By Kaylee Shen

Hello everyone!

My name is Kaylee Shen and I am the president of the Olympia High School Climate Action Club. This past year, we’ve gotten our club to have several mass-emailing sessions, testified at multiple city council meetings, and did everything we could to support the passing of the Thurston Climate Mitigation Plan. As such, we’re incredibly thankful that the TCMP is finally passed– and about time too! We’re such a progressive, forward-thinking community that I’m sure we’ll get started with the work on climate action right away.

Especially being in the Pacific Northwest, the TCMP will play a vital role in highlighting our environmental leadership as a community and our willingness to do whatever it takes to protect our climate– and stimulate our economy with the myriad of jobs that come with a renewable energy transition. I’m excited to be a part of this change, and ever since hearing
about the TCMP my freshman year, I’ve been anxious to see it materialize into legitimate action. 

I’m also incredibly thankful that our city councils are open to collaboration with youth. After passing our Climate Inheritance Resolution (M-2045) with the Olympia city council (which set a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2040), I know we’ll have a lot of work to do, especially as a city, but I’m excited to see the unique and synergistic collaboration that our city council will have with the youth activists in this region. We’re ready as ever to get down to business. Our climate is our future, is our community, and is our passion. We’re so hyped for some hardcore climate action!

This article was featured in our Feb 9th newsletter, which you can read by clicking here!

Want to read more from Kaylee? Click here to read Kaylee’s article about food waste from our youth focused newsletter in August!