It was August 2018 and California was among one of its deadliest and most destructive forest fires. I vividly remember walking home from school with my brother—who was only 6 at the time—and seeing him point to the sky and ask, “Is that the moon?” Thanks to the wildfires, the sun was unrecognizable among orange, apocalyptic skies.

The next year, as a freshman at Long Beach Polytechnic High School, I was enrolled in an environmental science class that helped me understand the severity of the climate crisis. The message was loud and clear: The world is dying and we must act now to save it.

In the summer of 2020, I came across Climate reality projecta non-profit organization involved in education and advocacy related to climate change and offers leadership training. After completing the week-long program, I was connected to the local Climate Reality chapter and introduced to the amazing individuals who helped drive the Los Angeles Unified School District to commit 100% in 2019 clean energy in the electricity sector by 2030 and in all other energy sectors by 2040.

Those people inspired me. If Los Angeles could do it, it couldn’t Long Beach Unified School District?

Leaders in LA’s Climate Reality Project reached out to me, and I was able to find students and teachers at my high school—including Patrick Gillogly—and in the district who shared a similar vision. In August 2020, as a sophomore, I founded Long Beach Green Schools Campaign and recruited some of the like-minded students, who in turn spread the word to other students at other schools in the district.

I was naive at first. I thought the GSC would simply present the school district with a 100% clean energy resolution and the school board would vote yes and, boom, done. The world saved. I did not expect a two-year process.

The campaign had to prove to the district that the students involved in the movement were not just an angry, obnoxious group of teenagers. We had to earn the school board’s respect and show that we were willing to keep running.

Contrary to what some might think, the campaign never faced direct opposition – we never encountered climate deniers. Everyone we spoke to believed in climate change and recognized the importance of transitioning to clean energy. The big hurdle was making it a top priority.

We had our first meeting with an LBUSD school board member, Megan Kerr (who would later become one of the campaign’s biggest supporters), in December 2020, and she said that while she fully supported our goals, the resolution would not pass for a while. The district was focused on the pandemic and distance learning.

It made perfect sense — school districts, like all governing bodies, are constantly juggling priorities — but it was hard to hear. We wanted to see the board pass a clean energy resolution immediately. But there were advantages to waiting. In what my mother has often called “a marathon, not a sprint,” the many months it took to pass this resolution allowed us to create a workable, realistic plan that put climate action at the forefront of LBUSD’s goals.

The Green Schools Campaign kicked things off with an online student-led Climate Town Hall, which attracted more than 75 participants. We started a petition (which was signed by more than 1,000 residents) and continued to reach out to parents, students and teachers to discuss the campaign and its goals.

In September 2021, we organized a personal climate rally in which almost 200 people participated, including the actor and the environmental activist Calum Worthy. The event included talks by energy experts, local politicians and environmental activists. The campaign was also able to attract 70 different speakers to speak at each biweekly school board meeting in favor of a transition to clean energy.

The second part of the campaign was to work directly with the district. This involved regular meetings with facility directors and a district-designated representative to review proposals, line by line. We also met regularly with school board members, superintendents and other school officials to discuss how we could gain their support. We helped bring environmental experts into the discussion to help explore financial incentives and funding streams available to LBUSD to help with the clean energy transition.

After two years of meetings and community engagement, the Green School Operations – Energy and Sustainability Policy was adopted on August 17, 2022, committing the district to transition to 100% clean energy by 2045.

At this point I must point out that effective action involves cooperation between those currently in charge and those who will be in power in the years to come – that is, my generation. Yelling at a school board to be greener without creating a workable plan to do so will get you nowhere.

Non-renewable energy has been the norm for so long that our systems are built around this technology, and frankly, it’s easy to stay that way. That’s why it takes a village to decide to fight for these issues.

Diana Michaelson is a sophomore studying health care policy at Cornell University. She is happy to oversee the district’s compliance with the energy and sustainability policy until the job is done.