Griffith believes education is key to understanding why and how climate change happens is the key to preventing it.

Climate change is no new problem on our planet, with record-breaking heat this summer and ice caps melting by the second, AP Environmental Science teacher Lauren Griffith, believes that corporations should be held accountable for events that come out of their actions contributing to climate change.

Griffith has always been passionate about protecting the environment. Being the founder of the Environmentalist Club at her high school and now being one of the sponsors for the Green Club at McNeil, she teaches students how their actions affect not only the environment but also their own health.

“What we do to the Earth, we do to our own bodies,” Griffith said, “You poison the air, well guess who breathes it.”

Through this passion that comes from a love of nature, Griffith wants to stop the environment, people and everybody from suffering.

“I think protecting the environment is the right thing to do,” Griffith said. “It’s wrong to cause suffering that doesn’t need to happen and I want to protect living things cause we are all part of each other. If we don’t take our actions seriously, then we will only have ourselves to blame when our infrastructure fails.”

Griffith believes that making changes in our lifestyle to reduce our carbon footprint is a lot easier than people realize. Some of the ways she does her part are by thrifting most of her clothes, making her own cleaners and eating a vegan diet.

“There’s a lot of our habits that we do unconsciously and we have no idea how big the impact is,” Griffith said. “Trying to limit the amount we fly and travel and trying to design our lives around being walkable like being closer to where you work are changes we can make in our everyday life.

Through her journey advocating for climate change, she has learned that individuals can spread awareness through education, but they all have to be active in acting upon our values.

“We all just have to try our best,” Griffith said, “We should just try to do whatever we think is right every single time we make a decision and whatever that is, that’s good enough.”