Paulina Torres is Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s California Regional Fellow and a student at UCLA as a public affairs and education studies double-major and a Chicano(a) studies minor. She is from Terra Bella, a small town in the central valley of California.
Growing up in a low-income, farm laboring, Latino town, I would have never imagined myself being part of a climate organization and eventually lobbying for a bipartisan climate bill in Washington DC. However, after seeing the effects of climate change in California and my community, I decided to take action.
In California, where climate change is causing more frequent and extreme heat waves, under-resourced, low-income, immigrant, and undereducated communities are the worst impacted, four categories that I know far too well. For example, farmworkers experience disproportionate rates of occupational injuries and illness due to the high-intensity labor in high heat. They are exposed to harmful pesticides and often have a record of respiratory health problems. Additionally, most farmworkers live in low-income rural communities that are surrounded by waste, power, and oil plants. This pollutes the air and harms their health and quality of life.
The issues that surround my community are the reason I decided to join Citizens’ Climate Lobby in 2017. I first heard about CCL my junior year of high school through a good friend of mine, who like me, was worried about the future of our planet. My main goal initially was to inform my community about climate change in their native language, since many farmworkers in the Central Valley do not speak English. Through grassroots outreaching and collaboration with other high school students, I led a district-wide endorsement campaign which was later mentioned in the lobby meeting with our congressional representative.
In my second quarter at UCLA, I applied and received the California regional fellowship with CCL. This position has allowed me to work with devoted and passionate young people that care deeply about climate change. I have particularly enjoyed working with new and current campus leaders to increase membership and participation at their respective campuses. This spring I organized and moderated a panel on environmental justice at the California state conference, a topic that is very important to me and my community. This panel opened the door to many important conversations, some of which are difficult and controversial, many of which I've had with members of my community. Overall, my role as a regional fellow has strengthened many important skills that I will need in my future career. This role has been both challenging and fulfilling, something I will never forget.
As a member of the future generation of this country, I am worried about the future of my community and the constant threats of climate change. For decades we have known about the possible effects of greenhouse gases yet we have decided to ignore them. It has come to a point to which the effects are no longer possible to ignore. I hope that in the near future we can come together and address the issue of climate change through legislation like the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, which would put America on the path to zero emissions and put money in the pockets of low-income Americans. We must act now and change our trajectory.