About this episode
Avroh Shah is a remarkable teenage climate activist who’s already spent half his life advocating for environmental protection. Unlike my typical guests who’ve established professional careers, Avroh offers us something perhaps even more valuable: the unfiltered perspective of a generation inheriting our climate decisions. From organizing cleanups as an eight-year-old to becoming a plaintiff in a landmark lawsuit against the EPA, Avroh’s journey demonstrates that age is no barrier to meaningful action. His clarity of purpose and unwavering commitment serve as a powerful reminder that passion and persistence can create change at any stage of life. Whether you’re just starting your climate journey or decades into your career, Avroh’s story challenges us all to examine what more we might do with the platforms we have.
Notes and resources
Full transcript
Michael Ethan Gold (00:01)
Avroh Shah, welcome to Climate Swings. It’s great to have you here.
Avroh Shah (00:05)
It’s great to be here.
Michael Ethan Gold (00:06)
So you are a little bit different than my usual guests. Do you want to just start by telling the audience how old you are?
Avroh Shah (00:14)
Sure, I am 16 as of December.
Michael Ethan Gold (00:17)
And you are a sophomore in high school, is that right? Right, and you actually go to my alma mater, Palo Alto High School. You were born and raised in Palo Alto, is that right?
Avroh Shah (00:20)
That is correct.
Yeah, let’s go Vikes.
Michael Ethan Gold (00:28)
Great, great. So the idea of being a climate activist or a climate professional, we kind of need to modify that a little bit for someone your age. Obviously you are not in the professional world right now. You have not started your career, but you do have quite an impressive background as someone who cares about climate and is trying to do something about it. So can you just start with like a little bit of a history of your exposure to climate
and some of the actions and activities that you’ve done around activism and advocacy.
Avroh Shah (01:01)
Sure. So I became involved in, I guess, climate change advocacy or whatever you want to call it at a very young age. And back then I would joke, oh, it’s just the average age that people are getting involved in this because, you know, was a bunch of kids leading climate strikes back then. You know, I was just an eight year old in third grade who decided to get involved.
So I started very small, I just wanted to do my part. So I would just try to do a lot of education and I organized small cleanups and did some positioning for sustainability within my school. But for the first couple of years, I just tried to stay very small. I didn’t wanna be in the spotlight at all. I just wanted to do my part and I was very, very hopeful that…
all the people who needed so much more than me as I was just starting to educate myself on climate change would, you know, be making lot of progress. And unfortunately, that mentality began to fade as I started to become older. And I found myself kind of being now more so in the spotlight, where people who were leading climate strikes used to be I found myself now leading those climate strikes. So that
I think there’s a big shift in my mentality around that point where I decided, you know, I can’t afford to just be doing something so small when this is a very big issue. And, you know, with the experience of a couple of years, I can take this a lot further. So that point I joined an organization called Earth Guardians. This was in 2020, just a few months after the pandemic started. And I organized with them for a few years. And that also served as a really good point to educate myself about
not just the environmental side and, cause like I came into climate change advocacy from an environmental standpoint of always felt very connected to nature. So I always wanted to, you know, protect the things that I love. And that was the world outside, but getting involved with Earth Guardians, I started to see the human rights perspective around climate change. Most notably was when I was getting involved in opposing the line three pipeline expansion, which I imagine I’ll be talking a little bit more about later.
I started to learn about the sheer human rights violations that were happening against Native American water protectors and also the constitutional and civil rights that were being violated by the treatment of people who were just protesting for the protection of their land.
Michael Ethan Gold (03:45)
There’s a lot that we can unpack there and you’re doing a lot now that we definitely want to dive into a little bit. Let’s just go back to you were eight years old and you started thinking about climate, you started doing things actually around climate. How did you start hearing about it? Was it from your parents? Was it from the media? Was it from teachers, from peers? How did it start to enter the mindset of an eight-year-old?
Avroh Shah (04:13)
Yeah, so I guess I had the benefit of having small snippets of climate change being thrown into conversations. I remember in first grade, our teacher showed a video that was like maybe two minutes long, just basically saying, you know, climate change, the world is going to end. And then that was pretty much it in terms of my school education around climate change until many years later. But I think the biggest player in that was actually my older sister,
who’s one of the smartest people I know. And she, you know, taught me about the greenhouse gas effect and how carbon dioxide can, is it heat trapping greenhouse gas and that’s leading to the warming of our atmosphere. That’s leading to rising sea levels. Of course, a lot of these things weren’t being evidenced around us at that point, but you know, you would see climate disasters happening, of course, in less frequent abundance than they are now.
And you’d be saying, okay, this is starting to happen. So I got involved because I didn’t want this to be happening at the scale that it is now and the scale that it is going to be tomorrow and the next day. Because climate change is an increasing issue. It’s not just the meteor hits Earth and Earth is gone. It’s an issue that we can choose how much of this we want to tolerate. And I didn’t want to tolerate any of it. So I got involved at that point.
Michael Ethan Gold (05:38)
Yeah, and as an eight-year-old, you’re making the swing from an elementary school student into essentially a climate activist. What specifically did you do? You talked about climate strikes. Are those the strikes that Greta Thunberg started organizing? It was like Fridays for Climate and those kinds of activities? Or what specifically were you doing at eight years old?
Avroh Shah (06:00)
Yeah, so I started by getting a bunch of my friends together and convincing them to start doing some cleanups. Because that was just the most direct thing that we could do that we could see in front of us. And I kind of started educating myself just through online resources about how, you know, methane released in landfills contributes to climate change. You know, of course, it’s kind of a very particular issue, but it’s one that I found
myself being very passionate about because like I said, I came into this from an environmental standpoint. So I found it very weird that people would just, you know, throw plastic on the ground and I’m like, how, can you even consider doing something like that? So I think that’s really the, the first thing that I started doing. But after that, I did start going to local protests and you know, school strikes, things like that at a young age.
Those are being coordinated by people who are now my age. But that was really just a good point to get involved and connected with the broader, you know, local climate community.
Michael Ethan Gold (07:08)
Yes, so as an eight-year-old and you’re doing some cleanups with friends, that could be seen as, as you said, really local. You’re just helping your local community. You’re greenifying it. You’re making it look better and feel nicer. But then getting to the point of striking and going to protests, I’m guessing that’s the kind of thing that is a step above, right? I mean, it’s the kind of thing where you may not have friends that are just
who were probably willing to go with you on a cleanup to go to a strike or a protest, right? How did your social life change when you started doing those things?
Avroh Shah (07:46)
Yeah. Well, I will say that my first protest, I convinced one of my best friends to go with me. And I remember making my first sign for that protest in my garage, you know, walking to that. that’s been something that’s been very memorable for me. But it was definitely a big shift. And I think the people that I was associating myself with, you know, going from someone who’s maybe eight or nine at that point and
Michael Ethan Gold (07:58)
How old were you?
Avroh Shah (08:14)
you know, all my friends were also around that same age to someone who’s now working with people who are twice my age and a lot more than that. It was a very big shift, especially because I felt myself, you know, being out of place. I was the youngest person there in every single room. Of course, you know, there are other kids here and there, but I think I found myself, I found myself being very intimidated by just the presence of people who were literally twice the size of me. So
I think I spent a lot of time trying to push down, you know, the little bit of fear and just trying to like brave my way through that. But, you know, it was fun doing that and making connections. And I’m really glad that, you know, all those people that I’ve met, I’ve kind of stayed with them since and it’s been really nice knowing them.
Michael Ethan Gold (09:04)
What did the adults in the room or at the protests say? I mean, you could kind of hear the stereotype of, oh, this is for our children, or we have to think of the children. And you can imagine that you might have been pushed forward as kind of like, look, this is the next generation who’s going to be most heavily impacted. I mean, what was that dynamic like, being around those adults when you’re so young in those kind of contexts?
Avroh Shah (09:28)
Well, I think there were two main points to that. And the first one would be that in some ways I found myself feeling very disrespected. You know, at the beginning, I kind of understood it. I’m someone who has no idea what I’m doing, just kind of walking into a room or starting a petition for local waste management. And I found people just kind of talking down to me
in a way that, you know, they framed it as nice, but I could kind of see through it. And I didn’t really enjoy that. But I think the more I educated myself and the more I was able to kind of hold myself to the same standard or even a higher standard than, you know, people who were much older than me and supposedly much more mature than me were doing, then I think that started to kind of find some way. But I think the second thing that Concerned me perhaps more was I found myself
being manipulated by people who were kind of in a position of power. So I mentioned how I was petitioning. So that was when I was maybe 10 years old or nine years old, somewhere around there. I had started a petition for increased waste management within my elementary school. And I put forward like four solutions that I had identified and said, you know, I know that these work. I identified some companies that recycled and
repurposed materials that our school had in our cafeteria that were going in the trash can. So I brought those forward. I managed to get a meeting with the administration. And in that meeting, it was very much like they were kind of validating me. And they’re like, it’s great if you want to do this, but we’re not going to do anything to support you is essentially what they were saying. And looking back, I really wish I had realized that I was being manipulated and done something about that. But
then again, I’m not sure what more I could have done.
Michael Ethan Gold (11:25)
You know, I’m not sure if you’ve heard this from other adults that you’ve spoken to potentially in workplaces who are trying to do something similar with things like very local like waste management and they’ll report hearing something really similar from their superiors or their bosses that it’s great if you want to do this, but we’re not necessarily going to support you. You know, unfortunately it’s not just children that get this attitude sort of thrown at them when they try to do things
that are good for the environment or pro-sustainability and whatnot. Yeah, so you eventually joined Earth Guardians, you mentioned, and you participated in a pipeline protest. Can you give a little bit more detail about that? That wasn’t here in the Bay Area.
Avroh Shah (12:14)
No, and I should say I was never on the ground in Minnesota protesting that pipeline expansion. There were parts of me that wanted to go there at times, but first of all, my parents would have never signed off on that. You know, I’m still a kid at the end of the day. And second, it was something that just seemed very, very scary and intimidating to me. But you know, there were people my age at those protests.
Michael Ethan Gold (12:22)
I see.
Mm-hmm.
Avroh Shah (12:43)
So I don’t think it would have been completely that out of the ordinary. I should note that this line three pipeline expansion, this was led by a company called Enbridge, which was responsible for the largest inland oil spill in American history. And they were partnered with a lot of banks that were supporting this pipeline. So I got involved in just a solidarity campaign
against the line three expansion, where I made a bunch of small flyers and canvassed around my neighborhood, hitting around 500 homes, talking with a lot of people. This was around the same time that my school was coming back into like a hybrid learning. So I was able to pass things around in school, which surprisingly the school did nothing to stop because I guess as long as they didn’t have to do any work, they were fine with it. But it was a very political movement.
Um, so I was just a little bit surprised that the school had no opposition to any of the work I was doing, but that was really, really nice of them. Um, I think that, you know, protesting Enbridge and just trying to get, uh, more people involved, more people to see the link between the banks that they invested in and the banks that essentially are lying to them because they’re not telling them that their money is going to fossil fuels, uh, something that they would not otherwise support,
was something that was very eye-opening for people. And I know that a few of the people that I talked with, like I kept some ties, they actually switched their bank as a result of those conversations so that they wouldn’t be supporting these fossil fuel banks. So the term money pipeline was kind of coined in the sense to describe the connection between the pipelines and the big banks that were funding them.
I also did some education around the insurance companies backing them. There was one particular named Chubb that actually then made a bunch of promises that it did follow through with to move away from backing the fossil fuel industry, which may have been more of an economic choices. You know, the fossil fuel industry at the end of the day is going to be a dying one, but there were some, there were definitely some victories and I was able to
talk with a lot of people and reach out and connect with a lot of people about this. But at the end of the day, you know, that pipeline ended up going through and it did end up being expanded. So, you know, as much as I can pat myself on the back for saying, I did all of this to protest it locally, you know, that was still a big loss that still is accounting for a lot of emissions going into our atmosphere. And I think that we need to be cognizant of that.
Michael Ethan Gold (15:38)
What would you say are the main things that you learned from that experience including the the sort of failure at the end to prevent the pipeline from going forward?
Avroh Shah (15:47)
Mm-hmm. It taught me that, you know, even when you seem like you have a super strong campaign of, you know, hundreds and thousands of activists across the country and even across the world supporting something, you can still lose. No matter how strong you seem to think you are. I would, I was in organizing calls with, you know, 700 people and I would, I was like, all these people are so, so strongly in support of this.
There are people in this call who were on the ground yesterday protesting this on bridges, know, chaining themselves to fences, things like that, direct action, civil disobedience. And I think the amount of solidarity around this that I saw, I was really taken by surprise. But also not 100% by surprise. When this ended up going through because, you know, sometimes we choose short term economic profits over long term economic losses and also
you know, environmental catastrophe. So it was disappointing, but it was in some sense, my first big loss. And I think I handled it fairly well. I think something that I was a little bit more disappointed by was I had tried to urge my local newspaper to write an article covering the connection between the big banks and pipelines. And I guess it was what I wrote to them was technically a letter to the editor.
I didn’t know what those were at the time. I thought that if you just write something, it would just get published or they would publish something. So I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I wrote something and they responded back by saying there’s no link between the big banks and they only cover local issues. And I was like, so if someone’s funding a genocide in Palo Alto to where I live, would that be okay? That was kind of my thought process. And I shot back
and never received a response.
Michael Ethan Gold (17:43)
So after the pipeline protest, you ended up becoming a party to a pretty significant lawsuit
against the EPA, is that right? Can you just walk us through that whole process and what that was all about?
Avroh Shah (17:54)
That is correct.
Definitely. So I actually did some more environmental organizing between that loss, which happened in April of 2021. I was 12 at the time. And then I just tried to organize some things to kind of build momentum around celebrating our earth and valuing our environment, which did have some success. I got a couple of hundred people to come out to some events, did some speaking, had a couple,
yeah, big speaking events, hosted a goat yoga event once that was really fun. But around the time of I want to say December of 2022 or January of 2023, I ended up getting into contact with Julia Olson, who is the lead attorney, and I believe co-executive director of Our Children’s Trust.
For people who don’t know what Our Children’s Trust is, it’s one of the lawsuits, one of the law firms that’s behind a lot of the biggest American climate lawsuits, including one that was recently just failed to be revived by the Supreme Court. That would be Julianna versus United States. I was actually familiar with this group, Our Children’s Trust through that lawsuit, Julianna versus United States,
which was filed in 2015 asserting that our government’s intentional allowance of climate change and climate pollution was a violation of our constitutional rights. And there were 21 plaintiffs in that lawsuit who were, some of them very young at the time of the filing in 2015. And now they’re, you know, ranging from I think 16 to maybe in their 30s now. But
I remember following that lawsuit very closely from probably around 2018 till, you know, about now. So the last seven years I’ve been following that. So when I ended up getting into touch with these people, they told me, you know, we’re considering filing a lawsuit, another federal lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency, because something that the Environmental Protection Agency does is it uses these discounting tactics, which devalue the lives
of people who are younger and people who are going to be coming into the world soon and future generations compared to the lives of people who are adults today and people in the past. So historically it’s used a two to seven percent discounting rate which compounds on itself. let’s say my life is worth a hundred dollars. Since I’m not considered an income earner by the government
they would discount my life by let’s say 0.93% year over year, which, you know, 10 years down the road, I would be about $60 compared to someone who is an adult today. So, you know, while, you know, 2%, 7% may seem rather insignificant, just that compounding over and over does really create a devaluation. So, you know, you’re probably asking why the heck does any of that matter? And the reason is the
EPA, whenever it approves a fossil fuel project or an energy project, it does several cost benefit analyses on these. So by devaluing the impact it would have to a life that has been discounted, someone who is a young person or a future generation, it essentially allows for more fossil fuel pollution because it doesn’t see the impact on our lives as much as it would
if they weren’t discriminatorily discounting it. So that’s the intentional allowance and permittance of fossil fuels. Well, quite literally discounting our lives. So this is a 14th and 15th, Fifth Amendment case saying that they were violating equal protection. And then since this is federal, we’re just linking it to the due process clause in the Fifth Amendment. And we…
ended up filing on, I believe, December 10th of 2024. And the case is kind of progressed since then, most recently, about a month ago now, being dismissed by in district court, which means that we can still appeal it, for lack of standing, of all things.
Michael Gold (22:42)
And what motivated you specifically to join that lawsuit as a plaintiff?
Avroh Shah (22:48)
When I was in eighth grade, this was early 2023. There were several, I believe what the news called it was bomb storms that affected the Bay Area. Atmospheric rivers that came through California, resulting in lot of flash floods and extreme winds.
Um, so there was two occasions that my middle school had to evacuate as a result of this. Um, and I remember one of the times they were, cause we quite literally had to flee our classrooms and get to a point where we would be taken off and picked up by our parents. Um, and I remember there was, there was saying, stay under the overhangs on these buildings. And there was one open spot where they were just telling kids to run between.
And I remember I was about to go and this huge tree branch just swept through. And I think that was really, really eye-opening for me because I was like, I’ve been involved in climate advocacy for so long. And now this is climate change happening. Of course, you know, I’d seen things like the sky turned orange, but this is a real, real disruption to my life, a disruption to my education. And, you know,
people died in these storms too. Houses in my neighborhood, I saw trees falling on cars. I saw a house smashed quite literally in half by a fallen tree. And I remember thinking, you know, that could have been my family’s car. That could have been my house. And I’m not going to be complacent to the point of just local activism at this point. So that’s where I really got involved and I reached out to Our Children’s Trust.
Michael Gold (24:38)
And how many other plaintiffs were there and how did you guys decide on what specific kind of damages that you were seeking?
Avroh Shah (24:47)
Yeah, so there were 17 other plaintiffs. I mean, there still are 17 other plaintiffs. And what we are seeking is injunctive relief, which would mean that the EPA would cease its implementation of these discounting tactics, which it actually has adopted from the Office of Management and Budget.
So that would put an end to that discrimination, which would mean that in its cost benefit analysis, it would no longer be devaluing the lives of all future generations and all children today. Meaning that, you know, a lot of fossil fuel projects would not be happening. And it would also mean that, you know, the substantial discrimination that kind of creates an inherent inequality between
young people and adults would be gone. So it’s incredibly stigmatizing to kind of tell a young person, you are valued less than someone who’s older because you don’t earn money. And that’s incredibly harmful just in itself. It’s very similar to the Brown v. Board of Education argument, which said that having
black students separated from white students created an inherent inequality between the people of color who were being kind of pushed down and separated from white students just for no other reason than the color of their skin. We’re saying the same thing here, just the difference is, we’re arguing it based on age. So there’s a whole lot of legal precedent going back to Brown v. Board that really supports that argument.
But the effects on really ceasing US climate pollution and making a real impact to cease the progress of climate change would really be there. And that’s something that we’re really hopeful about. So it would not just be a symbolic victory. It would be something that actually does something.
Michael Gold (27:05)
As a party to this case, what do you have to do on a day-to-day basis or what’s your actual role in moving this forward?
Avroh Shah (27:15)
Right. So as a plaintiff, I’ve done a lot of work with the media, just trying to, so I guess I should rephrase that and say that
something that all of the plaintiffs do is we’re kind of the face of this case. So when we file, the media looks to us and looks at, you know, the harms that we’ve experienced as a result of climate change, ranging from disruption to our education or to other plaintiffs who’ve lost their homes and had to flee from wildfires. So that connection there is really what the media looks like. And that gives us an opportunity
to go out to and appeal to the American people and also the people across the world and say that this is discrimination, this is unconstitutional, no one should have to go through what people like us have gone through. And we have an opportunity here to remedy that. And we’re trying to do that in our courts because we can’t vote, we don’t have the same legal power or the basic legal power of every single person to cast a vote.
So our best avenue is through the courts, especially as this is a ticking time bomb of an issue. It’s not just one where we can ignore it and ignore it until eventually there will come a point where it’s too late. So I think that’s where a lot of the media perspective comes in. Of course, that’s something that gets a lot of press coverage. So it’s a really, really good opportunity to appeal to people
and change the mindset of people around us to say that, you know, even if you might not be super supportive of a certain political agenda, you can at least agree that this is unconstitutional and something should be done about it. Because we have the facts on our side and we have the science on our side. We have the solutions and we’re saying that your failures implement them and actually your actions that work against the lives of so many people and you know future
generations to come is inherently unconstitutional. So that’s one side of it. And then the other side is we have opportunities to write declarations in support of the case. So we filed our amended complaint earlier in 2024. Just to further detail how
our harms can be mitigated as a result of this. As when we first went into court, the judge seemed a little bit confused by all these harms that we’ve listed are all in the past. He said, you know, even if we do all these actions, how is that going to actually do anything to remedy these harms? And our lawyer, Julia, she stood up and said, you know, these are ongoing harms. Sure, you know, what’s happened in the past can’t just be fixed.
Homes that are burnt down are going to just pop back up. But what we can do is prevent ongoing harms and future harms. So I think that was a point that really stuck with me. So when we filed that amended complaint to further show how our harms can be mitigated, I wrote a, I believe a 14 page declaration in support of the case, kind of detailing some of
my activism and also describing just the impact this would have on myself, but also, you know, young people across the world who are being devalued as a result of this. So we do have an opportunity to really work within the legal framework and support that. And I was not the only plaintiff to write a declaration and we had several,
I believe a few other plaintiffs and then a few experts ranging from a Nobel Peace Prize winners to leading pediatricians who came out in support of this case. I found it interesting that the government’s motion to dismiss that complaint, they only referenced one sentence from all the declarations. And that was the sentence in mine, which they basically said that the stigmatized harm is symbolic.
Michael Gold (31:46)
What does that mean specifically? What did it mean to you and then what do you think they thought it meant?
Avroh Shah (31:52)
Well, honestly, reading through that motion to dismiss it was, it felt a little bit facetious that like they ignore all this expert testimony and they just chose like a single sentence in my declaration to kind of just point out and say that, you know, these harms aren’t really real because they aren’t physical, which in many ways that they are physical, but this is just one of the, you know, mental aspects of this climate anxiety is something that a lot of youth, including myself,
you know, do struggle with. So as much as I wish that that wasn’t real, that simply isn’t true. And it’s more than symbolic when the government is unconstitutionally devaluing and discounting our lives.
Michael Gold (32:40)
So you wrote that phrase or that sentence as a metaphor, as something just rhetorical. You didn’t mean it to be literal, I suppose.
Avroh Shah (32:52)
Well, I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I believe I talked about how we were kind of being stigmatized by these discounting rates. In the motion to dismiss, they kind of portrayed it. They, of course, had a whole bunch of legalese in the way that they phrased things, but the way that they painted it was something that’s not really affecting us in the negative way.
I think that in some ways that the stigmatization argument helps our case. Of course, there’s more than just that because that is one of the harms that can be instantly averted if the government were to cease its discounting practices.
Michael Gold (33:39)
Right. You will appeal this decision, is that right? Yes. Okay. This story isn’t done, but just taking a step back a bit, you talk about starting as an eight-year-old in very local ways and gradually graduating into much more regional and national and potentially global applications of your climate activism. Looking at
Avroh Shah (33:43)
That is our plan.
Michael Gold (34:08)
your career, your future professional life. I know you’re still only 16. What do you think you want to do? I mean, how do you see all this work that you’ve done, both locally and nationally or globally, continuing and amplifying as you enter the working world?
Avroh Shah (34:28)
Well, I made a very shabby plan when I was eight years old and I’ve honestly just kind of been following it since. And that plan is for me to, you know, go through high school, go through college and go to law school and become an environmental lawyer. I think that’s just something that I feel very strongly about. And it’s also something that I’m passionate about, which is a little bit different than climate change advocacy, because I feel like I’m doing that more so out of necessity rather than
this is something I love doing. Because, you know, at the end of the day, I’d rather be playing soccer, spending time with friends than trying to save the planet. Fighting for our environment is something that I really care about. And, you know, protecting the natural resources that we have. Because the way I view it, once you destroy something that has been essentially gifted to us by the earth, it’s gone forever. It’s not coming back.
And we’ve seen that happen. We fight species to extinction and we continue to all the time. I believe that there has to be some kind of accountability for that and we have to also hold ourselves accountable to the impacts that we have. So I’ve just always felt a very strong calling to do some work, at least in conservation. But I think environmental law has always been my calling.
Michael Gold (35:50)
Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a shabby plan. That sounds like a solid one. And the fact that you made that plan when you were eight years old is pretty remarkable, I have to say. Probably not the typical career aspiration for a lot of eight-year-olds, I presume. So it’s been a pretty dark period recently for climate activism and the climate movement and environmentalism. And you’ve grown up almost your entire life
with Trump being a major national political figure and the Republican Party seemingly becoming more and more entrenched in its opposition to any kind of action around climate change. How do you feel motivated and feel like your work is making a difference and that you have a sense of mission and purpose given all the challenges?
Avroh Shah (36:41)
Mm hmm. Well, you’re not going to win any big fight, especially the fight for climate justice in our courts without a few losses. And it has been more than a few losses. But I think that honestly, we we really just need to hold ourselves together, take care of ourselves and stay strong and push through this, because at the end of the day, people in 2020
realized that you know Trump was not the best for a variety of reasons and I can only hope that they will remember that in this next election if he gets the third term.
Michael Gold (37:26)
That’s a whole other podcast, I guess.
Avroh Shah (37:28)
That is. And kind of, you know, people really just stand up and exercise their voices. I will be able to vote in the next election. And I am looking forward to that. But yeah, it really has been hard. I’ve, you know, I’ve spent four now, I guess it’s gonna be eight years of my childhood is going to be with Trump
and that’s not exactly something that is great if you’re a climate activist. But I do know that what we can do is push through this and kind of stay strong true to our values. And, you know, when they go low, we can go high and just demonstrate that we are really, really just fighting for what we say we have, we’re fighting for, which is
climate justice, which is for an equal potential for a future for every single person. And I don’t think, I think that’s something that most people can get along with and most people can agree with. Because, know, climate change is not a partisan issue. Republicans actually used to be leading on climate change. Now, unfortunately, they have gone all Trumpy and not been doing that. But I do think that we…
have the means and the ways to get past this. And I think that everything Trump does will only damage his reputation, especially as people begin to see the impacts in their own backyards.
Michael Gold (39:09)
Yeah, one can hope. Even from a small-scale perspective, you’re again only 16. Don’t need to repeat that over and over again. You mentioned you may just want to go play soccer. You may just want to go hang out with your friends. You might just want to go be a normal teenager. How do you push through those urges when it gets hard, it gets tiring,
and your friends are all doing something else and you’ve got a lot of homework. How do you balance all that?
Avroh Shah (39:44)
Yeah, well, I can’t come this far and have educated myself this much and then do nothing without calling myself a decent person, without calling myself like a bad person. The truth is climate change, you know, once you get past the elementary school science side of it, it becomes a lot more deeper and complex issue. And I think that most people, you know, even adults haven’t made that connection. But I think that once people do,
and the, if they are decent people, then they feel obliged to do something about that. So I’m just, I’m just trying to be a decent person and do my part. I guess I’m doing a little bit more than my part now, but that’s just because, you know, other people maybe haven’t seen the enormity of this crisis, the scale that I have. Some people haven’t been affected by climate change yet, but I’m
now more so involved so that other people don’t have to go through what people like me have had to go through. And so that people like me don’t have to go through more of this. Because you know, people are dying as a result of climate change. I believe one in 10 deaths are linked to extreme heat. The enormity of these numbers just keep going up. $38 trillion in debt damages to the global economy in 2024.
That was a number we were supposed to hit in 2049. So that’s insane. It’s also up from three trillion in 2023. So this is an exponential crisis. And it’s one that people are gonna have to wake up to sooner or later. I just hope that we can wake up to it sooner.
Michael Gold (41:35)
Yeah, and you obviously work with a lot of people who are a lot older than you, and presumably you’re also engaging with and interacting with younger people who kind of see a role model of sorts in you. How do you engage with both the older folks and the younger folks in terms of mentorship, in terms of trying to pay it forward?
Avroh Shah (42:00)
Sure. I actually had the recent opportunity to be a mentor for the Sierra Club’s CYCP program, which is I believe the California Youth Climate Policy or something like that program, where it was, I think I was the only high school student being a mentor in that, but it was connecting kids my age with people who’ve been involved for a few years at least,
to give them the tools and guidance necessary to really take them to a higher level of activism, getting involved in local governance to pass resolutions and get concrete things done to reduce emissions. So that was a really great opportunity for me to connect with people who are my age, a little bit younger, a little bit older, and
share some of my expertise that I’ve come to accumulate over last eight years. And it’s been half of my life. And really share that and I was happy to see them then go on to do some good work. And I hope that in a few years, they’ll be where I was and passing that along. Because something about the climate movement is that it can really only grow. And I think that’s really nice because
you know, it’s just regular people like you and me, who did our research and, you know, talked with experts and became acquainted with this crisis and are just doing what we can to oppose it. And that’s, that’s something that I found really nice. It’s, you don’t have to be special to be involved in fighting climate change. You can just be a regular person. And I think that as long as we can hold true to that, then this movement
is really, really gonna get stronger.
Michael Gold (43:57)
Yeah, I mean, Avroh, I often ask my guests to provide kind of professional advice for people who might want to do what they do. But obviously in your case, it’s a little bit different because you’re not actually working in climate in the same way that a lot of people are. But I do think that they can probably get some psychological support or some psychological motivation from what you’re doing as only a 16 year old. Again, I said it. So hopefully that comes through here. But looking back a little bit,
what are a couple of things that you might tell that eight-year-old that you would want them to know about this kind of work that you’re doing, this kind of action that you’re taking to maybe help smooth the path and make the losses go down a little easier or anything?
Avroh Shah (44:47)
I think the biggest thing that I could have told myself or known when I was just getting involved is you don’t have to have all the answers. You don’t have to be an expert about everything to know that something is wrong and you can do something about it. I think a lot of people feel intimidated when they see, you know, words that they don’t know and people talking about phenomenons and all sorts of very complex stuff that maybe they don’t have a full grip on or really don’t know anything about.
But you don’t have to be a scientist or an expert or a politician to say that something is going wrong in terms of how we’re handling the climate crisis and that it’s not a hopeless cause and it’s something there’s things that you can do. You can get involved at really any level and just do something. And if doing something very small is what you feel comfortable with, then that’s great. And maybe if you want to push yourself to go bigger, that’s better. But
just doing anything is really, really imperative because there are 8 billion people in this world. And even if, you know, small percentage of those 8 billion people stand up, then the people in power are going to be forced to, you know, give in to our demands. And I don’t think what we’re demanding is very absurd or crazy. All we’re just saying is we want a livable planet, a life-sustaining climate and an equal future for everyone.
I don’t think that’s something that is necessarily a left-wing or right-wing ideology, as much as people try to make it out to be. So I think I would have told my younger self, just know that even if you don’t have all the answers, people will see you as a person. And you can use that to your advantage. So just speak up for what you know is true. Because we have the facts on our side, as I said.
Just keeping that truth and taking it to a place where you can really empower yourself and empower others to take action is something that is really, really going to go far.
Michael Gold (46:59)
Yeah. And as my last question, I like to ask people to cast their minds to the end of their career, which in your case, again, final time, I’ll say it, you’re only 16. So that’s a potential, hopefully a long, long way away. So maybe particularly difficult for you, but I’m still going to do it because you seem to have a very clear sense of your mission and purpose and what you want to do and how you want your climate career to take shape. So what would you want your sort of.
Avroh Shah (47:08)
you
Michael Gold (47:25)
final words to be? What would you want people to think about the contribution that you made to climate and the things that you care about at the end?
Avroh Shah (47:33)
Mm-hmm.
You know, in some sense, I don’t want to be remembered for doing all this climate activism. As I said, I’m just, you know, a regular person who decided one day that I could do something more than just, you know, walk around and keep my head down while knowing about the climate crisis. And I got involved and it’s been about eight years now. So just kept getting involved, getting involved and getting involved. And now I guess I’m one of the
youth climate leaders in our world, or whatever you want to call it, but it’s a common sense issue, climate change. It’s one where you take the destruction of the planet, the only home that we have, and say, hey, maybe something is not right with that. So I want to be remembered, but only if we win. And I take that I say that because I am
aware that, you know, this is a cause that is an uphill battle. But I’m not going to go down as someone who, you know, just got scared away from losing because it was an uphill battle. So, you know, if people were to read my epitaph or something, I’m just someone who loves nature, likes being outdoors, and has held true to his values since then.
I don’t think of myself as someone who’s special or worth being remembered. I’m just someone, I’m just someone. That’s it at the end of the day.
Michael Gold (49:11)
You are actually the first guest I’ve had that said you didn’t want to be remembered, which is, I think, pretty refreshing. Everyone has their own thoughts about it. That’s a totally valid way to put it. I think that that is how we will wrap up here. Avroh Shah, thank you so much. This was a really, really interesting and enlightening conversation.
Avroh Shah (49:34)
Thank you for having me.