Youth are 'wired' to push for change, researcher says about why they're climate choice influencers

Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This story is part of a CBC News initiative entitled Our Changing Planet to show and explain the effects of climate change and what is being done about it.

From decisions about what car to buy to what families eat, young people can have a big impact on choices their parents make, and that can benefit the environment, according to Canadian experts and young activists.

It's something Shakti Ramkumar discovered when she was growing up.

A climate activist most of her life, her journey began with her family's move from India to Surrey, B.C., when she was eight years old. Ramkumar said adjusting to a new life and seeing a new culture made her curious about the city around her, so in Grade 4, she did a science fair project about how public transportation could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

"It was really shocking to me that we had this global problem and I really wanted to help solve it," she said.  

Since then, she's been focused on finding solutions to the climate crisis, and that's extended to her efforts to influence the people around her. 

As part of her job as director of communications and policy with Student Energy, a global and youth-led organization that aims to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy, she'll be attending the UN's climate change summit, COP26, in Glasgow that begins Sunday. 

"I would really urge adults who feel jaded maybe, or indifferent to the crisis, to see that young people are doing this out of a sense of fear. And also because we have hope that we can build systems that are so much better than this, that can be better for all of us," said Ramkumar, 25.

She said one of her big victories was convincing her parents, who were already vegetarian, to give up all animal-based products.

"I finally asked my parents to go vegan with me in Grade 12. It was actually after visiting Antarctica with an organization called Students on Ice and kind of seeing the effects of climate change first hand on this remote ecosystem," she said.

Her father, Ramkumar Permal, said he'd tried going vegan before but couldn't get used to drinking his coffee black. At his daughter's urging, the family finally went all in.

"We had allowed ourselves the occasional consumption of dairy products when we were outside, like when we had to buy a sandwich or a bean burrito, or the occasional slice of vegetarian pizza, telling ourselves that it was just occasional," he said. "But Shakti decided that we had to stop even that because things were getting bad on the climate change front."

Ilona Dougherty is a postdoctoral fellow and the managing director of the Youth and Innovation Project at the University of Waterloo, and has studied how young people can influence the adults in their lives.

Dougherty and her group looked at how the brains of 15- to 25 year-olds are different from those of adults, and said the findings can explain why youth tend to be at the forefront of movements like the fight against climate change.