PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Youth organizers in Eugene are fighting against efforts to stop their city’s electrification ordinance, a policy that they believe affects their generation more than it does some older residents who have opposed it.
Friday, March 3, marks the 2023 Global Climate Strike. Young climate activists across the world will lead their own demonstrations to encourage lawmakers to take direct action on the issue of climate change.
Eugene students have organized their own protests during the Global Climate Strike, in which they will focus on a polarizing local issue: the gas hookups ban.
In early February, Eugene city council voted in favor of eliminating fossil fuel infrastructure in new, low-rise residential buildings that are three stories and below. The ordinance will go into effect for building permits submitted on or after June 30, 2023.
A few days after city councilors passed the ban, Eugene Residents for Energy Choice was established. Since then, the group has gathered signatures to add the fossil fuel measure to a future election ballot and received financial support from NW Natural gas company.
Youth in Eugene will address this and more during a walk-out scheduled for Friday afternoon. Many students who are participating in the march lead environmental organizations at their schools, and have already been focused on climate change mitigation measures in their city.
“The city made promises to Eugene, with the climate recovery ordinance almost 10 years ago, that they would be working to reduce fossil fuel use by 50% by 2030,” Milla Vogelezang-Liu, a junior at South Eugene High School said. “We’re not close to that goal, and with this electrification ordinance, we’re making progress in the right direction.”
Vogelezang-Liu and other student organizers say that young people’s voices have often been overlooked in the conversation of fossil fuel infrastructure, because many of them aren’t paying utility bills or are ineligible to vote.
But Harvard’s School of Public Health argues that fossil fuels can worsen air quality, lead to respiratory disorders and exacerbate climate change — three effects that members of Generation Z would live longer to see.
“Even my parents are like, ‘But we love our gas stove!’” Churchill High School senior Ella Van Wyk said. “You have to look at it in the long-term, and it’s very frustrating that someone who’s only been here for 17 years is thinking more long-term than someone that has been here 50 years.”
Eugene was the 97th U.S. city to pass the electrification ordinance, and the first city in Oregon to do so. Students hope that this trend encourages other cities to follow suit, and see what a move away from natural gas can do for their homes.
“There’s oftentimes the argument about loss of jobs that would come from losing the natural gas infrastructure and the companies that support that, but we don’t often talk about the jobs that are created from green energy,” South Eugene High School senior Avery McRae said. “Getting anybody to change their habits and change the ways that they’re living is not super easy, but it’s also absolutely necessary if we’re going to try and preserve the one planet that we have to live on.”
After marching from their high schools on Friday afternoon, Eugene students will join University of Oregon students and other activists for a 1 p.m. rally at Kesey Square.