A Lively Medley of Climate Action

Madeleine Bohn is a Junior at Madison West High School; this feature is an original assignment for YEPT.

With nearly 200 attendees from almost 30 high schools around the state, the fourth annual Dane County Youth Environmental Conference was a lively medley of inspiring successes, motivating stories and fierce brainstorming. Located at Madison Area Technical College in south-central Wisconsin, the free conference drew attendees from over three hours away.

As a member of the core planning committee, I am incredibly proud of the conference our youth-led team pulled together. Students were at the forefront of every aspect of planning, from formulating an agenda and organizing caterers to moderating and speaking at the conference itself.

Attendees came from as far away as three hours.

Held just eleven days after the 2024 presidential election, in a moment that appears rather bleak for the fight against climate change, the conference provided a beacon of hope and offered a sense of community to participants.

Keynote speaker McKenna Dunbar kicked off the conference with a passionate speech about the power each of us carry, the courage to reach out and seize the future, and resisting the paralysis of climate anxiety. At just 23 years old, Dunbar is the Community Engagement Coordinator for the Virginia Sierra Club, an environmental justice activist, clean energy and climate advocate, and a climate mental health practitioner. They earned their bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Richmond Robins’ School of Business. Dunbar later shared that while they were invited to the conference with the aim of inspiring others, they left feeling incredibly inspired and uplifted themself by what they saw and heard at the conference. 

After the uplifting keynote speech, attendees gravitated towards exhibits set up at one end of the room. Among the exhibitors included high school green teams, University of Wisconsin environmental groups, several Madison museums, and the Trash Lab, an interactive exhibit built into a truck trailer with the goal of helping us rethink our relationship with waste. As students explored their peers’ projects, they also helped themselves to a pasta bar catered by local Black-owned business JustVeggiez. 

Mauston HS students explain the mechanics of wind power.

After lunch, students settled into their seats once again for an interactive activity led by Sara Ostad, a PhD student and researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Life Science Communications. Attendees role-played as delegates for various countries around the world, imagining an ideal 2050 at the local, national and global levels. Through small-group simulations of an international negotiation, they drafted mutually-beneficial treaties which worked to solve a certain aspect of climate change.

Participants were given free reign to focus on whatever area of climate action they wished, from agricultural methods to industrial overproduction, allowing those who might have a particular climate focus to apply the lens they were passionate about. At the end of the activity, each country created a flowchart-style poster presenting the solutions and treaties they came up with.

Students participate in an interactive activity.

Ostad, who is accustomed to leading similar sessions with adults, commented that she was impressed with what a room of high schoolers was able to accomplish in just an hour and a half, compared to days-long negotiations between adults. 

Following a gallery walk presentation of the treaties and climate solutions, the stage was handed over once again to high school students for a series of presentations. High school green teams from Chippewa Falls, Central Sands, Deforest and Monona Grove presented on past projects and future hopes; a representative for the Midwest Climate Summit spoke about his experience and encouraged others to sign up for next year’s summit, which will take place in Madison; and I co-led a presentation about Citizens Climate Lobby’s trip to DC. In addition to these presentations, we played short videos throughout the conference from people who couldn’t be present, including COP29 delegate Elsa Barron.

The author, speaking into the microphone, explains Citizens’ Climate Lobby.

The conference closed out with a chance for attendees to offer final thoughts and impressions through an open mic and a raffle drawing for prizes from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Office of Sustainability.

Such a dense gathering of passionate youth activists was bound to produce tangible new ideas. During the closing comments, many students remarked that they were inspired to spearhead new projects. It is easy to feel disillusioned with the power that we hold as individuals, but the conference reinforced the idea that individual students hold immense power to organize large-scale change. Organizer Natalie Lesnjak, a senior at Madison West High School, said in an email that “Our conference this year exceeded my personal expectations and has deepened my desire to continue my work combating the climate crisis and inspiring others to do the same.” 

I am still amazed at the wonderful things my peers have accomplished. As an organizer of the conference, I anticipated some of the inspiring things we would see, but even I was blown away by the talent and passion present in the room. Conferences can seem intimidating, particularly for youth, who often find themselves alone in a room of older folks. At this conference, however, the vast majority of attendees were youth, all overwhelmingly friendly and eager to connect over a shared passion for helping the earth.  The connections I’ve made each year at the DCYEC conference have lasted me to today; I’m still dreaming up new climate-saving schemes with the same people I met at my first Dane County Youth Environmental Conference two years ago.

Organizer Nina Zhu, a junior at Vel Phillips Memorial High School who presented about CCL with me, expressed similar sentiments in an email after the conference. “Attending this conference for the first time two years ago was one of the best decisions I've made. It inspired me to take action against climate change and allowed me to meet like-minded young people from around the state. Reflecting on the future of the world today, this year's conference especially left me feeling the need to act,” she wrote.

To know that we are shifting hearts, minds, and maybe even the trajectory of our planet with this conference is the best thing I could have hoped for.

The Dane County Youth Environmental Conference is a place to connect with peers who care about the looming threats of climate change that are so often ignored. It is a place to dream of a brighter future. Most of all, it is a place to build those dreams into a concrete reality, to take abstract vision and transform it into tangible action. It is a place to be inspired by the work of others, and to expand one’s conception of what is possible.

A single drop has the power to send unimaginably far-flung ripples. But two hundred collaborating drops have the power to change the current.

To learn more and stay updated about next year’s conference, visit here.