While most of us are still fumbling with our 2022 resolutions, high schooler Diana Michaelson is laser-focused on 2030. That’s when she and her Long Beach Green Schools Campaign (LBGSC) student posse want the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) to completely convert to using renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.
“Our goal is [for the board] to pass a 100% clean energy resolution,” she told the Signal Tribune.
Currently a junior at Poly High School, Michaelson has been leading the nonprofit LBGSC since she founded it as a sophomore in August 2020. Her parents first taught her and three siblings about environmental responsibility, she said, such as not wasting electricity, eating less meat and using bar soap instead of liquid in plastic bottles.
Michaelson then took AP Environmental Science through Poly’s PACE college-prep program. And when she found herself needing more purpose after the pandemic started, Michaelson earned a certificate from the Climate Reality Leadership Corp of the Climate Reality Project’s Los Angeles chapter, inspired by a friend who had done the same thing, she said.
Founded by former Vice President Al Gore, the Climate Reality Project seeks “to create a safe, sustainable, prosperous future powered by clean energy.” Its Youth Action Committee helps support students like those in LBGSC to advocate for change in schools.
Excited to make a difference, Michaelson reached out to one of her Poly teachers, Patrick Gillogly, for guidance.
“He is one of the most optimistic people in the world,” Michaelson said of Gillogly. “He’s been a really crucial teacher-mentor, providing insight into the district.”
Since then, LBGSC has expanded from Poly to other LBUSD high schools—such as Millikan and Lakewood—especially after attracting over 100 participants at a climate-change rally it held in September 2021 at Martin Luther King Jr. Park.
LBGSC also held a virtual town hall last April, drawing over 75 community members, Michaelson said, and it met with Long Beach water and energy officials, LBUSD officials and City Council members.
Strategy to end LBUSD’s use of fossil fuels
Since the campaign’s main goal is to end the school district’s use of fossil fuels, Michaelson said they’ve also met with LBUSD Board of Education members, Superintendent Jill Baker and Kristy Freund-McFeggan, head of the LBUSD’s environmental sustainability curriculum.
Michaelson said LBGSC’s most significant LBUSD partner has been Alan Reising, business services administrator in facilities development, with whom the group has met at least once a month to work on revising the clean-energy resolution it wants the school board to pass.
“The resolution is a promise by the district to work on an implementation plan that commits the district to 100% clean renewable energy, specifically in the electricity sector, by 2030, and in all energy sectors—so that would be cooking, transportation, heating and cooling—by 2040,” Michaelson said.
Since she is fully aware passing a resolution doesn’t necessarily translate to action, Michaelson is most confident in the part of the resolution that calls for a task force consisting of students, parents, teachers, energy experts and community members.
“Essentially, the resolution commits the district to form a task force that will oversee the implementation of a clean energy plan,” she said.
Reising told the Signal Tribune that he commends LBGSC students for their “activism and dedication to the goal of energy sustainability,” and confirmed that he wants LBGSC’s voice considered in the sustainability goals of LBUSD’s Facilities Master Plan, which will be updated this year.
“We are committed to continuing to work with this group over the next few months to ensure these goals are appropriately included in our overall plans,” he said.
The campaign’s first step is to get the resolution onto a board meeting agenda. Though that hasn’t happened yet, Michaelson said she is hopeful it will be as soon as February.
“That’s going to be a really big deal,” she said. “Things are definitely building up right now.”
In the meantime, LGBSC students will continue to be a fixture at board meetings, as they have for months, visible in their bright green t-shirts, to apply public pressure on the board and district officials.
Michaelson said anywhere from five to 10 of its approximately 50 LBGSC student members prepare three-minute speeches for each board meeting—such as its upcoming Jan. 19 meeting—which she helps outline, proofread or make suggestions to, such as adding quantitative details or personal stories like how the oil spill off the coast of Huntington Beach last October affected them. The speeches argue that it is financially feasible and socially and environmentally beneficial for LBUSD to convert to green energy.
The Sierra Club is also supporting LBGSC by making it an official “Ready for 100” national team. Residents can sign a petition on the Sierra Club website for LBUSD to transition to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2030.
So far, the petition has garnered more than 1,000 signatures.
Youth advocacy: “The world is falling apart right now”
Youth advocacy can be empowering, leading to positive social and emotional development, according to a 2020 study in the journal Preventive Medicine.
Despite the heavy time commitment of one to three hours per day leading LBGSC, Michaelson said advocacy has taught her about public speaking, working with people and communicating with officials.
“Other people in the campaign have really enjoyed the opportunity to speak, something they probably wouldn’t be doing otherwise,” she said. “It’s been a learning curve for all of us.”
Those skills will stay with her “forever,” Michaelson said, though she is not yet sure she will continue such work in the future since she is considering becoming an orthopedic surgeon after experiencing a snowboarding accident last year. Nonetheless, her passion for environmentalism runs deep.
“People my age specifically are told, ‘You’re the generation that has to fix all these issues for your kids,’” Michaelson said. “Then I realized, that’s B.S. because the world is falling apart right now.”
The world’s beauty will be “long gone” by the time she would have children, Michaelson said, with the planet on the brink of being uninhabitable. But that specter also motivates her.
“I’ve been told to take action, yet people have been opposing action from youth for the longest time,” Michaelson said. “So why not go ahead and do this.”
