When Carmen De Backer was a toddler, she would sit on the couch staring at photos of wildlife in the worn pages of National Geographic magazines her mom bought at the thrift store. She couldn’t read the articles so she would ask her older sisters to tell her about the wildlife in the photos.
That’s where her love for and curiosity about nature started.
Throughout grade school, she would revisit the magazines, reading the articles and looking at the photographs over and over. At about 7 years old, De Backer remembers watching a video about how polar bears and their environment were being impacted by a warming planet, their feet getting stuck in ice blocks and injuring the bears.
“I remember my heart, my heart broke,” De Backer said, as she dropped her hands to emphasize the heavy emotion. “I’m like, ‘why are people letting this happen?’”
Now 16 years old, she is co-lead of the Tucson team of the Arizona Youth Climate Coalition.
On Tuesday, De Backer’s long, wavy copper hair rested over her shoulder, partially covering the “AZYCC” logo on her t-shirt, as she introduced Rep. Adelita Grijalva and Ward 5 Council member Selina Barajas to more than a dozen Arizona youth during a climate change conversation at El Pueblo Activity Center on Tucson’s south side. The two elected officials were there to listen to how extreme heat and climate change impact young people’s lives, and to share some of the ways they’re addressing the issue at a local and national level. The Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter hosted the conversation alongside a handful of community organizations.
The wall and windows of the large room were lined with signs that read “Climate Can’t Wait,” “El Clima No Espera,” and “Too Hot To Learn.”
The students, mostly high school aged from Tucson and Phoenix, sat at tables arranged in a rectangle as Grijalva told them how much their voices matter on the issue of environmental justice. She assured them that there are national leaders, local leaders like Barajas, fighting to address climate change. But the solutions have to also come from youth, she said.
“This conversation cannot wait for people my age and older to figure it out,” Grijalva said. “Because you’re the ones that are going to be living with the consequences every single day.”
Climate change is the biggest challenge this generation is facing, Grijalva said, and it’s important that the adults who are in positions of power listen to youth rather than simply telling them what elected officials are doing to address the problem.
Barajas urged the students to think of ways to get their classmates and neighbors more involved in climate solutions and more civically engaged. She said there is a correlation between low voter turnout in Ward 5 and the climate inequities South Side residents face, like poorer air quality and less tree shade.
“I want to see if there’s opportunities that we could collaborate and bring more people in the room because I want this area to be the greenest area,” Barajas said. “I want this area to have the highest voter turnout.”
Over the next hour, students described how heat affects their daily life as they watch parents work outside in dangerous temperatures, endure triple-digit heat during after-school sports and push school and city officials to adopt policy changes.
Students worry about parents who work outdoors
One student from Pueblo High School said her dad builds pools, and it’s been difficult for him and his coworkers to get the job done in extreme heat. She wanted to highlight that the people most affected by heat are outdoor workers, as well as unhoused people who have to spend most of their day outside.
Barajas added that the city has a list of cooling centers for people to find relief from the heat, including one at El Pueblo Center across the parking lot.
Azulayde Romero, a junior at South Ridge High School in Phoenix, also worries about the wellbeing of her dad, Olegario. He has been a landscaper since he was 21, and Romero has seen how excessive heat has impacted him over the years.
“My dad’s older now, he’s 62 years old, and he’s still working in the heat, from 5 in the morning to like 3 in the afternoon, and seeing him it’s upsetting, you know, because I want to do something about it,” Romero said.
Romero joined a team of youth through a Mi Familia en Acción summer fellowship and helped educate her neighbors about tree shade inequities on the south side of Phoenix, where there is a predominantly Latino population. The team did some research on the heat island effect and found that many factories and asphalt on Phoenix’s southwest side along with fewer trees cause an even hotter climate in that part of the city.
Romero and her teammates went door to door educating their neighbors about what they learned and helped them register for a workshop with the Salt River Project, where the energy company gives homeowners two free trees to add shade to their property.
“I’m worried about the extreme heat that we’re facing because it feels like [we’re] getting more intense heat waves, and the solutions that we’re getting are often just temporary fixes rather than long-term effect fixes,” Romero said during the discussion. “I just want to know what steps are truly being taken to address this and ensure that our state is being prepared for the future and not just to make a quick fix.”
Grijalva said not much is being done because a lot of the long-term solutions need to come from the federal government and right now “you have people in power that don’t believe that what’s happening to our climate is a real thing, they don’t believe in science. They don’t believe in solutions.” While it’s important that everyday residents do their part in saving energy and water, corporations also need to do their part and be held accountable, Grijalva said.
Youth are already taking action through policy change
The daughter of immigrant parents, De Backer grew up in a community in Tucson where her neighbors struggled to keep the AC on during the summer. At school, she notices the waste – single-use plastic, food waste, incandescent lights that use more energy than LED lights – and wonders why no one is fixing the problem. She’s not relying on adults to address these issues. Instead, she’s working alongside other teenagers in Tucson to write policy.
De Backer is part of Tucson Unified School District’s Climate Action and Sustainability team, which ensures that the district is making changes according to its policy code.
“I feel I would be doing an injustice to my community, I’d be doing an injustice to my family, if I wasn’t fighting,” De Backer said. “Because if I wasn’t fighting, then there would be one less person that could help with the impacts of climate change.”
Sofia Garcia, a senior at Canyon del Oro High School highlighted the policy report on energy, titled “Distributed Capacity Procurement,” that Arizona Youth Climate Coalition members drafted and presented to the city’s Commission on Climate Saving Energy.
The group spent months analyzing Tucson Electric Power reports, doing a fiscal analysis and gathering community input “to build a more sustainable future for Arizona’s energy grid,” Garcia said. They are hoping the city adopts the policy.
Garcia, co-lead of the Tucson team of the Arizona Youth Climate Coalition, said it’s important that youth are given more opportunities to be involved in addressing climate change.
“We’re the ones inheriting the environment,” Garcia said. “We’re the ones that are going to have to deal with these long-term effects for generations to come.”
Excessive heat impacts outdoor sports
Gabriel Sadza, a sophomore at University High School, took the microphone from Garcia. With his 6-4 stature and his booming, upbeat voice, he admitted he was a little nervous to speak in front of an audience.
Sadza shared a story about having to practice for the marching band inside the school gym.
“We’re doing our plie, relevé. I’m sweating. I can’t see out of my eyes. My sweat’s stinging my eyes. So we move into the gym. The gym AC blows out. We’re marching in a 95-degree gym for 14 hours a day, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. for a week straight,” he said. “This shouldn’t be how we live here in Tucson. We need to adapt.”
That was one of many times Sadza has had to deal with excessive heat during a school activity. He remembers his first cross country practice. He was in the second grade. It was over 100 degrees.
“I’m not joking when I tell you I was dying. My vision was blurring. I was going through it,” he said. “I was so dehydrated, and at that age, I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t know how to ask for help. I wasn’t educated on the dangers we were facing with extreme heat and also ways to remedy that.”
He remembers an advisor got him some water, helped him find shade and sat with him to make sure he was OK. The heat has only gotten worse since then, Sadza said.
While canceling outdoor recreation is left up to each school principal, the Arizona Department of Health Services recommends moving activities indoors when temperatures are above 105 degrees.
“When I got to high school, I was like, ‘What can I do in my position and pulling from my experiences to help fight the increasing climate crisis, and you know make sure students in the future, students like myself that love playing outside, that love going on hikes with their families, ensure that they don’t experience the same struggles that I faced growing up?'” he said.
Sadza, who is the communications director for the Youth Climate Coalition, has been involved in finding solutions to address climate change. Tuesday’s conversation was a step in the right direction, he said, but the work needs to continue in order to find climate solutions that will make Arizona’s communities better for everyone.
As the event came to a close, Grijalva told the youth that her office was committed to having more conversations on climate solutions on a monthly basis. The students say they intend to hold her to that commitment.
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