- Polluting the environment
is kind of like taking a bunch of cold soup
and spilling it all over your bed.
- Ew!
- Just all over your bed and then laying in it.
So, cleaning up the environment
and keeping it clean is like cleaning your bed.
(gentle ambient music)
- Hello, I'm Justin.
- All right, nice to meet you. I'm Aji.
And you are?
- Gigi. - Nice to meet you, Gigi.
How old are you?
- Just turned 10. Double digits.
- Welcome to the double digits.
- Aji, how are you doing? (Aji laughing)
- Pretty good. - That's good.
Why are you here?
- [Director] Wait, you two know each other?
- Yes, we know each other.
Her mom runs the music school
where I took music lessons.
- And his mom used to babysit me.
- Yeah, and that.
Do you guys know why you're here?
- We are here to talk about...
- Do you want me to say it?
- Yeah, Say it.
- Youth activism. - I knew it!
I knew it was activism.
I just forgot the word.
- Yeah, to meet an activist.
I am an activist.
And do you know what that means?
- You have like a certain thing that you think is wrong,
so then you protest peacefully or violently,
whichever one you choose.
Preferably peacefully. (laughs)
- Legally. Peacefully.
I'm an environmental activist,
so I engage civically around the environment.
I wanna know if you guys know what that entails.
- Trying to help the earth, like the environment, kind of.
- There's obviously the physical pollutants,
hard plastics and micro plastics,
things that end up in the ocean.
But the global warming is mostly air pollution
from burning fossil fuels.
- What's that?
- Fossil fuels are like oils and gases and coal.
And we burn all of those
either for driving or creating energy.
The rest of it gets turned into plastics
and that's in a bunch of things in life.
- So you're saying plastic is made out of oil?
- Yeah. Pretty much all pollution that we have to deal with
in the world is just fossil fuel pollution.
How familiar are you with that topic, like...
- Pretty familiar.
People say that, "oh, yeah, the icebergs are just melting
because well, they're just melting."
Well, the thing is they're melting at a faster rate.
That means sea levels might rise.
- You know, it's not just icebergs and sea level,
but it's all kinds of other things.
- What I explained was like only-
- The tip of the iceberg?
- Nice pun.
At least like five hundredths
of the entire gargantuan global problem.
- Yeah. Do you feel anxious or worried about this?
- I don't feel worried,
but I kind of mentally speaking am,
because I know the effects of what will happen
if global warming becomes worse.
- Right.
- How did it get so bad?
- We all recognize that we enjoy a lot of luxuries
of modern life because of industrialization
and burning fossil fuels was required to do all of that.
But there was a kind of a point we became aware
that climate change was a serious issue
that we were heading towards.
And we got the choice to decide whether to really focus
in on renewables or to lean into fossil fuels.
And the corporations convinced our governments to lean
into fossil fuels and to create that infrastructure.
Then all of a sudden it's coming
to a head for our generation.
We're just like, "Oh my god, this big problem.
How did it get so bad?"
- I'm trying to go over all the stuff I learned in science.
I was half asleep most of the time.
- [Interviewer] What?
- Understandable.
- [Interviewer] You're not supposed to admit to that.
- It's not as bad as math, okay?
- Why did you get involved with activism?
- I moved to Seattle and attended a workshop
led by other youth that gave a presentation
about climate change
and got me into planting trees as my first kind of action.
- Oh, I went with your mom and we planted trees together.
- Yeah. (laughs)
And so that kind of launched me into activism.
A lot of environmental problems pose a direct danger
to our futures.
And so as a kid I was like, "Hey, that's not cool.
Like adults can't be over here messing up my future.
I've gotta do something about it."
But I couldn't vote at 12,
but I could still go to protests.
- Your mom let you?
- Yeah, she took me to a lot of those events.
In your own words, can you tell me what a protest is?
- When lots of people fight for their rights
or other people's.
- So is it a violent thing?
- No. Not like, "oh my god! No, you're horrible!"
That kind of fight, but more of kind of
like telling people with like signs and banners.
- Have you been to protests?
- Oh, yes, we have.
- Maybe like three or four.
- Three or four, I think.
- My school had a racial protest
since we were just walking around few blocks,
holding up signs and chanting, you know.
- What do people chant about?
- Usually there are slogans like, "Hey, hey, ho, ho.
Fossil fuels have got to go."
And you can imagine like how that sounds when
you get like 300 people being like, "Hey, hey ho, ho.
Fossil fuel have got to go."
You know what I mean?
You want try a chant right now?
- Sure.
- "Hey, hey, ho, ho.
Fossil. Fossil feels have got to go."
- [Interviewer] Hey, hey, ho, ho, oh, I'm all alone.
- (laughs) All alone.
Just let the director do it.
- Have you ever been worried about your safety at a protest
because of police or rioters?
- Yeah, there was a protest outside of Seattle
by this refinery.
There were protestors that were blocking the train tracks
so that the trains carrying the oil couldn't get
to the refinery.
And there was all these police
with SWAT gear arresting people from the protest.
And you know, I've done things,
like BP was bringing a oil drilling rig
and docking it in the port of Seattle.
They were gonna ship it all the way up to the Arctic
and they were gonna drill for oil in the Arctic.
And so we got kayaks
and we blocked the oil rig from leaving.
- So you got kayaks, which is made
from oil and it turns into plastic.
- Yep, to block an oil rig that was gonna go to the Arctic.
Yep. It's one of those things.
There's a lot of contradictions,
because we live in a world that is constantly
surrounded in fossil fuels.
- Like, at least all of the stuff here has oil in it,
which is plastic.
All of the gear used here, maybe even the walls.
- Paints, all of the plastics, everything.
- Do you ever think about the people who need this stuff?
- Yeah. It's not like I'm fighting to make it
so that these things are unavailable in the world at all.
What I am fighting for is that
when we use plastic, we make it reusable.
You know, oil and gas is something
that we can transition away from,
as far as like energy sources.
We can get away from those.
We have the technology, we have the money.
We just need like the policy to drive that.
- What is the biggest thing you've done
that's impacted people?
- Me and 20 other kids, with the help of our attorneys,
have brought a lawsuit against the executive branch
of the federal government because of their
actions contributing to climate change.
- That's actually a good thing, because that means
that they'll realize, "hey, they just sued us
and took some of our money."
- So here's the interesting thing about the lawsuit.
We're not asking for money.
We are asking for the courts to order the executive branch
to reduce you know, global warming.
We sued the executive branch specifically
so the President's branch of the government,
because they have been causing climate change knowingly
for like several decades at this point.
That's actively damaging my future as a kid.
- It's not their problem, yes,
but it's gonna be their problem if they don't,
you know, do something about it right now.
- We're the generation that's gonna have to deal
with climate change and have to make it stop.
But why not start now, so we don't have to prevent it
when we're older?
- That's exactly it.
- What else can we use instead of using fossil fuels?
- Solar and wind, but there's also nuclear or hydro
as renewable options.
And do you know what renewable means?
- That you could reuse it?
- Yeah, that it's not gonna run out after one use.
So, like a piece of coal, if I light it on fire and burn it,
it's gonna go away.
But a solar cell, if I set it out in the sun,
it's gonna produce electricity for its entire,
like, lifetime.
What do you guys think somebody could do to
help the climate situation?
- If you're just driving like five minutes and it's
like a nice day, you could just walk.
Just simple changes like that would help the world
and the Earth.
- Definitely. Definitely, definitely.
This is DaVinci Kids.
It's an app that has a ton of educational content,
videos, games, et cetera
that is all ad free and kid friendly.
- I'm gonna play it.
- Yeah. And we're gonna take a little quiz here.
So this is the refuse quiz.
- There could soon be more plastic than fish in the ocean.
A.
- You think it's true?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
That's true.
- I got it right.
- Which is terrifying.
More plastic than fish in the ocean, mind-boggling.
We're gonna take a little environment quiz right now.
If you can reduce traffic pollution by A,
taking a taxi, B, walking or cycling.
C, using a spaceship or D, always staying at home.
My personal favorite is using a spaceship.
- Right, right? I'm about to say C.
- I think that's an elite move,
but that's probably not the right answer.
- I think it may be B.
- B? You both agree on B?
- We got it right, let's go!
- We did, yeah, we got it right.
- We're so good.
- [Director] So DaVinci Kids has hundreds of fun learning
shows and games and it's completely safe and ad free.
Is this an app you might check out?
- What'd we think about it? - I'd rate it a 10 out 10.
- I rate it a 100 out of five.
- You get a 100 out of five
and a 10 outta 10 out of these ones.
It's a pretty good app.
(dramatic music)