Dr. Heather Price of North Seattle College stops by the office to share her and her family's experience of School Strike for Climate (#fridaysforfuture) at Seattle's City Hall and beyond, and to what degree she's heard talk of carbon removal in these circles.
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom. I am Ross Kenyon. I am lead strategist with the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me Dr. Heather Price. Heather is an atmosphere chemist at North Seattle College. You have been involved with the youth climate strikes, at least here in Seattle. And we want to do a take on this. Actually, I screwed up because I was supposed to go down when there was that big school strike where everyone walked out on a Friday. And my calendar had it on a Saturday. And I went down to the park in Capitol Hill.
I thought it was weird that they would be skipping school on a Saturday. And it didn’t make sense to me. And then I realized my error. So I wanted to do this live at a protest. The schedule didn’t work out. But Heather, thank you so much for graciously coming in here and telling me about what’s been going on with these strikes. So what is it about and what’s been happening particularly here in Seattle?
Heather Price: Well, I guess I can start back at the beginning. Gerta Thunberg, who is at the time she was 15 years old in Sweden, she started these strikes. She started striking on Fridays in Sweden, I believe in front of either the City Hall or the UN there. And it sparked strikes throughout Europe. And on, I think it was COP24, at the end of that, she called out for other kids to start striking. And then I think that’s where it started to kind of come into the United States. There were some girls in New York.
I can’t remember her last name. Haven.
Ross Kenyon: I’ve seen her on Twitter.
Heather Price: Yes.
Ross Kenyon: I forget her last name as well, but it’s been quite popular and people have been sharing her content.
Heather Price: Starts with a V, but I can’t recall it. But anyhow, so she’s been striking in New York and there’s a number of kids that have been striking every Friday since November or December. My own son, he saw what was happening in Europe and asked me, hey, why isn’t that happening here? Can I do that? And so I’ve been Supporting him in going and striking at Seattle City Hall. And he’s been there since the end of COP24. So he watched the video of Greta at COP24 and said, Oh, I’ll do that.
Ross Kenyon: And what are they looking for? What kind of policy changes or actions are they clamoring for? These young rabble rousers.
Heather Price: It seems like they just want adults to wake up and the words that Greta uses is stop stealing my future. So stop stealing their future. Start to reduce our emissions from fossil fuels, our land use changes, solve this problem in whatever way it needs to be solved. For the United States, that’s right now the only thing on the table seems to be a Green New Deal in Canada, they’ve just instituted a carbon tax. So each country is coming at this from a different route. For Greta, it was that she was on strike until her country met the Paris Agreement and came in line with Paris.
And so that was for Greta. So I think each kid is kind of coming at it from their own, how are we going to solve this? How can I get the adults on board to solve this? Because they can’t vote. What other choice do they have? And for a lot of these kids that are out there, this needs to be solved in the time before they can even vote.
Ross Kenyon: I’ve seen some policies advocated, but I think it probably is individual and just what people care about. And in some ways, it seems like it isn’t really about specific policy. It’s just we’re walking into this. We’re coming into adulthood. And it doesn’t seem like anyone’s at the helm figuring this out. And that’s the scary thing.
Heather Price: Exactly.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. So I’m not wrong in my take on it. Am I showing up on a Saturday, not fully knowing besides what I see on the internet?
Heather Price: Yeah, it’s not super organized. The Fridays for Future is really what each striker is wanting to bring to the table. But the thing that is, I guess, goes the thread through all of it is it’s climate action, action on climate.
Ross Kenyon: Do you see anything about carbon removal? Are people at these protests, have you seen anyone talking about pulling it out of the atmosphere or has it been more focused on avoiding emissions and clean energy? What sort of conversations are you hearing over there?
Heather Price: I’m hearing more on reducing emissions to zero, transitioning from fossil fuel energy to renewables. And then in terms of I guess carbon removal, I recall hearing some about agricultural removal, changing agricultural practices so that we can take up carbon in the soils. And when the kids, there have been more and more kids that have been showing up at Seattle City Hall the past couple of weeks and they do these little chants and one of them has keep it in the soil. And so I was like, hmm, I wonder if that’s related to something that they’re learning about carbon removal through agriculture or through, I don’t know, Yeah, I think I saw recently Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did some sort of like live streaming of gardening and was talking about regenerative agriculture and farming the other night.
Ross Kenyon: I wonder where people are picking up on this, but big companies are switching to regenerative practices. Nice. I’m curious to see where that’s coming from. So, okay, I’m glad to hear that. I wanted to do a show about the school striking. I have to make it about carbon removal, so I had to interject that. I’m happy to hear it. Soil is one of those ones that seems a little less controversial. I’m not surprised people start there because there are so many co-benefits with erosion and water retention and resilience and a changing climate compared to something like industrial carbon capture through direct air capture that doesn’t have a lot of those same benefits and also doesn’t have that feel-good biophilia effect.
Heather Price: Yep.
Ross Kenyon: Crunchiness to it. So I guess I’ll keep my eyes peeled out on that and I will stop being so negligent and just show up one of these days, try to learn for myself. But that’s great. Well, thank you for sharing all that with us, Heather.
Heather Price: Wonderful.
Ross Kenyon: Thank you. By way of an addendum, I should have mentioned when Heather was on the show that the next big climate strikes that are happening are in the US and Canada on Friday, May 3rd, and in Europe, the UK, Africa, and Asia on Friday, May 24th. If you’re interested, I’m sure you can find information about this online, especially as they draw near. Thank you.
