CHOOSING A THEME

Journey To Happiness

Using bright hues of orange and yellow, senior Taylor Smith creates contrast through her use of green and blue values in the background of her artwork Tuesday April 4. The center image of her artwork is a depiction of a face, surrounded by eyes in the background.

Working on her AP Art piece, junior Ava Bilyeu continues to sketch a bird on her paper Thursday, April 6. Bilyeu plans to make her piece to be a painting of an American Robin.

Humans And Their Interactions With The Environment

WHAT IS WILLOW?

With President Joe Biden’s recent approval of the controversial Willow Project, an oil drilling project in Alaska, many teens are feeling worse climate anxiety than ever. The project, as proposed by ConocoPhillips, would have included five drill sites located on Alaska’s North Slope. However, Biden only approved three sites and thus reduced the scope of the project greatly. Despite Biden’s efforts to minimize the project’s potentially harmful effects, many climate activists were outraged at the project’s approval, claiming Biden was turning his back on campaign promises. This pushback was particularly felt among members of Generation Z on social media, with the spread of information and petitions.

WHAT’VE WE TRIED?

Long before the Willow Project’s approval, though, students have been making individual efforts to limit the effects of climate change.

For junior Gwen Heideman, shopping sustainably is a great method of helping in small ways, but education can also be an avenue.

“I try to purchase sustainably so my clothes are all from thrift stores,” Heideman said. “I try to use reusable bags whenever I can. I’ve educated myself a whole lot about climate change. I want to spend some time learning about what I personally can do to help.”

Clubs like In the News have facilitated those conversations. Junior Meron Abebe, club president, explains the conversations about the environment they have had at meetings and the future plans she has to discuss more about actions students can take .

“I know that In the News has briefly discussed topics of climate change,” Abebe said. “I’m considering a meeting in the close future about climate change.”

Another common avenue for education on climate change is social media. For Heideman, teenagers gravitating towards this platform for information can generally be beneficial as long as you take into consideration your sources, and fact-check some of the information you are reading.

“I think that it helps to educate people and I do think that if used correctly, if you look at the right things that you really can learn a lot from it.” Heideman said. “As long as you’re not going on to sources that have misinformation and you [use] unbiased sources.”

Nonetheless, when looking at the efforts of individuals to go green, some are skeptical about their overall impact. Social studies teacher George Walden has seen many individual attempts to go green, but hasn’t seen a large impact since they