Ella Bradford
2024 Youth Climate Activism Award - Essay + Photos
Ella is a 17 year old from the Yukon.
The first time I started climate activism, I wrote a letter to my MP, asking him to speak up about climate change and the Trans-Mountain pipeline. I was terrified, but felt I had to. I knew I could speak up, but I hadn’t before and I was scared I couldn’t make a difference. I sent it off, and he wrote back with the most disappointing thing I’d read. He thanked me, told me he was inspired that I cared and asked how I was lowering my carbon footprint. He was my elected official, with the power to make changes, and he was asking 12 year old me what I was doing?
Since then, I have gotten increasingly involved in climate activism. I started attending strikes hosted by my classmates to support climate action. Over time, I took on leadership at Fridays for Future Yukon. I organise strikes and meetings with local politicians, give interviews and run our social media pages. Our organisation has grown from us hosting strikes, to meeting directly with politicians.
I reached out to our city council and coordinated a meeting with the councillors. I planned, researched and knew what our city needed. At the meeting, we made our points, leaving feeling heard and empowered to make change.
We later met with the Mayor and it felt like she did to say she consulted with the youth. But I knew what I wanted to say and held her accountable.
Recently, we gave input into their Climate Action Plan. It is overdue but I believe Whitehorse has an opportunity to be leaders for climate action across the north and the world. We shared our experiences, and what we know the plan needs: stronger transit and local food production, and more importantly, collaboration with other governments and quick, meaningful implementation. Someone has to lead in implementing solutions, so why not us? It felt amazing to speak directly to people who can make a difference and feel we made an impact.
This is a long fight and I intend to keep pushing. We are hosting another climate strike soon to raise awareness about the plan, and show our city we want their plan to be strong.
As part of the submissions application we asked participants to answer these 3 questions in addition to their essay or video.
What future goals do you have around your environmental and climate work, and do you have any future projects in mind?
I’m going away to university next year for environmental engineering. Throughout my degree, I intend to continue activism at my university and the city I end up in. Studying environmental engineering will also empower me to continue working for changes that are very important to me on a larger scale by helping me create solutions to our energy, waste and overconsumption problems.
Growing up in the Yukon, we have really strong connections with the First Nations that live here. Their knowledge is essential to conservation and I want to be able to design energy and water systems that combine engineering and science concepts with traditional knowledge to create solutions that work for everyone and are as accessible, sustainable and low impact as they can be. I want to learn more about clean energy production and water management and making it accessible to a wider variety of people and places, including remote and northern areas, like where I’m from. I want to meet people and learn skills that will help me make a difference in our world and in people’s lives.
I’m really excited to connect with others from across Canada and hear how they’re making a difference, and to continue being involved in climate activism here.
If you could share with us one message of hope for our planet, what would it be?
Our small actions that we take at home and in our daily lives do make a difference, not just in reducing our footprint, but in proving to ourselves that a more sustainable world is possible, so everything we do, no matter how small, is worthwhile.
Who or what inspires you to work on climate change?
My whole life, I have grown up in the Yukon and loved being outside, hiking, exploring and seeing the world. Being outside makes me feel better and makes the world feel worthwhile.
When I was 11, my family went to France for a summer and it was amazing. When we were there, we hiked part of the Tour Du Mont Blanc. There was a small group of us, and we hiked for 7 days. One of the days, I was hiking and it was wonderfully warm and felt amazing, but we were on top of one of the biggest mountains around, and there were only small patches of snow. Looking back it was definitely too warm. We were walking and got to the top of a little summit, and were able to see the entire valley. All around was green, and on the other side, there was a glacier. You probably wouldn’t have known just by looking at it. As someone who came from the Yukon and hikes a lot, it wasn’t an impressive glacier by any means. Our guide told us it was a glacier, and the other people in our group were amazed. But it was tiny, and grey and brown on the edges. It felt a little sad.
A few months later, my mom showed me a post of a before and after of that same place, from years before we were there and now. The glacier used to be massive, regal and impressive. And now, it was gone, just a month after we saw it dying. There was nothing left of it. Just gone. Knowing that it was gone is hard to describe. How could something so large just disappear? The weather got too hot and it melted away, and we made it that way. I’ve always loved the outdoors, and until then climate change was some big scary thing off in the distance. But now? It was real.
Experiences like that, of being so close to nature and seeing in real time how it is changing is what drives me to be a climate activist. I think everyone deserves access to the outdoors the way I have, and I know that they are worth protecting.