Sage Lenier, 24, is so done with climate doomerism that, in fall 2018, she launched a whole course as an antidote for feelings of guilt and hopelessness about the warming planet. Solutions for a Sustainable & Just Future, Lenier's student-led course at UC Berkeley, was so popular that in just five semesters it grew from 25 enrolled students to occupying a 300-person lecture hall, eventually serving 1,800 students. A survey conducted at the end of each course has found that, because of the program, 71% of students either have or hope to participate in an environmental initiative or organization.
In 2021, Zero Waste USA helped launch a one-time online version of the course, and Lenier is now setting her sights beyond that. In late January, the program launched as a nonprofit, bringing her solutions-focused climate curricula to businesses, communities, universities, high schools, and the digital space. Coming soon: a podcast and a YouTube series.
“On an emotional level, the goal is to move that vague sense of anxiety about the environment toward a calmer, clearer understanding of the problem and its solutions,” Lenier tells Teen Vogue. “Bringing the monster out of the dark, so to speak.”
The nonprofit course offerings, like the Berkeley iteration, will be ambitious but granular. “We start with consumerism as capitalism as climate change," she explains. "It's like a history lesson of how we got here, looking at our past relationship with resources and nature and how we arrived at the concept of waste and wastefulness.” From there, the course tackles the circular economy, urban planning, food systems, decarbonization, environmental justice, and more.
On the heels of the nonprofit’s launch, Lenier, who recently wrapped up a fellowship with Yale Public Voices, talks with Teen Vogue about climate education, the perils of climate doomerism, and how to deal with anxiety about our warming world.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Teen Vogue: Can you explain what you're doing and what your goals are? What are you teaching?
Sage Lenier: Climate education is really inaccessible. There's no K-12 climate education at all. The only environmental education you can get on the K-12 level is if your high school offers AP environmental science. It is [only at] select high schools across the nation. I took AP environmental science and it's super depressing. It's super problem-focused. My best friend dropped the class after the first semester because she was like, "It's really interesting, but I'm getting depressed."
I watched close friends of mine switch majors or drop classes or whatever because they were like, "I can't handle it. My mental health..." What this program is — and what I was seeking to create — is solutions-focused, action-oriented environmental education. It's very much a crash course in everything you need to know about the planet, in my opinion.
We go into a whole segment on the circular economy. Okay, zero waste on a personal level. That's awesome. So cute. But how do we design zero-waste companies, cities, economies, societies, values? How do we scale that concept up? How do we keep things circulating? That's very exciting.… People are like, "Oh, wow, I never thought about things from this perspective."
We're talking about cradle-to-cradle design and we're talking about materiality and about building a more circular economy. For example, turning the concept of a car into a service rather than a good. It's not something I own and consume; it's something that car-share programs can allow us to own.
Then we move into urban planning. We've got 8 billion people. We're looking at 10 billion by 2050. Where do we put all of them? Just trying to demystify these things… People are like, "Okay, I'm with the anti-lawn movement, but what else?" Those little pieces that are now mainstream, and then it's like, "What's next? Where do we go from there?" So that's step one.
With step two we move into food systems. Obviously, agriculture is a huge part of the puzzle … but in terms of visibility, it's just not talked about. It's not easy to access information about it. So we're trying to demystify the food system, where … I have to say the whole thing is very environmental justice-oriented. Along the whole way, we're talking about who the people are in these systems.
When we talk about food systems, we're talking about our farmers and the communities that are impacted by our agriculture and that sort of thing, and what a regenerative agriculture system could look like. Then we move into decarbonization. …We have a new lecture [by Elli Arzbaecher] on reconnecting to the earth on a personal, emotional level, because a lot of us have grown up feeling like outside was something abstract from us.
TV: Why you are you interested in climate organizing and education?
SL: I was a very social justice-type teenager. I was really into feminism, really into racial justice. I just had a big heart, was always on fire. When I came to environmentalism, I was learning about all these problems. I was learning they were connected to all these things I already cared about.
I think the thing that freaked me out most was — I don't even know where to start…. For example, in that AP environmental science class, my teacher gave a very long discussion on top soil collapse. I was freaking out after that…. It's like, “Do you go to plastic pollution? Do you go to top soil collapse, climate change? I'm confused. None of this is cohesive or adding up. I don't know what the priorities are.”
For me, it was a little of my own search for the truth about everything, but it was also ... I feel like my biggest problem is that other people don't know this. Because I can't tackle all these things, I need to get a bunch more people on board. That's kind of where the idea formed.
TV: I read that you've had over 1,800 students enroll. Were you surprised by the huge amount of interest in your program?
SL: Yes. No. I'm not sure.
I guess no, because I think I wanted … to make the thing that I'm looking for, and I feel like other people are looking for it too. This is the education I'm not getting, so I wasn't surprised when it spoke to a lot of people.
I always had a maxed-out wait-list, and lots of people would tell their friends about it, and it just kind of built hype from there. The school newspaper did a little article on us and stuff, and then a lot of people would recognize me and be like, "You're Sage, right?" I'd go to San Francisco and people would be like, "I read an article about you in The Daily Cal." And I'm like, "Oh, hi, nice to meet you."
*__TV: __*As you said earlier, part of your mission is to make environmental education accessible. Can you talk about what you mean by accessible and how you plan to achieve that?
SL: I think part one is the high schools, and part two is digital. I don't think it should just be youth who are getting environmental ed, even though it's really important because it's our future. I also want to offer digital-type information, and maybe in-person hubs and workshops and stuff.
The environmental movement is definitely growing, but I think your average person who would say, "Oh, I care about the environment," they don't know where to start and they don't know how to get involved. What I'm passionate about is making more activists. You go in there with a ton of passion and you convince these people that this is what is cool, this is what they should care about, and then they get involved in initiatives, organizations. They decide to do an environmental lens with the career they already have, whether it's data or fashion or whatever.
I just think a lot of people, no matter what age they are, are looking for a way to plug in that's not recycling. People are like, "Oh, yeah, I could go to a beach cleanup." And I'm like, "Okay, you could do an ecosystem restoration. That's a little more impactful."
People don't have all the tools. I'm definitely going to be writing [this initiative] as a book because I want it to be as successful as possible. I want to reach anyone who wants to learn.
*__TV: __*How else are you hoping to connect with community members, high school students, and college students?
SL: That's a matter of just being flexible, whether we can get a community space. I don't really care what kind of community space, even if it's the YMCA and they want to host a weekly workshop or something. I want to have this be an intimate and personal thing, and I think that's going to require a lot of training of facilitators and educational leaders.
I want this to be like a vision people feel they can touch, because I think that's the overwhelming feedback we've gotten. People will be like, "I was not hopeful at all. I felt really doomed about everything, and I came out of it feeling like I have a vision for what a path forward could look like.” That's really what we're trying to build here.
Also, it's a matter of getting as interactive as possible. One idea I was thinking of was everywhere we could go. We could start some sort of community action, whether that's a community fridge or a garden or something, just to have that tangible, in-person effect where people can see the results of their labor.
TV: Why do you think a solutions-oriented, action-focused program is particularly effective in beating back what you call climate doomerism?
SL: First and foremost, guilt and helplessness make people tune out.
[Also], to be fully honest, I feel like you kind of have to “cool girl” the revolution. If people think that it’s only weirdo radicals on the court... And don't get me wrong, I'm a weirdo radical in disguise a little bit. That's totally me. But I think you have to create a space.
You have to make it cool, and you have to make it personal. If we leave the influencing to the fast fashion girlies, then the only role models people have are the fast fashion girlies. But if we step up and make this cool and actionable and accessible, then people have something else to look up to and aspire to. I think that's kind of the solution and the hope.
TV: Do you have advice for anyone who's trying to fight feelings of climate doomerism or climate anxiety?
SL: Oh, absolutely. I always say the work is here. Someone has to do it….
Another important point: It's never going to be too late…. The problem, too, is that as environmentalists, we've done a bad job at communicating. There's a lot of, "We have six years left to save humanity!" People are like, "Well, okay… At that point we're all just screwed." That's not a good selling point. People don't want to hear that. I think it's, “There will be billions of people on this planet in the year 2100, in the year 2200, 2300, 2500, and no matter what, their future is in our hands.”
Whether or not they are well-equipped to survive and adapt in the climate-changed world is fully up to decisions we make today. It's always worth fighting for because what we do will absolutely make a difference to our descendants. You have an obligation to be a good ancestor.
*__TV: __*What advice do you have for young people looking to get involved with climate organizing?
SL: There's such a huge burnout culture associated with climate activism. It really sucks you in and squeezes you out. Maybe the most simple advice is just to ask yourself what your community needs.
It's easy to get sucked up in the national fights, and those are really important, but I think a lot of people maybe don't want to get sucked up in the national fights. They don't engage on that level. But it's like, “No, there's a difference that you could make in your community. Does your city have a climate disaster preparedness plan? Are you guys building more resiliently? Do you have a [municipal] compost program? What does your community need?” That's one of the tenets of the program: trying to be as rooted as possible.
I had someone message me on Instagram a couple weeks ago and say that he came out of the class and went back to his predominantly Black, food-desert community. They don't have a grocery store, and he fought the city for two plots of land and they now have community gardens. He was trying to say, "That's all thanks to you." And I was like, "No, it's not. It's all thanks to you."
I cried when I heard that. I've had a lot of people say things like that, where it's like, "How can we root this a little more? How can we bring this down to earth?" Because organizing with Sunrise is great, awesome, really important, but there are things our communities need right here and now.
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