By Caleigh Wells for KCRW.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Students in Brittany Jefferson's class can rattle off facts and opinions about deforestation, corporate greed, rising tides, warming temperatures, and the unequal plight of poorer countries as soon as the topic of climate change is introduced.

And most of them are just 10 years old.

"Because of global warming, and the amount of gas that we use, and the animals that we kill, and all the trash that we're putting in the ocean, we're just taking everything," says a fifth-grader named Jack at Citizens of the World Silver Lake charter school.

That doesn't mean these students are sanguine about ecological collapse.

"It makes me feel overwhelmed," says Hayoon, one of Jack's classmates. "If I was in the next generation, I would just cry and eat ice cream all day."

With greater knowledge comes greater anxiety. And while it's important to LA Unified School District administrators to educate kids about the warming world - this year the LAUSD board passed a resolution committing to incorporating climate literacy into existing curriculum - that leaves teachers grappling with how to inform children without traumatizing them.

"They don't have faith in the people powerful enough to make systemic changes," says fifth-grade teacher Jefferson. "And so they're just like, 'Yeah, the world is burning. And so we're gonna burn eventually.' And so that's something that I am working to combat."

Generational trauma

Kids like Jack and Hayoon are part of a cohort "that is experiencing much higher levels of anxiety than earlier generations," says David Bond, a licensed clinical social worker and trauma specialist. It was different for their parents, Bond says, who might think, "'Well, somebody else is going to figure that out.'"

"For young people," he continues, "they are the ones who have to figure this out. And also there's a sense [that] older generations aren't doing enough to mitigate the harm that we have done to the environment. So there's a sense of anger and frustration at older generations as well."

Citizens of the World Silver Lake fifth-grader Sawyer is ready to prove the point.

"I feel like we take it a bit more seriously than some adults because we actually care about having this earth, not having it turned into just like a wasteland," he says.

But that doesn't make Sawyer hopeful. "Eventually, this is just going to end up in a way that kills us all."

Lucy Garcia with Climate Reality Project, which helped spearhead LAUSD's climate literacy effort, knows this is a problem. She believes one way to combat anxiety is talking about it in the classroom. When it's ignored, she says, "That's where the trauma is worsened. So the most important thing is to be able to have them see that we are working on it, that we need their help ... [rather] than to ignore it. Because they see it anyway - this is the age of the internet."

Bond agrees that climate anxiety and the internet can create a problem for kids, because social media can become a place for teenagers to air their stress and anxiety publicly, which encourages doomscrolling.

Teacher Blossom Shores at Van Nuys Middle School says her best antidote to climate anxiety is teaching kids about solutions that are working.

"They're more perceptive than we realize," she says. "Yes, we want them to understand the gravity of it, but we don't want them to have dystopian reality fears. ... It's so important for them to feel empowered."

When Shores recently gave a climate talk to a class of Van Nuys Middle School sixth-graders, it started with some bleak statistics. But when she got to the back half of the presentation and started talking about the exponential growth of wind and solar energy, some students were more than ready to jump on the optimism bandwagon.

"Now there's a chance that global warming doesn't get worse," says one student named Luciana.

Her classmate Tyler was glad to see some of the good news, but says it still doesn't outweigh the bad news.

"It hasn't done so just yet, but I hope it will in the future."

Caleigh Wells wrote this article for KCRW.


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Results of a new study from Michigan State University suggest farmers no longer have to choose between growing crops and harnessing solar power. They can do both on the same land.

The 25-year study of California farmland found farmers who added solar panels, a practice known as agrivoltaics, made more money per acre than those who did not. The research shows crops and solar work together, especially when panels are placed on low-yield acres, or spots not growing as much food due to poor soil or too much shade.

The research indicates the approach helps farmers boost income without reducing food production.

Jake Stid, a graduate student at Michigan State and lead author of the study, said farmers can also benefit through a system called Net Energy Metering.

"A return structure where farmers can directly in many cases, interconnect so they can use the electricity to offset their own needs, as well as sell excess generation, excess electricity back to the utility for a discounted rate," Stid outlined.

Researchers estimate California land now used for solar panels could have fed 86,000 people had it stayed in crops. The study looked at the trade-off between farming and solar energy, while critics warned it could worsen food security by reducing farmland.

Stid highlighted his team chose California's Central Valley as the focus of the research due to its significant contribution to both national and global food production, particularly for a variety of orchard crops.

"It's a really, really agriculturally valuable state and it also happens to be a pretty water-stressed state," Stid pointed out. "Specifically, the Central Valley has been experiencing pretty significant drought, as well as over allocation of water resources."

Some farmers expressed concern about solar panels shading crops, affecting growth and reducing yields. Stid hopes to expand his research on solar arrays and food production nationwide, contributing to the ongoing debate among farmers on how to use land sustainably, without harming food production.


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Lawmakers and climate change activists are speaking out against a rumored executive action by President Donald Trump to revoke tax-exempt statuses from climate nonprofits. One rumored change includes the removal of climate change from qualifying topics for the exemption.

Last Thursday in the Oval Office, Trump hinted environmental nonprofits could have their tax-exempt statuses scrutinized by the administration. Federal law currently bars a president from directly or indirectly ordering the Internal Revenue Service to investigate specific tax-exempt organizations.

Ruth Ann Norton, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Green and Healthy Homes Initiative, said she found the rumored executive actions troubling.

"We should not be talking about removing tax-exempt status from the civic good that comes from the work of nonprofits to prevent environmental issues that impair and impact and are harmful on people's lives," Norton contended.

Climate nonprofits are not the only organizations in Trump's crosshairs. He has suggested Harvard University should lose its tax-exempt status over defying demands from the administration dealing with diversity, admissions processes and antisemitism.

Tax-exempt status allows organizations to receive tax-deductible charitable contributions and not pay federal income tax.

Joelle Novey, director of the nonprofit Interfaith Power and Light in Maryland, the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia, said the actions may target climate nonprofits first but all nonprofits are at risk.

"There is no attack on civil society groups in the United States that isn't an attack on every one of us who expresses who we are by forming, supporting, volunteering and taking action through nonprofit organizations," Novey argued.

A federal judge last week ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze billions of dollars in climate and infrastructure funds previously targeted in an executive order on Trump's first day in office.


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As of today, Earth Day, more than 50 elected officials have signed a letter urging lawmakers to make oil and gas companies bear the cost of climate change.

The California Polluters Pay Superfund, which goes before the state Senate Judiciary Committee today, would assess a fee on large oil and gas companies to pay for programs that mitigate damage from climate change.

Ahmad Zahra, a council member in Fullerton, signed onto the letter sponsored by the group Elected Officials to Protect America.

"Throughout the years, these large oil companies were really not necessarily telling the truth about air pollution," Zahra pointed out. "Just like we've seen in oil spills and ground pollution, the responsible party has to pay for it."

The Western States Petroleum Association opposes the bill, saying it would lead to higher gas prices. The bill directs the California Environmental Protection Agency to determine how much climate change has cost the state from 1990 to 2024. Federal data show California has suffered 46 natural disasters linked to climate change since 1980, each resulting in more than $1 billion in losses, with $250 billion from the Los Angeles firestorm alone.

Marisol Rubio, a council member in San Ramon, said 40% of the funds would be directed to low-income communities most affected by fossil fuel pollution.

"Those funds can then be used to better manage and correct and abate the pollution that not only already exists but that will come inevitably in the future, until we are able to be independent of fossil fuels," Rubio explained.

Advocates said right now, everyday Californians foot the bill for climate change in the form of higher taxes, insurance rates and utility bills, as well as via medical expenses for pollution-related illness.