Next Station: Fighting Climate Change

“Class is canceled,” I texted my mom while I waited at my community college’s bus station. It was a chilly, late-fall afternoon in 2018 and I could smell smoke in the air. As I boarded the bus for what would be a two-hour commute home across sprawling Santa Clara County, I could see the smoke in the distance, drifting towards us. The air was already hazy with ash from the Camp Fire, the most destructive wildfire in the state’s history. I didn’t know back then that public transit would soon become a medium for me to engage in environmental justice advocacy and the fight against climate change.

As a low-income student from a working class, immigrant family living in the California Bay Area, public transit has always been an essential service for me. It provided a mode of transportation when my family could not afford a car or rideshare services. Public transit allowed me access to educational, career, and recreational opportunities across a county the size of Rhode Island, opportunities that are unavailable in my underserved, blue-collar neighborhood.

Because of my family’s background, I was taught to always focus solely on my education and career so that I could climb up the socioeconomic ladder. Yet, as I witnessed my mom suffer asthma attacks due to the Camp Fire and heard from environmental scientists that climate change is intensifying wildfires in California, I knew I had to join my generation in a global effort to fight the climate crisis. My hard work in school would mean nothing if the planet were no longer able to sustain me, my community, and my species.

The opportunity to engage came during a youth climate summit a few months later where I met with peers equally concerned about the threat climate change poses to our future. I learned that most of us had also relied on public transit to get to the summit.

Around the same time, I met with some older transit riders who expressed concern about upcoming budget cuts from the county transit agency, which would reduce services, discourage transit riders, and indirectly incentivize people to opt for gas-guzzling, single-occupancy vehicles. Recognizing that public transit and the transportation sector are vital to combating climate change, I joined the youth and older transit riders and organized to fight the looming budget cuts.

Transportation is the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions in California. In Santa Clara County, it accounts for around 30 percent of emissions. Because of the intersectional nature of transit, we knew that fighting for better public transit also meant we were fighting for equitable access to travel, for less stress-inducing traffic and better mental health, and for a healthy planet to continue calling home.

Within a few months of the summit, we tapped our social networks and organized to turn out to the transit agency’s public meetings. We spoke for hours before board members, expressing our opposition to the proposed budget cuts and urging them to invest in public transit in order to achieve social equity and fight climate change. Each of us shared our stories, and we dragged the meetings late into the night for months on end until transit became a higher regional priority.

While I am only one student still discerning my trajectory, my transit and climate advocacy work has enriched my studies in environmental biology and public policy. It also challenges me to grow as a young leader and give back to the people I love. By organizing for better public transit, I have learned that our voices are powerful when we speak together. As someone who was never told that I could make a difference and had no models to emulate as a minority student, the fight against climate change empowered me to see myself as a change agent and public servant. Most importantly, advocating for better public transit made climate change a more tangible and personal issue to me.

As more young people join up to meet the challenge of our lifetime, I encourage my peers to be open to discovering their personal stakes in this issue, to build alliances with those for whom climate change poses a similar threat, and to approach the fight against climate change through that lens. Whatever effort we can give to curb this global crisis is an effort in the right direction.