Just as he was preparing to get in his car and drive to visit his daughter at her college in northern California, Phil Glosserman received a phone call. "Don’t come," said his daughter on the other end. "The fire jumped the freeway, it’s headed our direction and I may have to evacuate."
It was the fall of 2020 and wildfires were raging across the west coast in one of the most intense fire seasons on record, fueled in large part by human-caused climate change. Glosserman had first become aware of the threat of climate change in the 1980s when he had read a book on the subject. He remembers being terrified.
"When I heard this news about climate change, I thought about the ramifications for young people and my kids– it was scary," he said. "And so I basically pulled the covers up over my head, and kind of ignored it because it was too hard to deal with. I felt powerless, I felt really disturbed and anxious about it, and I didn’t feel like I could do anything."
Glosserman said he continued this way for years- until that fire.
"That’s when it became personal to me," Glosserman said. "As a result of that event, I started kind of waking up to, well, I really need to do something… so I became an activist at the ripe old age of 67."
Glosserman is now the Co-Chair of the Southern California chapter of Third Act, a national environmental advocacy organization for people over the age of 60 founded by author and activist Bill Mckibben just a few years ago. The organization recently held nationwide protests against major banks lending money to the fossil fuel industry.
That same year, as smoke choked the skies across Los Angeles, Maya Williams was a ninth grade student at Santa Monica High School doing her own research on climate change. She became as equally unnerved as Glosserman had been, but for her it felt personal more quickly.
"I started panicking because no one had ever really told me how bad it was, so I think that really just scared me a little bit," she said. "I have younger siblings and a big family and I was just thinking, we have to do something about it."
So, she joined her school’s environmental club, Team Marine. The club recently played a key role in urging the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District to commit to transitioning to run on 100% renewable energy this year.
Separated by decades in age and multiple generations apart, Glosserman and Williams have at least one thing in common: a determination to channel their climate-related fear and anxiety into action.
Along with their respective organizations, they have been working to determine the areas where they can have the most impact.
For Glosserman and his fellow Third Act members, this comes down to the country’s financial institutions, where they have the money, time and leverage to create change.
For Williams and Team Marine’s other students, it’s within the schools where they spend the majority of their days and the district that runs them.
A march in the rain
On Tuesday, March 21, 2023, as rain was pelting Los Angeles during one of the nearly dozen atmospheric rivers that have hit the state of California this year – a weather phenomenon that is only expected to increase in frequency and severity as climate change continues to intensify – Glosserman and close to 80 other seniors gathered in front of the Beverly Hills sign on Santa Monica Boulevard.
Wrapped up in scarves and shielding their heads with umbrellas, they prepared for the mission that had brought them together that day: to walk to the offices of the banks who contribute the most to funding the fossil fuel industry.
Experts have long declared the need to stop drilling for oil and burning fossil fuels to maintain a sustainable planet. While activists have many times called on companies to cease such operations, there are other players involved as well.
"The banks are equally complicit, because they’re lending them money," Glosserman said. "Since 2015, they [banks] have lent over a trillion dollars to big oil companies for drilling projects …and the problem with that is that we need to stop burning stuff now."
On the marchers’ schedule for that day were the four top offenders: JP Morgan Chase, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
Over the course of an hour and a half, the protestors walked from branch to branch, sending in several volunteers at each one to deliver a letter.
"It was talking about the climate crisis, talking about the importance of taking responsibility for the ecological damage that their financing is causing and also telling them that people, that we as a group, unless they change, intend to stop doing business with them," said David Rosenstain, a Third Act Member from Santa Monica who helped organize the demonstration.
As a coalition of people mostly over the age of 60, the generation that holds the majority of the country’s wealth and assets, he believes Third Act has unique leverage.
"We are the ones that have the economic power to affect change," he said.
As part of the protest, over 17,000 people signed a pledge to take their money out of these banks if they do not move their investments out of the fossil fuel industry, including Santa Monica resident Gerda Newbold.
Though shy of the 60 year old threshold, Newbold, who is also a member of the Citizens Climate Lobby, was eager to get involved.
"This is the group, the baby boomer group, that has more resources, more time often, and can really make a difference, putting our money where their mouth is," she said.
While the motivations for Third Act members joining the movement vary, Glosserman said for many of them, a large part of it is a desire to help shape a sustainable future for their children and grandchildren and future generations.
School Board meetings, climate literacy, rooftop gardens and sustainable fashion
When Santa Monica High School science teacher Benjamin Kay founded Team Marine with six students in 2006 it had a broad focus.
"It started out not necessarily focused on Samohi, it was about things going on at the city and the state level, even on a national level," he said.
That started to change when he and his students’ asked themselves a question: "How are we doing here within our school district, sustainability speaking?"
"And we were kind of horrified, on some levels, at what wasn’t happening, and what was going on," he said. "So that’s when we realized we needed to kind of work hyperlocal, take a hyper focus on what’s happening here."
In the years after, Team Marine students helped develop a sustainability plan that was adopted by the District in 2019, and now, they’re making sure they stick to it. After switching most school and office buildings to 100% renewable energy in 2019, the district reversed the move after a year, citing cost as the reason.
This year, staff, teachers and students pushed for the district to again make the switch- this time permanently. Williams and fellow Team Marine member Willa Ross spoke at multiple Board of Education meetings on the matter.
"It said in the plan that they were going to be 100% renewable energy by 2020, and they switched off 100% renewable energy in 2020, " Williams said. "I think, really just keeping them accountable, and making sure that they are part of the city wide effort to be sustainable, and to really be an example to other cities of how we can create a better future for everyone."
As one of the largest energy consumers in the City of Santa Monica, what the school district does really matters, Ross added.
"The school district is influencing all of the young people that will become the future climate warriors, so I think that it’s so important – you have to start at the school district, because if they’re not doing it, then how can you assure that all of these students are going to do it in the future?" she said.
Another part of it, Williams said, is teaching students about climate change and giving them the knowledge and tools to help address it.
"Climate education really should be integrated into our existing curriculum," she said. "Our students should be aware that it’s happening, because they’re not going to care about an issue that they don’t know anything about."
With this in mind, the group has been working on a climate literacy resolution that they eventually plan to present to the school board. While the details are still in the works, Team Marine member Emery Cunningham has a clear vision of the goal.
"We’re really interested in, beyond simply education, empowerment," he said. "We see this huge issue that’s going to end the world, but when you tell that to someone, they’re like, ‘okay, is there anything we can do about it?’ If the answer is no or there is no answer, then, what’s even the point? We’re not giving anyone any hope."
"The point of climate education, why there needs to be more of it, is to bring back that hope. Because we’ve heard the doom scenario, we’ve heard all the bad parts, and we need to understand the bad parts with the good, with what we can do – the best we can do – to truly effectively combat it."
Team Marine has taken the lead on this within their school, with many projects underway including a hydroponic garden on the rooftop to grow more local produce, a waste management initiative to insure items are disposed of properly and a sustainable fashion show scheduled for later this year.
Fernanda Casas, another one of the group’s leaders said she thinks it is important for young people to take initiative on an issue that has so many implications for their future.
"The youth are at the forefront of a lot of change," she said. They’re the ones creating modern thought and modern opinion and that’s why I think it’s really important that schools are at the forefront."
However, Cunningham emphasized, that’s not to say everyone shouldn’t be involved, especially those of older generations.
"I think that it’s important to remember that while this is a struggle for the future, that doesn’t mean that you can’t be a part of it," Cunningham said. "There’s so much that needs to be done, that there’s really a lot of space for you to come in and help in the way that you feel you can."
"If we have any chance of trying to save our planet, we really need all hands on deck," Ross added.
Action for the future
Both Team Marine and Third Act members see a need for collaboration of all types – intergenerational and beyond – to truly combat the climate crisis.
Glosserman said that one of the strengths of Third Act is that its members have had varied careers and experiences throughout their lives.
He himself still works as a business coach, which he credits with helping him develop organizational and leadership skills. Newbold has extensive knowledge of housing, finance and urban planning that inform her activism. Rosenstein is the owner of a cleaning business that incorporates sustainability practices into their operations and is a certified B Corp.
Similarly, the members of Team Marine all have different plans for their futures.
While Williams knows she wants to study environmental science, Ross wants to be a pediatrician and Cunningham wants to work in public policy. However, they all said that even if the climate crisis is not the explicit focus of their future jobs, that won’t stop them from being part of the solution.
"I cannot even fathom not being super active in whatever place I live and speaking at city council meetings and being involved in organizations," Ross said. "I think that’ll always be a very important part of my life, regardless of what I do as a career."
"With every skill set, like there’s something sustainable that you can do, so do something that makes climate action tie into your passions," she added.
"This is not going to just go away," Rosenstein said. "The impacts become more evident every day…and, we’ve ignored this issue – the biggest issue facing humanity – for far too long."
