Three local names stand out from the list of speakers who presented at this year’s MassEnergize Community Climate Leaders Conference—Bromfield High School students Michele Buni, Ibrahim Shabra, and Gabriella Temps.
The second annual MassEnergize conference, held Wednesday, April 30, sought to encourage community engagement in climate action, inviting people from across the state to collaborate on ideas and share their experiences working as community climate leaders. As youth climate activists and members of the Bromfield Green Team, Buni, Shabra, and Temps were offered the chance to present their own climate initiatives at the conference.
Buni, a senior, and Temps, a sophomore, presented on different panels, but both spoke about their successful experience designing and teaching a hands-on climate change lesson to fifth-graders at Hildreth Elementary School. Shabra, a freshman, facilitated an interactive workshop where participants used a simulation model to explore climate change impacts and solutions.
The Press interviewed the students about their projects and the lessons each had hoped the conference attendees would take away from their presentations.
Buni and Temps offered their perspectives on the fifth-grade climate curriculum they both worked on over the past two years. They explained the elements of the lesson plan, which focuses on teaching the causes and consequences of climate change.
From left: Caroline Ells, Michele Buni, Savannah Senykoff, Gabriella Temps, and Ibrahim Shabra. (Courtesy photo)
When working with the fifth-graders, Temps said, the Green Team members split them into six breakout groups where the students use the NASA Climate Time Machine to see, with a series of maps and graphs, how key environmental data points are changing over time, indicative of global climate change. Based on the NASA data visualizations, Temps said the students analyze changes in sea ice cover, sea level, carbon dioxide concentration, global surface temperature, polar ice sheet mass, and ocean temperature.
After the groups discuss their findings and report back to the class, Temps said, the students learn about the major causes and effects of climate change. The causes they teach center on pollution and the increasing atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide due to deforestation, transportation, and the burning of fossil fuels. The effects include environmental destruction and natural disasters like wildfires, droughts, floods, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, and coral reef bleaching. Temps said the Green Team also teaches the fifth-graders about U.S. environmental protections, and this year, they discussed the likely impacts of the current wave of federal rollbacks on environmental regulations.
Focusing on ‘effects and evidence’
Temps explained how the Green Team strives to teach the fifth-graders about climate science at a level they will understand without shying away from the truth. “Our emphasis is on effects and evidence,” she said.
“Young kids are intelligent and open to new knowledge,” Buni added later. “It’s okay to start exposing kids to this sort of stuff because it’s important and it’s happening.”
The Green Team members decided to start with a fifth-grade curriculum, Buni explained, because they want the younger students to develop an interest in climate action before entering middle school, when students can start joining clubs and volunteering for community service. She added that the Green Team encourages the kids to get engaged at home with “tangible actions” by introducing them to the Harvard Energize module where they can track their families’ household climate actions and the amount of carbon saved.
Buni said she went into the project assuming the fifth-graders would not know much about climate change, but she was surprised to discover many of them already knew a lot, and they were all engaged with the lesson. Next year, the Green Team plans to move this curriculum to the fourth grade and teach the fifth-graders a more advanced lesson. And in the future, Buni said, she hopes the climate lessons can be extended to all grade levels.
At the conference, Temps spoke on a student panel called “Engaging Youth Voices: Youth Perspectives on Climate Education and Action.” Before the conference, she told the Press, “I hope people understand how important the education aspect is, because for change to occur, it needs to be on an individual level and a bigger level.” Temps said, “The most important place for [climate education] to happen is with younger people because they’re the ones who are stuck living with [climate change] and the ones who will have to find a solution.”
Buni presented alongside other community leaders in a showcase called “Lessons from Climate Campaigns.” Buni said, “It’s difficult to see a way through small actions, but at the conference, I hope people take away that we’re a small group but we’re still doing something important.”
Buni is also a member of the Massachusetts Youth Climate Council, a student council that advises the state Office of Climate Innovation and Resilience on climate policies. She has been actively involved in climate action and education for the past five years with plans to continue as she pursues a degree in elementary education. “I am happy to be doing this kind of work even if it feels kind of futile sometimes,” Buni said.
Climate education for policymakers
Shabra’s project also focused on climate education, but at a level more closely aimed at policymakers. At the conference, Shabra was one of three facilitators for a workshop called “En-ROADS Live: Test, Explore, and Act on Climate Solutions.” He is also on track for becoming an En-ROADS Climate Ambassador.
En-ROADS (or Energy Rapid Overview and Decision-Support) is a simulation model that allows users to test how various policy changes could impact future climate-related projections, Shabra explained to the Press, noting how the En-ROADS simulator provides a useful tool for gauging the efficacy of potential climate change solutions.
During the workshop, Shabra said, he gave a presentation on En-ROADS before splitting the participants into breakout groups to explore the simulation model and collaborate on ideas for climate change mitigation strategies; the groups then reconvened to discuss conclusions. “We learned that some climate solutions affect each other,” Shabra said, and “climate solutions need to work together.”
He provided carbon pricing policies as an example, explaining how moving the policy indicators on the En-ROADS simulator shows that taxing carbon emissions and fossil fuels would lessen the rate of global warming over time. But if only some fossil fuels are taxed while others are not, the current rate of global warming would remain largely unchanged. “For example,” Shabra said, “getting rid of natural gas doesn’t really change the temperature because then coal takes its place. … You can’t rely on one solution. It takes a lot of solutions to get a [global] warming down.”
Students speaking up
Shabra also expressed the importance of climate education, especially for students, and said he hopes to show En-ROADS to classes at Bromfield. “I think it’s important,” he said, “that you have people everywhere talking about it, not just scientists.”
Ellen Sachs Leicher, the Green Team advisor and chair of the Harvard Climate Initiative Committee, told the Press the MassEnergize conference was a positive experience for the students, but she said she wished more students were invited. Only two other high school students besides the three from Bromfield were in attendance, and both were on the same panel with Temps. “I thought our students would benefit more if they could have interacted with students from other schools,” Sachs Leicher said, “but it was good exposure for the kids.”
From left: Tree Warden JC Ferguson with Claire Battaglia, Michele Buni, and Annabelle Purcell of the Bromfield Green Team at Annual Town Meeting. The group discussed the Erosion Control bylaw. (Photo by Jen Manell)
Sachs Leicher said she hopes the Green Team will be invited to attend again next year and that the conference will be open to more student participation in the future. “Gabriella’s breakout room was packed because people really want to hear what the kids want to say,” she said. “I think if there were even more students, it would have been even more popular.”
Buni and some of her fellow Green Team members also spoke up at the Town Meeting May 3, Sachs Leicher added. “And when the kids get up to speak,” she said, “they all clap. It’s inspirational to them. … Everyone looks up when that happens.”
