‘This Is About Our Lives’

Kyle Meyaard-Schaap is the national organizer and spokesperson for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action. He spoke with Sojourners' Jenna Barnett.

“IN 2017, Young Evangelicals for Climate Action marched in the People’s Climate March. [The next day] we invited God’s spirit to go with us into the halls of Congress. After we shared why climate change is important to us as young Christians, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s staffer asked, ‘How many of you identify as conservative or Republican?’ Nobody raised their hand. The staffer smiled, like he suspected this was a Trojan horse kind of deal where we were bringing young progressives in here and pretending like we were evangelicals. One by one the young people told the staffer how they had grown up in conservative Christian households and that many of them still held those values. But because the party had left them behind on climate change, they could no longer claim the party.

Regardless of political party affiliation, younger generations are overwhelmingly supportive of climate action. I hope that message continues to reverberate across Capitol Hill. Every party should be engaged in this conversation. And if you’re not, you’re going to start losing—and lose for a while.

For young people, climate change is not an abstraction. This is about our lives, our futures, and the futures we want. Young people contributed next to nothing to the problem of climate change and yet are bearing the brunt of it. This fundamental injustice positions young people to make a moral argument that other generations can’t.

Right now, with the wildfires out West and the hurricanes in the Gulf, climate change is on our front doorstep. In a weird way, those calamities give me hope because it’s harder for us to look away. We’re finally coming out of this stupor.”