On Wednesday, November 6 Aili Scott, Co-President of Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s Tahoe Youth Action Team and a Truckee High School junior, presented a compelling speech to the TTUSD School Board. She gave voice to the proposed resolution regarding electrifying the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District presented by her older sister, Keira Scott, almost two years before. This comprehensive resolution, which had been carefully composed and meticulously researched, included numerous achievable solutions to electrify the school district’s buildings and transportation to reduce the district’s polluting greenhouse gas emissions. These solutions included decreasing EUI (energy use intensity) in district buildings, replacing as much gas-combusting equipment as possible, and reinstating energy use monitoring technology that the district has used in the past.

Since Keira and the members of the Tahoe Youth Action Team drafted, composed, and proposed the resolution, numerous other school districts, including the Cincinnati, Ohio public school district, the Tucson, Arizona public school district and more have ratified similar resolutions.  So far, TTUSD’s board has not negotiated or adopted the student-led resolution presented to it in April 2023.

TTUSD has, however, implemented the suggestion in the student resolution that it create a full-time sustainability manager position, and it has purchased some electric school buses.   TYAT welcomed the addition of Sustainability Manager Erica Mertens, who is regularly meeting with it and has implemented another of the student resolution provisions by arranging for a baseline greenhouse gas inventory for the school district.

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 It is time for the school board to return to the students’ proposed resolution and pass it. TTUSD now has the in-house expertise and access to resources to evaluate the provisions of the resolution, make revisions, if necessary, and adopt it. Among other things, the resolution would pave the way for creating a district climate action plan to set goals and timelines to reduce polluting emissions and measure progress in doing so.

As Aili pointed out in her comments to the school board, for the next four years the incoming federal administration has pledged to reverse support for climate solutions.  The president-elect has downplayed the urgency of climate change, often questioning the science behind it.  During his prior presidential term, he reversed environmental regulations, withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement and supported policies that prioritized fossil fuel industries. And he has threatened to do so again.

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 This makes local climate action, regardless of federal leadership, even more important. It is in our local government and organizations’ hands to make the change we want to see and utilize the resources we have to make our community more sustainable.

California has been a leader in taking bold action to combat climate change, adopting policies to reduce emissions, promote clean energy, and accelerate the transition to electric vehicles, with a goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2045. However, California is still relying on individual communities to take action that makes sense for them. The TTUSD school board has had before it a proposed electrification resolution that was designed for Truckee specifically. Let’s commit and move forward  to consider, adopt and implement it.

This resolution is for our children and generations to come, who will pay a steep price for what we fail to do now. Our community is at a crossroads– will we shake our heads at the actions of the federal government while sipping through our metal straws, or will we turn our concerns into decisive action? The decisions we make over the next few years will have unimaginable impacts on the future of our planet. We cannot afford to desensitize ourselves to that responsibility. And at the end of the day, “we” means the people our town elected to represent and protect us. “We” means the people in power.

Annika Pekarek is a junior at Truckee High School and part of the Tahoe Youth Action Team. She is passionate about improving our environmental options and spending time exploring the outdoors, and she looks forward to seeing the world.