This is the Decarbonisation Dialogue, a podcast from Salix. Welcome to Delivering on Climate Change, our collective challenge. Welcome to the Decarbonisation Dialogue. I am Hannah Walker and I believe that the best way to communicate a message is by being passionate about what you are talking about. Through that passion, I believe that you take people with you and create action using your influence to make change and make a difference. Our task today is to get all of
us to net zero. I've got two wonderful guests with me today from the UK Climate Coalition and that's Charlotte Lasvesky and Olivia Horne. They're on a mission to mobilise and empower young people to take positive action for global climate justice. UK Youth Coalition is a voluntary consensus -led non -hierarchy and non -profit organisation. The community working group's aim is to engage local communities in the action against the climate
emergency. The group's project spans from the analysis of MPs voting record on climate change issues to delivering workshops to young people to educate and equip them with the skills needed to achieve climate justice. Olivia works as a communications officer at an environmental charity and her work at UK Youth Coalition is as a member of the Communications Working Group as well as the Network Liaison with the Climate Coalition.
Charlotte is currently a Student Union sabbatical officer and one of the press officers at UK Youth Coalition. Charlotte has been involved with climate justice for several years, both in the UK and on an international context. I cannot wait to hear more. Thank you to both of you for joining me today. Thank you to Olivia and to Charlotte. Tell us about your work and your interest in the environment and where that stems from and
how has that developed into this career. My kind of climate change, climate activist journey actually started in primary school. So I still remember we read this picture book that was all about sort of a rainforest being concreted over and turned into a car park. And I had nightmares
for two weeks after that. And I think that was something that really I kind of don't want children to have that experience, both in real life, but also we weren't really given any information about what we could do or it kind of was presented as this is a crisis that's happening and it's out of our control. And so I think that's something
that. I really like about UKYCC, the UK Youth Climate Coalition, is that it's about empowering young people and kind of rather than just focusing on what's going wrong, kind of focusing on what are our powers and changing things. But obviously, as a primary school student, there wasn't that
much I could do individually. And so I kind of pushed down those feelings for a while until I got to university and then I joined some local climate activist groups and then only a year ago actually I joined UKYCC in the recruitment and we're recruiting some new members at the moment so that'll be really exciting to get a
new lot of recruits in. That's really interesting to hear about how that vision or that image in your head then started off this kind of spiral of, it could easily start this spiral of despair, which is probably what we'll get onto later for young people because there is that very delicate balance isn't there between this anxiety and actually giving people a voice. Charlotte, how about you? How does your, how does that, does that reflect your experience? Yeah, really, really
similar. But mine didn't start until high school, so I went to prime school in like the countryside. So it was very much like I was seeing nature all the time and growing up in that environment. So it was never kind of crossing any of our minds that things were worse other places because we were in this kind of echo chamber. There was 22 people in my class. Like we were such a small kind of community. So it wasn't. even crossing my mind that, you know, things were bad for people
across the world. And then I went to high school in more of a city setting and started noticing that, oh, nature is not being looked after and, oh, the government isn't caring as much. And then when I got to GCSEs, it was just in a science
lesson and it barely scratched the surface. like it was you know melting ice caps and recycling there was no mention of justice or power or the real impacts of the world or it just felt really kind of distant and abstract and then I ended up just seeing a post that youth strike was happening in my local city and I was like yeah I feel like I need to do it and it isn't like I didn't I didn't wake up one day wanting to be an activist it kind of was I looked around and felt like
I had to be and needed to be and needed to kind of make some sort of difference and make my voice heard in some sort of way. Okay because of course research does show that young groups are more concerned about climate change and Gen Z is the most eco -conscious generation according to various reports and researchers that have been carried out. So Olivia what kind of future do you imagine
for generations to come? And how should climate justice be assessed because presumably it is a long -term picture, a long -term impact on people, on future generations, on the planet? What do you think the way ahead is? How can that future, what kind of future do you imagine? Yeah, I think for me the key word and the future that
I imagine is connection. because I think one of the key problems today and that has led to the climate crisis that we're in is a kind of lack of connection both to the environment but I also think to each other and kind of the sense that even now sometimes when countries are trying to reduce their own CO2 emissions they're basically just outsourcing them to other countries rather than thinking if this is something that we're all in together so I think that's something that
would be key for me in any imagined future. Also because I think sometimes climate interventions can be framed as kind of we're losing things that people are kind of having to make sacrifices. Whereas actually if you reframe that around connection, it becomes a much more kind of intentional fulfilling way of living that you're thinking about your connection to other people and getting something back from that rather than just giving something
up. And in terms of climate justice, I think if people haven't really heard the term before, a definition would be including historically marginalised groups and everyone in this transition. So rather than just replicating the current model that we've got but with lower carbon emissions, it's kind of taking this moment as a chance to reframe how we do everything and kind of include
people whose voices aren't normally heard. And I do think that sometimes includes being open to having your point of view challenged and kind of the privilege that you have. So I mean, I acknowledge I'm also maybe not always the best
person to speak about this stuff. And I think that's something we're keen on in UKYC actually, sorry to keep plugging us, but when we get passes for the UN's COP and kind of other big climate events, we try and pass some of those passes on to activists in the global south who don't get. given those opportunities to speak and his voice is also need to be heard. In terms of how to assess it, it is quite difficult because some of it is imagining a completely different world
from the one that we currently have. So I do think that some of it that kind of that have been institutional and systemic changes rather than just kind of carrying on with business as usual, but finding ways to reduce. CO2 emissions. Okay, so you've got this voice, and it can always be greater. I'm sure you can always have an even greater contingency of young people in that voice, but millennials are certainly the ones who are going to be seeing the impacts of all the policy,
all the changes that are going on now. And a question for Charlotte, really, we've talked about that kind of balance between the anxiety, but also the action. How do you think in UK youth coalition, how do you think you can embed a positive attitude, and socially aware attitudes? How do you embed that positivity when the conversation
is so difficult, isn't it? It is, it is really difficult, but I think it's by starting to treat... is by treating young people as active participants not passive receivers of things that are happening so actually you know including them in decision making visibility in the media and validation in classrooms actually teaching them about the the consequences of the climate crisis actually teaching them What is actually happening at other parts of the world and that it's not this distant
abstract in the future? Thing is something that is happening now and it's affecting people in the present and we need to show that change is possible and it's happening and it's led by people it's led by people like them and Hope isn't kind of this naive thing and I think that's what people keep on thinking that it is, that hope is this abstract concept that it's out in the never, it can never be grass -backed but it can be strategic and when it's shared it can become really contagious
as well. So actually treating those young people as active participants and giving them that hope and those tools can be a really really powerful thing and that's kind of how you embed that positive attitude and keep people going and about having that connection as Olivia was saying and that community as well. Okay I'm lucky enough to go
to quite a few schools. We work on decarbonisation projects so that's getting rid of those old fossil fuel boilers and looking at a range of energy efficiency measures to help protect our planet and also future -proof some of these buildings way into the future for these schools. I get to meet a lot of young people from primary school all the way to secondary. I was in a big secondary
school actually last week. And you look at the walls and they've got pictures about the, you know, pictures of the earth, pictures of the planet. It's very important to them. It is part of that discussion. They've often got eco committees. They're rarely engaged in that discussion. Do you think as we move on to secondary school and there's a whole wealth of subjects for students, I mean, they take huge numbers of GCSEs, etc. Do you think that the climate change should be
embedded into the curriculum? Olivia? Yes, I think it definitely should. I mean, Charlotte was talking about her experience of climate change really coming up in a science lesson and it was
simple for me. I'm 26 so I was at school a little while ago and it was very much focused on kind of if we were told about actions it was oh don't forget to turn off the lights when you leave the classroom or recycle and obviously those are important things and they're things that school children have agency over and I think that's partly why schools used to emphasize that so much but I also think they've done lots of studies that have shown that part of the reason
Gen Z are so engaged is because they have this really high level of climate anxiety. And I think that partly comes from climate change being framed as a kind of global scientific issue, but that does impact them somehow, but sort of that link isn't quite clear. And I think covering climate change in all sorts of different subjects would really help with that. I think if it was covered in more kind of arts and humanities subjects that gives people a chance to engage creatively
with the problem. So both in terms of like expressing their climate anxiety in a way that might help them work through it in an art lesson or also kind of maybe writing a short story imagining what a potential future could be and that could help come up with some new solutions rather than just ones that I've been come up with before.
So I really think it is important. I think there have been a lot of there's been a lot of progress since I was at school but I do think there's still some way to go and that it's not just a kind of scientific issue that needs to be in science classes because that's not how people experience and so it doesn't feel true to young people. We're experiencing climate change every
day to some extent so I get that point. Now going back to being at the table and using your voices, I talk here to a lot of scientists, a lot of engineers, about what's happening to our planet, the warming, how it looks. And your organization talks about radically transforming systems of power. What does that mean for you? What does that look like, that radically transforming? I've been on your website, I've looked at that.
How do you see that? I think it means not just asking for a seat at the table, it's like redesigning the table. fundamentally and redesigning how it looks like and how young people are involved because right now decisions are made by people who often won't face the consequences or won't face them as much as young people or marginalised people now and that's why I think it's really really important that we are youth led and we don't want to be consultative we want we want
to lead. the fight we want to lead those attitudes, those policy decision makers. We want to influence those decision makers and influence those policy. And we believe in shifting the power to the margins, so the people, the communities and the nations most affected by the climate crisis, as Olivia was saying, when we have those passes that we can give to those people that we do. We don't
just want to be heard. We want to be in charge of building what comes next and being part of those conversations, not in a tokenistic way, but in a really meaningful and impactful way as well. Okay, so there are challenges when you talk about your membership in engaging the youth, aren't there? The statistics show that The younger generation have a shorter attention span and that's maybe to do with social media and the flicking through, I think it's eight seconds
flicking, flicking. There's an eight second rule of people flick, drunk people flick through from screen to screen, which means you've got to really engage your audience. There's the influencing part, but you also have an audience, which is those billions of young people across the world. I mean, in New York, UK, but we want to kind of, we need to work together. Climate. crisis isn't just here, it's a global issue. So what are the challenges in engaging the younger generation
in your messaging? Yeah, I think that's a really important question. That's something we've been thinking about quite a lot, at least in the communications working group, which I'm part of. I think there's an assumption, I've heard this from so many older people, that our generation will save save the
world and save us. But I think that's putting a lot of responsibility on young people, but also assuming that we're a monolith and it's not, although there are higher levels of engagement and kind of climate activism in the younger generation, that doesn't mean that that's uniform across everyone. And I think some of that is that sometimes climate activism, well, it's definitely true and it's being criticized rightly. that climate activism has kind of become a bit of a niche
kind of elite activity. And I think a lot of that's put people off and also kind of means that the way that climate activism has been designed doesn't always include people. So a lot of it's kind of big protest movements that if you're busy or you don't feel safe going to that, that's not a way you can engage. So you're trying to think of how to engage people and kind of meet
them where they already are. So we're currently designing a campaign which is thinking about what are young people already interested in and how can we kind of show that that is an activity that can be kind of slightly shifted to become
climate activism. So for example, one of the things that I'm particularly interested in is there are so many sports fans around the world and there are some kind of sometimes negative behaviors associated with fans of sports, particularly football, in the past anyway, and kind of showing them that that collective power that they have as a member of this sports club, that gives them
this power to reframe things. So for example, telling the sports club they're a fan of to improve their sustainability policy, or to use their soft power to kind of influence things. Because I know there are football teams that have become
fully green clubs. went off on a little bit of a tangent, but that's kind of, I think the challenges are also places where there's a kind of opportunity and trying to reframe what climate activism is or what caring about the environment means so that people... don't necessarily have to make a dramatic change to their lifestyle. They can kind of use things that they're already engaged in, but just kind of shift the focus to be more
on the climate. And of course, there is that health focus as well, linking climate change to what is better for your health, you know, encouraging healthier lifestyles. Eating less meat has got to be a healthier way to live. So it's kind of bringing that together, isn't it? That kind of clean image and also improve mental health as well. and bringing all that part of the into the discussion. And of course, the linking of issues like social, economic, environmental
issues, they're all interconnected. So it's linking that climate change to that social justice. And I don't suppose you can do that enough. But in terms of practical aspects, If people are going to say, yes, we can influence, we can lobby, we want a voice, we want a seat at the table, we don't want to just be, this isn't just tokenism. And I know that's a big issue and young people,
the fear of being disenfranchised. But what can people, what do you think Charlotte, people can... practically do if you're one of those billions of young people. And there are many, I think I've looked at statistics today, the world is home to about 1 .8 billion young people aged
between 10 and 24. That's huge. So when you think of those numbers, and of course, there are other or there are many issues around that globally in terms of their situations and economic abilities, etc. But what do you think in the UK, because we're talking to you about UK climate? action. So what is the practical things that people can do, young people can do Charlotte, to make a
difference? I think especially it's easy to think like this is too big for me, this is too much for me, this is too much for me to even think about. And I think that it's really, really easy to kind of get yourself in that mindset that
you can't do anything. But it's all about kind of those little changes that you can make to make yourself kind of Do better for not only yourself, but for the environment You can you know go vegan for a day or go vegan if you can't give up cheese But you can go vegan everything else don't give up that cheese become vegan everywhere else That's what really frustrates me when people like oh, I could go vegetarian, but I couldn't give up this progress one product go vegetarian
don't give up that product that's absolutely fine to do if you can find your ways in contributing in a meaningful way that's absolutely fine if signing a petition is the way that you can contribute that's absolutely amazing if you can contribute a post educate somebody within your life that's amazing that's incredible that's one step more than what you were doing yesterday but i think it's really important to also be conscious that it's the top 1 % that admits more than the bottom
66%. So while individual choices really do matter, it's the system change that will shift the dial. So making these individual changes are great and will show to other people and to businesses and corporations and governments that you want to live a more eco and sustainable lifestyle. and that is proven to them that there was a shift within their community but it's actually like lobbying them and forcing them to make the changes that will have that effect on everyone else.
So it is always seeing that bigger picture and staying engaged and aware of what's happening and of course watching the progress you're making but not just watching but being part of it. Personally, okay, I have to ask this question. So we're talking about climate change, talking about sustainability, talking about healthier lifestyles. How has that affected your lifestyle? I mean, do you both count your carbon footprint every day, for example? How do you figure that in? I don't count my carbon
footprint. I think I did. I think at secondary school we had to calculate it, but that was at least 10 years ago, so it's probably quite a lot bigger now. Yeah, I think. I've made some of the changes that Charlotte was talking about, so I haven't eaten meat for the last sort of five or six years and having watched the near David Attenborough documentary Ocean now thinking about cutting down on fish or making a really conscious effort to look for sustainably sourced
fish. Although it does make you realise how difficult that is, especially if you're shopping in a supermarket, just things aren't labelled very clearly. as much as consumers can try and make a difference. If the infrastructure isn't set up for that, then it is really difficult. And then lucky to live in a city with really good public transport and it's very walkable. So that's usually how
I get about. I don't have a car. And then I'm also quite lucky that most of my family live within the UK so I can also get the train to see them. OK, so you're not up in the sky. You don't have to use that for transport. I try not to fly. Also partly, I just really hate flying. Charlotte, is there anything that you can tell us that you're doing that might inspire others to follow? Same as Olivia, I try to make those
sustainable choices and vegetarian limit. flying as much as I can if I'm going to a different country I try and take you know boats and trains, a shop second hand as much as my bank account doesn't like that, charity shops and and places like vintage are like my favorite places to go but I'm not kind of like obsessed with like that personal. perfection piece of it all. It is just trying to make sure that you are a little better every single day and it's about making a little
difference every single day. So even if it is you don't have that one meal. that has a load of meat in it that one day. I think that's good enough for that person. And that's the key, isn't it? It's making all of those little differences but not taking your eye off the big picture and having that big influence and that voice. So thank you very much to Olivia and to Charlotte today. Thank you very much for providing such valuable insight into this. important issue that
we're talking about. There can be no doubt that climate change is the biggest challenge of our time. Today we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow global warming. Today we must act for tomorrow, adjusting our lifestyles to current and future impacts of climate change. Today we must use our collective wisdom to deliver on our climate commitments. Today we work for tomorrow's world. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast channels and please do email us at podcast .salixfinance
.co .uk. We'd love to know what you think and we're always open to new ideas and new suggestions for our podcasts. But thank you very much to both Charlotte and Olivia. Really appreciate your time today to come along and talk about your work and talk about and also to give us a sense of that huge passion that you have and obviously to explain everything about UK Youth Coalition, which is something we're going to certainly be watching out for in the future.
So thank you very much to both of you. Thank you so much. For more information about our work and to find more content, please visit salixfinance .co .uk forward slash podcasts.