Bella Santos (12) and Grace Mordhorst (12), presidents of Advocates for a Better Environment (ABE) club, called out to the students around them with posters in hand to promote petitions that aimed to demand a national climate emergency and to phase out oil drilling in California. Mordhorst and Santos urged them to take action and make their voices heard about the climate crisis on Global Climate Strike Day, Sept. 23. 

After preparing the previous week, ABE held a climate awareness booth at lunch as one of the many steps the club hopes to take to make Westview’s campus more climate-conscious. 

The club works with Youth4Climate, which is part of SanDiego350, a movement focused on fighting climate change. As a part of Y4C’s eco-club coalition, which targets high school climate and social justice clubs all around San Diego, and through initiating on-campus actions, the organization hopes to build a group of driven, diverse students.

“Through the organization we’re a part of, [there] are youth interns there that spearhead these actions,” Santos said. “They give us toolkits with general [objectives] and resources for us to work together to collaborate and outreach.”

Santos and Mordhorst aim to educate people about how and who they’re going to vote for. They sought 16 and 17-year-old students and encouraged them to pre-register to vote.

“We made flyers to register [students] to vote with a list of environmentally friendly candidates who are local to our state assembly and state senate,” Mordhorst said.

ABE’s booth also had an interactive art project, where people wrote on reused ribbons that were then hung on string. 

“We had the question ‘What is something you love and hope to never lose to the climate crisis?’” Santos said. “People wrote down things [on a ribbon] like the beach, or the sunsets, things they love about the planet.”

Mordhorst said that the ribbon project helped put the importance of the planet into perspective.

“I think our climate ribbon project shows visually how many people have things about Earth that are important to them,” they said.

Santos said she wanted students to truly internalize the things they wrote down and to value the environment on a more personal level.

“Past just taking actions by signing petitions or registering [to vote], people were able to reflect on why they want to be in the movement, [how] something they love pushes them to getting involved,” Santos said.

Santos said her passion for climate awareness stems from her interest in racial injustices’ relevance to climate change through how communities of color are disproportionately impacted by its adverse effects.

 “People on campus are passionate about their own things, and I just want to make that connection,” she said. “All types of social injustice realms intersect with climate, so it’s super important that we all collaborate on actions in that way. I think that is something that kinda gets me out there.” 

Mordhorst said that seeing the damage done by previous generations motivates them to take action and inform the people around them.

“A lot of issues with climate change are already irreversible, so we need drastic action right now to help mitigate [the damage from] the past,” Mordhorst said.

ABE caught the attention of students on Climate Strike Day by speaking out and spreading awareness, but they hope to reach newer heights over the course of the school year with more permanent measures. 

“[The] strike was meant to mobilize people to come together and care about the [climate crisis], and now we’re trying to implement more sustainable actions,” Santos said. “One big thing that we’re doing this year is working on the garden at the back of the school.”

Westview used to have a garden in the back of the school that was meant to be reinstituted, but when COVID hit, ABE was unable to do anything. This year, the club hopes to use the garden to integrate environmental education.

“[We] have researched how gardens compel students to have greater respect and concern toward the environment,” Santos said. “It can also create a sense of community because people are working toward shared goals of caring and maintaining the garden collaboratively.”

Mordhorst said maintaining and caring for the campus is also one of ABE’s objectives. 

“We hope to reduce waste at school, like establishing food bins at lunch or making our compost in the garden more accessible to all students at Westview,” Mordhorst said. 

ABE already has a compost bin established and has club members manually mix the bin once a week. They put in weeds from the garden that can later be put back into the soil. 

“People can put food waste into [the bins] for the compost, and volunteers would bring it to the main bin,” Santos said. “We want to incentivize volunteers with volunteer hours as well.”

With many plans for the future on campus, Mordhorst said that they are grateful for the turnout at the climate strike booth that helped bring more awareness to the club and its goals.

“There were incentives, obviously, but it was really important to share information,” Mordhorst said. “I think it was really inspiring to see just how many people came out and took action.”