Local kids urge Trump to tackle climate change

Worried about coral reefs, polar bears, and their own coastal town, a group of Solana Beach students and their have begun a letter-writing campaign urging President Trump to take swift action on climate change.

“I think it’s really powerful if we can get this mass movement of children to show him that they care” said Heidi Dewar, a marine biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and a founder of the new group, Kids 4 Planet Earth. “They’re inheriting this planet from us. They’re the next generation.”

Dewar, who studies sharks, tuna and other large fish, said she sees the impacts of climate change in her daily work, as changes in the marine environment affect ocean predators. She is working on the kids climate campaign on her own time, but making use of her scientific expertise to help kids document their personal concerns. The group aims to get a million kids to write to the new president by Earth Day, flooding the White House with environmental messages.

“Dear Donald Trump, I think that we need to take immediate action, as to the preservation of our environment on planet Earth,” wrote Dewar’s son Luke Halpern, 13. “Although it may not seem like we are affected by, or may not have any impact on global warming, humans are the main problem. And if we do not do something, there will be a mass destruction of habitat and loss of many different creatures and diversity.”

The group held a letter-writing party last weekend, spreading out paper, postcards, markers, National Geographic magazines and climate fact sheets. It was a crash course in climate change for some in the group who said reading about global warming drove home how it will affect the things they cherish most.

One boy from Australia was particularly concerned about the fate of coral reefs amid warmer and more acidic oceans, Dewar said. Her son Luke, who loves hiking in the woods, worries about the loss of trees in the Sierras. And rising seas were especially alarming to coastal kids, who are growing up a stone’s throw from the Pacific.

“If global warming keeps happening, waters will rise, and all of a sudden it may not be this little beach town we see and grew up in,” said Olivia Whedan, 14, an eighth grader at Earl Warren Middle School.

Madeline Carlson, also a 14-year-old eighth grader at Earl Warren, cited some striking numbers in her plea.

“Sea levels have already risen and are expected to rise up to three feet by the end of the century,” Carlson wrote. “Please help save my coastal beach town.”

The group acknowledges that they have their work cut out for them. Not only will it be challenging to round up a million letters, but it could also be tough to get the message through.

Trump has vacillated in his position on climate change, tweeting during the campaign that “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

He has since said he believes that humans may play a role in climate change, but has not laid out a strategy for dealing with the problem. Still, at least two of his key cabinet picks — Montana Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, tapped to head the Interior Department, and former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, slated for Secretary of State, acknowledged the threat of climate change in their confirmation hearings.

Environmentalists breathed a collective sigh of relief at those affirmations, but remain wary about whether the new administration will tackle the problem aggressively.

“When President Trump was elected, and because of some of the people he has been electing to his cabinet, we thought that there might not be as much concern on the environment, which greatly stressed us,” Luke Halpern said.

After the vitriol of the election season, the organizers are careful to note that they’re not campaigning for a party, but for the planet. And they hope Trump and his administration view the changing climate from the vantage points of parents and grandparents, envisioning the world they want to leave to their own children.

“I think the important thing is that this is not about political parties,” said Ann Wycoff, Olivia’s mother and a writer and editor. “This is not about being Democrat or Republican. this is just about kids voicing their concern about the planet. I think we have a long road ahead of us, but we have to do something.”

deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com Twitter@deborahsbrennan