Next Generation Leaders: Sage Lenier

TIME

Through her sustainability course, Sage Lenier's goal is to inspire young people and equip them with the tools to take action.

Transcript

00:00 (soft music)

00:02 The way that the ecological crisis is usually talked about,

00:08 it sounds as though it's too late,

00:10 there's nothing we can do,

00:12 and humanity is completely doomed.

00:14 As a young person, that was obviously very jarring for me,

00:18 that there was no point in planning for a future

00:20 because we wouldn't have one.

00:23 I started looking for solutions.

00:26 We're not waiting around for the system

00:28 to give us the tools we need.

00:30 We are ready to take that for ourselves.

00:32 (soft music)

00:34 (indistinct)

00:38 I came to environmentalism

00:51 from a social justice background.

00:53 I was a really passionate teenager,

00:55 and I realized that this is really the one movement

00:58 that can encapsulate them all.

00:59 You know, there's no human rights on a dead planet.

01:01 I started teaching, I started writing these curriculums

01:04 because I was trying to invent the education

01:08 that I wasn't getting.

01:09 I feel like I built a community of students around me

01:14 where all of us were pushing away from the doomsday,

01:18 understanding how bad the problem is narrative

01:20 that our professors were pushing

01:21 and moving towards what are these actionable solutions.

01:25 We're looking at a population of 10 billion by 2050.

01:28 Where are we gonna put those people?

01:30 How do we feed them?

01:31 How do we organize these systems?

01:32 So collectively, we're all working towards the mindset

01:37 of being organized, being flexible, being resilient.

01:40 The reason this course is so popular

01:42 is because it's a solutions oriented,

01:45 action focused environmental justice curriculum.

01:47 It's a vision for what a better world could look like.

01:49 It's hopeful, and we are constantly connecting students

01:51 with fights and initiatives in our community

01:53 so that they can get involved.

01:54 I think me and a lot of the people around me

01:57 really felt like we had a responsibility to do it all.

02:02 You see a lot of burnout in youth climate activism.

02:06 It's definitely not sustainable,

02:07 and there needs to be more support from older generations.

02:10 It needs to be intergenerational collaboration.

02:13 If the kids have all this energy

02:16 and they're building all this stuff,

02:18 well, you guys have the money and the exposure

02:21 and the media control.

02:23 There needs to be more collaboration.

02:25 Even if it were possible to flip a switch tomorrow

02:29 and the whole world is run by renewable energy,

02:32 we would still be in an ecological crisis

02:34 because we're facing a crisis of pollution,

02:36 of deforestation, of over extraction,

02:40 and we need a radically different system.

02:43 The answer to the ecological crisis needs to be regional,

02:46 it needs to be local, and it needs to be tailored

02:49 to individuals, communities' needs.

02:53 If you create change in your community and I work on mine,

02:56 we can patchwork together this system-level change

03:00 through creating change in school districts,

03:02 cities, counties, states.

03:05 You don't have to go and lobby Congress

03:07 in order to be an effective climate activist.

03:09 When people tell me the impact that my work has had on them,

03:20 sometimes I cry, it definitely helps me

03:23 sleep better at night.

03:24 Knowing that I've put something in motion

03:26 that can't be stopped, that all of these people

03:28 have this framework now for what a better world

03:31 could look like, and they've all decided

03:33 to take it upon themselves to actively enact that,

03:37 and that there's nothing I could do

03:39 to stop them at this point.

03:40 I believe that there is a way to ensure

03:45 that the next generation is equipped to survive

03:48 and adapt in a climate-changed world,

03:50 and that's what we're building here.

03:52 (upbeat music)

03:55 (upbeat music)

03:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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