Terre Haute’s Bhattacharyya propels tangible climate action
Writer Ana Rakita is a class of 2024 student at West Lafayette Junior/Senior High School. Her previous assignment for Youth Environmental Press Team also described youth-led climate policy conference.
Though just a senior in high school, Ahan Bhattacharyya’s commitment to combat the climate crisis has put him at the center of Terre Haute’s recent efforts to pass environmentally conscious policy. His work with the city council, as well as the EARTHlings and reTHink organizations, have resulted in a greenhouse gas inventory report that details the city’s current emissions, and opens doors to improvement.
High School Senior Ahan Bhattacharyya speaks at a recent conference about his work creating a greenhouse gas inventory report for the city of Terre Haute. Photo by Chenyao Liu.
Bhattacharyya’s interest in climate activism was initially inspired by his mother, Dr. Shikha Bhattacharyya [Disclosure: Shikha Bhattacharyya is a Resiliency Coordinator for Earth Charter Indiana]. From a young age, Ahan had the opportunity to involve himself in his mother’s nonprofit organization focused on environmental sustainability, reTHink, where she is currently the executive director. But during the summer of 2020, he started his own campaign.
With a few family friends, he launched a new organization called EARTHlings, with the goal to get more youth involved with climate activism. EARTHlings, which stands for Environmental Activists for a Resilient Terre Haute, began by trying to implement changes at the school level, but soon met with local organizations and businesses, eventually gaining attention from the city’s government. “Along the way, we started seeing …a lot more success with city officials and our city council members,” Ahan said.
So, EARTHlings set an ambitious goal: Get a climate resolution passed through the Terre Haute city council. They achieved this goal in August of 2021; six city council members co-authored the resolution. Ahan started his work alongside Mayor Duke Bennett and the newly established Sustainability Commission to form and implement the Resilient Terre Haute Climate Action Plan. Additional comments from members of the Commission were requested over email. Sustainability Coordinator Caleb Williams wrote, “A climate action plan will give us a roadmap for moving forward by giving measurable goals and policies that can be enacted.”
Ahan Bhattacharyya, far right, poses with his fellow EARTHlings at their Earth Day Climate March in Terre Haute, April of 2022.
To proceed with the climate action plan, the Commission first needed a full current assessment of Terre Haute’s emissions. This is where Ahan’s most recent and arguably most ambitious project, the greenhouse gas inventory report, comes in. The report compiles data previously gathered by Indiana State University and the Terre Haute Resiliency Cohort, led by the EARTHlings, along with ISU student Ashley Baysinger. The data reveals greenhouse gas emission levels for the city and their sources. At the request of Mayor Duke Bennett, Ahan’s goal was to put the numbers into a comprehensive and easy-to-understand format.
“More important than the actual data itself is just seeing the report as a progress measurement, and seeing it as outlining Terre Haute’s goals and story,” Ahan said.
Interning with the City of Terre Haute, Ahan spent the majority of last summer drafting the report, which was recently published and is available for anyone to read. It includes an introduction to greenhouse gasses and climate change, an analysis of all the data collected, including graphs and tables, and an outline of possible solutions to lower emissions.
The Sustainability Commission has been able to identify the most pressing problems with Terre Haute’s ecological footprint, and compare the city’s emissions to that of the rest of Indiana and the nation. For example, one of the data metrics is the city’s carbon emissions per capita, which is around fifteen tons in the average American city, but was found to be in the mid thirties in Terre Haute.
“Ahan’s work in formatting and helping explain the data into a report makes it more useful and accessible,” stated city council and Sustainability Commission member Todd Nation in an email communication.
Despite troubling statistics, Ahan has hope for the future. “We’re moving in the right direction, which is of course, very good. But in terms of where we are right now, there definitely is a lot of work to be done,” he added. The path to fulfilling such work has been made possible by his report and recent efforts by the city council. As an intern for Mayor Bennett, Ahan has been present for and assisted projects like installing EV charging stations at City Hall.
Ahan’s story is yet another data point on the trend of increasing climate activism by young people. “I hope that with his efforts Ahan is able to inspire and motivate a lot more children to learn about climate action,” Dr. Bhattacharyya said in an email communication.
After he graduates high school, Ahan is looking to apply to a military service academy and complete his college education, while still finding new ways to stay involved with preserving the environment. “There’s always something you can find to be a part of and still be environmentally inclined,” he said.
The city of Terre Haute’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report is available to read here.
