. How can we join together to make a difference? We want to stay really hopeful and positive and keep doing the work.
Meaghan Cuddy:
That is absolutely incredible. I think it's amazing how much this has grown and how much you have seen action from young people really impact their communities and how much you guys are working to lift up voices all over the world because there really is a place for everyone in this conversation. Thank you so much for sharing everything with us today, Jen.
We're going to open it up to questions now. If you have questions for Jen, feel free to type them into the Q&A box and we'll try to get to as many as possible. It is about 3:30, so if you do have to leave, thank you so much for joining us today. Jen, do you think you have a little bit of extra time to stay on and answer questions?
Jen Kretser:
Oh, sure. I'll stay on as long as there's questions.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome. All right. You can type in your questions for Jen about her job, about how you can get involved in combating climate change in your own community. If you have questions about climate change and climate change impacts, feel free to let us know. Jen, we'll get to some questions. All right. We have a bunch of cool ones coming in. We have some questions about sort of climate change impacts. Cora would like to know how do plants play a role in climate change? Can you talk a little bit about how plants are involved in climate?
Jen Kretser:
Sure. Let's see. Where can we begin on that front? Because there's lots of ways. Well, of course plants are super-important because they produce oxygen and they absorb carbon dioxide. When we see things, like for instance, what's happening in the Amazon and large clear-cutting, what that does, I mean, I always think of places like the Amazon and other large tracts of intact forests as being the lungs of the Earth, and that we need that.
We need that. We that to sustain life. We need that to sustain all the animals that live there, to sustain the people that live there. So plants play a really critical role in helping to absorb that carbon dioxide. When we lose forests, we actually lose the ability to do that. We call it a carbon sink. They're actually taking down carbon and essentially breathing out that oxygen.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome. Yeah. I have a plant background, so I'm always pro-protecting the plants and keeping them in balance with our carbon in our atmosphere.
Jen Kretser:
Yeah. Also, I mean, just an interesting thing, I think there's so much about nature that we don't know. Maybe some of the solutions that we want to think about with climate change, let's look to nature and see what nature has to offer. I mean, there's so much cool stuff that nature does and plants do. There could be some things out there that we just haven't learned yet about how ... I mean, I've seen wind turbines in the shape of tree leaves, the way that trees move in the wind. Maybe there's so much that we need to learn.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. I think there's so much that we can learn from the world around us and those might make some really cool climate action plans for some people who are watching. All right. Kristin would like to know, are there any youth climate summit programs in Pennsylvania?
Jen Kretser:
Well, Kristin, that's a great question because there have been a lot of interest in it in a number of different places and so I would be happy to connect you with some of the groups. There hasn't been a summit yet, but there are a number of different groups that are interested in actually potentially doing a summit. I'd be happy to connect you if you want to reach out.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome, thanks. We will be providing a link to our email address for everyone watching if you would like to get some more resources from us at the end of today's program. Feel free to contact us if you're interested in getting some resources too. All right. We have a question from Robert about education. He asks, "Is spreading awareness enough? How do you feel about the role of education and communicating climate change in this?"
Jen Kretser:
That's a great question. I really think about educating for climate action. I'm really in a space where I feel like while education can do a lot, we really need to think about how education can help leverage action in a whole variety of ways. Just think about if we could take the intellectual capital that we have as a society and focus on climate solutions, to me there is nothing that we can't do. I mean, many of those solutions are already at hand.
It's just creating those systems to put it into play. Figuring out how you can engage in that in whatever that looks like for you is really important. While education is important, I think it's education for climate action, whether it's in your school, your community, your home, your family or state or national or international, there's all kinds of scales you can act on.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. There really is a level for everyone, I think. Vivon has a question that I think is probably on the minds of many people right now. I am stuck at home with my family due to the pandemic. What can I do on a daily basis from home to protect the climate?
Jen Kretser:
Great. That's a really good question because we've been all mostly stuck at home, as you can see. I'm safely here at work today away from all the people that are here. There's a lot to do. I mean, you can look at ... Some of the things that I've been doing at my house are looking at where my food is coming from. Food systems contribute a lot to carbon, where your food gets shipped from and how far it gets shipped. That's one thing.
Or lots of people are planting gardens now or container gardens to get food more closer to home. You can also look at your energy and where your energy comes from. A lot of communities and cities now there's a lot of opportunity to get renewable power, whether it's from solar power or from hydro or from geothermal. There's ways and often your energy company might even be a part of that. You can find that out.
You can also look around your house and I mentioned vampires earlier, those are the things that are plugged in like your microwave or your computer or your radio, even when they're off, they're still sucking power. Think about ways that you might be able to reduce that load and you'll save your family money. They'll be psyched about that. Those are just a few things.
Other big energy sucks are things like dryers, especially now that it's summer, can you find a way to hang your clothes that will save you energy? I'm wondering if there's other people or any of our participants have ideas for doing things at home too that they might be doing that I didn't mention.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah, absolutely. If you have some ideas or want to share with us some sustainable actions you're taking at home, feel free to write them into the Q&A box as well. We'd love to hear about what you guys are working on. I think that is really great, Jen. The way I think about it a lot is that climate change touches every aspect of our lives, which means there's an opportunity everywhere to make a positive change.
Jen Kretser:
That's true. One of my favorite things I'm doing right now is that I'm getting rid of my lawn. I have a little tiny lawn, but now I'm using it to either grow plants for butterflies and bees and to help support pollinators. It's the question earlier about plants, support all these other creatures, or to grow food. The lawn is out the door, vegetables and pollinator plants are in.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome. I love that. We have a couple more great questions for you. Sophie is 11 and she'd like to know how someone her age can help with these issues. Do you have any specifics advice for someone who's around that age of maybe some steps they could take in their school?
Jen Kretser:
Sure. I mean, you would be surprised what 11-year-olds can do, Sophie. You just have to find something that you're really passionate about and think about like, "What would I want to do?" I know a young woman who was maybe 12 or 13 when I met her, so a little bit older than you. Her name is Scout, and she started her own nonprofit. She was really interested in saving animals and she started her own nonprofit to protect habitat and just started talking about it and now she runs her own nonprofit.
There's lots of examples of kids like that that have ... Even just starting ... Like are you passionate about food? Are you passionate about getting everybody recycling? Are you thinking about planting trees? Do you like to talk? You could start a blog. If you're connected on social media, are there ways that you can spread awareness that way?
Think about what you like to do and what you're good at and find that intersection and I bet you'll find your passion. Also, I'd encourage you to search out other young people that are acting in climate change because there are so many inspirational stories about young people in climate.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. There really is something for any interest. Whatever anyone is passionate about, I always encourage them to just follow that and see how that can lead them to a really interesting opportunity to make change in their community. Speaking of people's personal passions, we have a question about toads and frogs. How can we particularly help them deal with climate change? Do you have any stories, Jen, about how teens that you know or young people you know are working with animals?
Jen Kretser:
Yeah. Well, that's a great story. There's a program called FrogWatch, which I believe is a citizen science program where you can learn about monitoring. Frogs and toads reproduce in what they're called vernal pools, which was like springtime pools. In the spring when there's more rain or snow melt, there'll be pools in the forest where, that's where the frogs and toads will breed and people track on that because that's a way of understanding when the ice is melting or when the weather patterns shift, it can impact how many vernal pools there are.
You can actually get involved with local citizen science projects. I should have mentioned that sooner because that's actually one of the coolest things you can do. There's tons of cool citizen science stuff out there. If you just google citizen science, you'll find tons. FrogWatch is one, Cornell Lab of Ornithology has amazing ones for birds called FeederWatch and a whole host of other ones. There's another one called Budburst where you can study when the buds come out.
Journey North looks at migrating birds and butterflies. Those are easy things that you can do just by almost looking out your window or taking a walk around your neighborhood. I would encourage you ... Because then you're contributing, you collect that data and you can contribute that to state, national, or international scientists. It helps them understand those patterns that are happening in the world right now, especially as they're impacted by climate change.
Another cool thing you can do for frogs and toads is make sure that there's like ... If you know about water sources or wetlands are really important to them, those areas need to be protected. Maybe there are some local groups in your community that are working to help protect wetlands or protecting watershed areas because that's what those creatures need to live.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Yeah. I think citizen science is such a cool way to get involved in these issues and it's something that really anyone at any level can do, which I think is amazing to get involved in these big projects. It's a great piece of advice, Jen. We have time for just about one more question, but I did want to share with you quickly some of the things that our viewers had said that they're doing to implement sustainability in their life.
Jen Kretser:
Oh, great.
Meaghan Cuddy:
We had some people say that they're working on planting trees, reducing waste in their own lives, and hosting Zoom calls with their environmental club, which I thought was a really, really cool way to make sure that you're staying [inaudible 00:42:22].
Jen Kretser:
Yeah, I don't even know why I didn't say that because we're doing that too.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Exactly. I know, I thought that was a great one.
Jen Kretser:
Thank you for whoever said that.
Meaghan Cuddy:
I want to ask you one more question, Jen. One of our viewers would like to know what is your favorite part of your job? I'd like to tack on a personal question. What is something that makes you feel optimistic about all of these issues that we're facing?
Jen Kretser:
Well, first of all, having conversations like this make me feel super-optimistic and to have all you here asking questions and interested, that gives me hope. There's young people around the world that are also connected to and feeling hopeful that just like you are worried about what's happening in the world. For me it's really connecting with other people and trying to understand and empathize what impacts they might be experiencing, which might be really, really different from what I'm experiencing and trying to make those connections.
Then again, get to work. Figure out, are there ways that we could work together? Can we connect? Can we work in some way to leverage solutions or leverage some kind of an action? I think that it's about that collective hope and I think people bring me a lot of hope actually. That to me is very important. I also, for myself really, am fortunate to live in a place that's really beautiful.
Being in nature and finding ways to connect to nature, it could be a park, it could be a plant that you have in your window sill. Any way that you can connect with green things right now in particular feels really, really important.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. That always makes me feel a lot better too. I love connecting with the people in our museum and people like you. It makes me feel really hopeful about our future and all of the passion that people bring to these issues. Thank you, Jen, so much for joining us today.
Jen Kretser:
Sure. Sure. I-
Meaghan Cuddy:
Thank you. Oh, sorry, go ahead.
Jen Kretser:
Yeah, no. I just wanted to also say I didn't get a chance to really just highlight that we ... And I think probably Meaghan will send this out to all the participants, but we have some great programming at our museum wildcenter.org/digital, and we have daily live programs where you can meet some of our animals, which is super fun, or see some naturalists running around doing cool stuff and fun education things.
Then you can also download our youth climate summit digital toolkit and see other work by students around the world and get more information also on our youth climate summit page which you can find from the wildcenter.org site.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Awesome. If you're interested in getting any of those resources, we can provide them to you. You can feel free to email us at youthnmnh@si.edu if you're interested in learning anything about what Jen just mentioned. Thank you again so much to all of you for joining us. Our team is actually taking a break for the next two weeks, but Teen Tuesdays will be back in July. Definitely keep an eye on our social media and our website for upcoming programs.
If you're interested in similar programming in July, please check out our Natural History Explorations programs, which are one-week experiences starting July 13th. Our first week is focused on deep sea ocean adaptations, which is a personal passion of mine. If you're interested in that, feel free to check out our website. You can register and see our schedule at the naturalhistory.si.edu.
Until next time, thank you so much for joining us. Jen, thank you again for taking some time out of your day to chat with us about this. I had a really great time talking to you.
Jen Kretser:
Yeah, me too. Thanks so much, Meaghan, and thanks everyone for joining. I hope you're all safe and well wherever you are. I look forward to maybe connecting again sometime so be well.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Absolutely. Thank you so much. Have a great day.
Jen Kretser:
Thank you.
Meaghan Cuddy:
Bye.
Jen Kretser:
Bye everybody.
