Youth Volunteer Combats Climate Change in His Neighborhood
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I’m Finnegan Schoebel, a sophomore at Palo Alto High School. Over the last few months, I’ve been working with Grassroots Ecology in order to help take care of stormwater retention gardens right across the street from my house.
These gardens help protect Palo Alto from the worst threats of climate change, and also help to improve the quality of my own town.
The retention gardens do this by absorbing stormwaters using layers of vegetation, gravel, and special soils, which also filter the stormwaters, before the runoff is absorbed into the ground. Not only do these retention gardens filter pollutants, but they are engineered with underdrains and other features to prevent flooding and lessen the effect heavy rainstorms will have on residential neighborhoods.
“Making small scale changes near where you live can make a massive difference.”
I’ve always believed that climate change is one of the biggest issues facing humanity right now, which is why I jumped at the chance to combat climate change in my own neighborhood.
I am helping to maintain climate-friendly architecture in the blocks around my home, meaning I could help protect my community against the negative effects of climate change.
My usually bi-weekly tasks involve weeding, trimming, deadheading, and cleaning these gardens, trying to make sure that the native plants and grasses inside are able to continue to grow and thrive undisturbed. As well, I try to clean the grates in the garden beds, so that stormwater can enter them and be absorbed into the soil.
It is obvious to me that projects like these gardens are needed more than ever now, especially as we begin to see climate change worsening and flooding in Palo Alto during the heavier rainstorms that come with the winter months. This flooding, which has caused huge amounts of damage and will continue to do so in coming years, did not affect the neighborhood where I live as greatly, in part due to the water retention beds that are scattered around it.
It seems clear that climate change is only going to get worse and worse with time, and if we don’t do anything to help stop it, humanity is on a collision course with catastrophe. The younger generations, especially people around my age, need to start working to help undo the damage caused to our planet over the last century. Although climate change can at first seem like an overwhelming crisis, making small scale changes near where you live can make a massive difference, and if many of us work together through small changes, we can make a huge difference in the fight.
Getting involved in organizations in your community not only can help fight climate change, but it also has benefits on a smaller scale; I can get service hours for my work, educate myself on native plants (still don’t know most of them but am learning), practice my gardening skills and help improve my neighborhood.
by Finnegan Schoebel, sophomore at Palo Alto High School
