Meet the Teenager Who Is Changing the World

By Curtis Morrison

Your help is needed. Voting in the Global Youth Video Competition is underway through Friday. The competition features the best youth climate projects happening around the globe.

Two youth entrants, whose videos receive the most views, will receive a round-trip travel to COP22 in Morocco in November, and have the opportunity to serve as a youth reporter for COP22, responsible for assisting the UNFCCC Newsroom team with videos, articles and social media posts.

Video entries for the competition, which come from young people between the ages of 18 and 30, are classified into two categories. The first category, climate action, includes entries explaining activities to help to address climate change. The second category, public awareness, includes entries showcasing efforts to raise public awareness around climate change.

The video entry above was submitted by 18-year-old Jacob Lebel, of Roseburg, Oregon, one of 21 youth plaintiffs who sued the U.S. government in federal court. The youth’s complaint, filed last year, itemizes the climate impacts already faced by Jacob’s family farm, including “rising temperatures and a dwindling water supply,” as well as expert predictions that “large destructive wildfires, aggravated by record-low snow packs and consistently drier and hotter conditions, will become increasingly common in Oregon.”

Last week, Jacob joined his co-plaintiffs in Eugene for a hearing on the government and fossil fuel industry’s motions to dismiss their lawsuit.

[facebook https://www.facebook.com/EcoWatch/videos/1287629794583288/

“Young people like Jacob are the engine behind the work we do,” said Julia Olson, the executive director and chief legal counsel for Our Children’s Trust, the Oregon-based non-profit who is assisting Jacob with his lawsuit. “His presence and voice in Morocco would simply be fantastic.”

The video competition is sponsored by tve and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Curtis Morrison, J.D., is a freelance writer and a social media strategist for Our Children’s Trust, the Oregon-based non-profit who is assisting Jacob with his lawsuit.