Last year, the Tucson Unified School District voted to adopt a series of measures designed to combat climate change. The measures represent some of the most ambitious targets of any district in the country, and their adoption is largely the result of advocacy by the Arizona Youth Climate Coalition.
Ojas Sanghi, co-lead of AZYCC, is just 20 years old. He Joined The Show to discuss how his generation views climate activism with greater urgency than some of their predecessors.
Full conversation
OJAS SANGHI: We’re thinking about climate action and reaching net zero by 2050. Our mind doesn’t go to, OK, but how do we like what are the roadblocks to that and how do we like what’s all the problems to that? And what are reasons to debate it? Our mind goes to, OK, we need to achieve that goal.
Adults and older people, they view it as something to debate about in terms of implementation and how much money it’s worth. And is it really worth not buying an EV bus instead of a diesel bus, because the diesel bus is cheaper for right now? As opposed to our view of: We need to do an EV bus right now. It doesn’t matter how much it costs.
SAM DINGMAN: If I’m hearing you right, it’s like in a lot of other conversations about climate, climate is sort of weighed against other factors when policy decisions are being made. It sounds like what you guys are saying in AZYCC is like, no, every decision needs to be made with saving the environment as the top priority.
SANGHI: Exactly. Climate isn’t something that we can deprioritize or push off to later.
DINGMAN: So the Tucson Unified School District recently voted to adopt a plan that AZYCC was a big part of putting together. Tell us what’s in that plan.
SANGHI: So the climate action resolution that they adopted back in October is the most comprehensive school climate action resolution in the entire country. It commits the whole district to net zero emissions across all three scopes of emissions by 2040.
And it has specific measures and dates in there, such as 100% clean energy by 2030, 100% electric vehicles by 2035, zero waste by 2040.
DINGMAN: So when you say the three scopes of emissions, what does that mean?
SANGHI: Yeah. So there’s three scopes of greenhouse gas emissions. The first scope is all of the direct emissions. So how much emissions come from their buses that burn gas? The second scope of emissions is from energy that they use or they purchase. So all the energy that they purchase from TEP, how many emissions is that causing?
DINGMAN: TEP is Tucson Electric Power?
SANGHI: Yeah. And TEP uses 80% coal and gas. So that’s a lot of emissions. And then the scope three emissions for TUSD is everything else up and down the supply chain. So when we buy food from a supplier, how much emissions were produced in the creation of that, in the using of the fertilizer and the creation of the fertilizer? And when we throw it away and it decomposes in a landfill, how many emissions is that creating? When you buy a wood desk and you cut down a tree, how many emissions does that create? All of that is in scope three.
DINGMAN: So when it comes then to the electrification of the school bus fleets — which, the district is pledging to get to 100% electric school busses by 2040, is that what you said?
SANGHI: Yeah.
DINGMAN; By 2040, how close are they right now? Do they have any electric school busses currently?
SANGHI: They have a few electric busses. It’s a weird mix. They are taking really strong climate action by adopting this resolution. But at the same time, their bond that was approved in 2023 — $480 million for capital improvements — they’re using some of that money to buy 20 new diesel buses.
That purchase was approved before they adopted their resolution. And so, they’re not willingly, blatantly going back on their promises. So whether or not we can undo that procurement process that has already started is just kind of up in the air.
DINGMAN: So the earliest targets in this plan are 2030. This is all very soon. How much is it going to cost to implement the changes that are going to be necessary to make all this happen?
SANGHI: That we’re not sure of quite yet. Over the next I believe 18 months, they’re going to be creating a climate action plan, an implementation like plan for their district staff. And it will also be conducting a cost-benefit analysis. So it’s going to be with their professional help that we’re going to be able to figure out how much this costs.
I can say that in other school districts across the country that have gone net zero energy or that have conducted climate action, the cost savings from clean energy and energy efficiency has always far exceeded the cost it took to get there. And so every school district that has done that has seen cost savings.
DINGMAN: So I have to ask, Ojas, a very ambitious plan like this that centers climate change as a dangerous thing that needs to be worked against by way of these very aggressive measures to counteract its effects — it is out of step with a lot of the national trends that we’re seeing around climate change. What do you make of that contrast?
SANGHI: I think it’s really disappointing. It’s going to kill a lot of people. I think it is a testament to the fact that climate action has to be done nationally, but also locally. Even as the national government is attacking climate action, we’re making meaningful, substantial progress at a local level.
DINGMAN: Could I have you describe just physically what it was like spending time in India when you were a kid?
SANGHI: Yeah, it really felt like — especially in the months when it was the most polluted — when you step outside, I felt like I was in pain, and I felt like I was actively harming my lungs every time I took a breath. I remember like we would wear masks when we went outside. I remember being driven to school, and the smog was so thick that you could only see the hazards of the cars in front.
DINGMAN: Wow.
SANGHI: Yeah. You couldn’t see anything. And I remember hearing about pileups that happened on the freeways there because no one can see anything just because it’s so polluted. And people would wheeze and cough all the time. One day of pollution in Delhi is equal to smoking multiple cigarettes. And I lived there for eight years.
And you live with this burden, and it feels like why are we not solving this? Like someone needs to do something. And then I moved to the U.S. for high school, and I’m just dumbstruck by how much better the environment is here. I can breathe freely. I can see the stars.
And I think that really made me realize at a core level how important environmental quality is and how much of an impact environmental degradation has on one’s quality of life and also on what people can envision for their future.
