Teegan Walshe
2023 Youth Climate Activism Video Entry
Watch Teegan’s award winning video entry.
The Youth climate activism demonstrations in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island began in September 2021 with a strike organized by Teegan and her friend. Teegan has continued striking every Friday since then, meeting other youth interested in climate activism.
She finds inspiration in the collective energy and the impact of young people fighting for change. However, she also faces anxiety and discouragement due to misinformation and dismissive attitudes from older generations. Despite living in a town with an older population, the strike has provided opportunities for meaningful conversations with community members. Teegan values these discussions and sees them as important as the strike itself.
Engaging in climate activism has allowed her to develop her public speaking voice and learn new skills like event organization.
FIRST PERSON — How embracing empathy helped me in my fight for the climate.
Read Teegans’ article on the CBC Kids News website.
As part of the submissions application we asked participants to answer these 3 questions in addition to their essay or video.
What future goals do you have around your environmental and climate work, and do you have any future projects in mind?
I look forward to continuing the strike at town hall and engaging in conversations with my community. I also look forward to working with my town council to take some more concrete actions, like pressuring them to follow up with their emergency declaration. I hope to build up more momentum under the petition our group started this spring and get an opportunity to communicate our message to some more influential leaders.
I am excited to help some other local individuals organize our town's annual March For Future as well. I would also like to take some time to write about climate change to motivate people to come together to take action.
If you could share with us one message of hope for our planet, what would it be?
Hope comes from action, and action comes from understanding, motivation, and organization. My message of hope for our planet is this: We will not give up because this is too important- that would simply be out of the question. I can tell that people are ready for climate action. As the Chinese proverb goes, the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.
There are enough people who care, who are dedicated to fixing this. The fact that it has come to this point in time and we have still not taken sufficient climate action is astounding and discouraging in and of itself. We must tell the truth about that and about how we have to transition off of fossil fuels much faster now than we would have if we did this 30 years ago. However, we must also tell the truth about the fact that we can, and must, do this!
For my generation, for the people in the Pakistan floods, the European heatwave, for the families in the Maldives, the communities in the Australian fires, the animals and ecosystems they inhabit- we must never throw our hands up and say it's too late.
Who or what inspires you to work on climate change?
I am inspired by the small, but incredibly dedicated number of people I meet, working towards change. I am inspired because I know that they will never give up and I am inspired because I have seen what they are capable of achieving when they work hard for something they believe in.
I am also inspired by the default to good-nature and empathy that I encounter, even in the most misinformed and angry people I speak with about climate change. All of these people have something that matters to them and something they love or someone they care about, and that makes our task enormously easier. All we have to do is help them (whether they are politicians or company owners or voters) connect what they care about to climate change, see how they affect each other, and how we can use that common ground to move forward hand in hand.