“Some adults just don’t believe climate change is real,” Athena Fain, 11, said. She kneeled on a bank of the Duwamish Waterway in gardening gloves, thumbing out a stubborn ring of roots from the shrub she was getting ready to plant. “But I believe I can get the ones who do believe in it to do something about it.”
Roughly seven feet away from Fain, six-months-pregnant port commissioner Courtney Gregoire struggled with a shovel, trying to break soil with her 2-year-old daughter, Audrey, and her husband, Scott Lindsay. In January, Gregoire spoke passionately about opposing a lease that would allow Shell’s Arctic drilling fleet to stay in Seattle. Still, she didn’t second a motion that could have stalled the decision or at least brought the issue to a vote.
Then, in the middle of the heated protest that’s followed the port’s obscure decision-making, Climate Academy volunteer Michael Foster extended an invitation to all port commissioners to join him and kids training to be “climate ambassadors” for a day of activism this past weekend. Awkward? Maybe kinda, but also pretty amazing.
Gregoire, one of two port commissioners facing reelection this year, was the only commissioner who showed up to the event in Herring’s House Park. (Bill Bryant said he planned to come, but e-mailed Foster later to say he couldn’t make it; Tom Albro said he was already booked.) Before planting, Gregoire gave a speech to roughly 45 kids, parents, and Plant for the Planet volunteers in the Duwamish Longhouse about the port’s economic prowess, her own opposition to the lease, and the agency’s environmental responsibility.
“She spoke mostly about [how] she wants to save the world,” 11-year-old Fain explained after Gregoire’s speech. That much made Fain optimistic about Gregoire, but she remained skeptical, too. “Because, as you know, as they say, ‘Stop talking, start planting,'” Fain said. “Her words just may be words.“
Aji Piper—the 14-year-old local Plant for the Planet president who showed up to last week’s port commission meeting with a ukulele—spent several minutes speaking with Gregoire directly.
“I thought he was very impressive,” Gregoire said. “And he just peppered me with questions about the environmental review,” she added.
But Piper wasn’t satisfied with the port’s explanation about its environmental review process for the lease, or lack thereof. In order to pursue the Arctic drilling fleet deal, the port determined that it qualified for an exemption from an environmental review under the State Environmental Policy Act, a judgment that’s now being questioned in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of environmental groups.
“I wanted to know what the environmental review was,” Piper said. “And then [Gregoire] told me about the categorical exemption. I was like, why does that exist? I felt like they were being lazy with it.”
Environmental groups are asking the port to rescind the lease over some of these issues, but Gregoire told The Stranger that she’d need grounds to break the contract and didn’t want to send a bad message to the business community otherwise.
A few minutes after Fain successfully untangled her roots, Patricia Snyder, a longtime Parks and Recreation employee helping out with the effort that day, walked over to the strip of earth Fain and Gregoire were working on and gently delivered some bad news: They couldn’t plant there. Fain and Gregoire had accidentally crossed the invisible boundary between city property and property owned by the Port of Seattle, so they’d have to pick up and to relocate to the city side.
Gregoire gasped and chuckled, adding that port land could use more trees anyway. “I’m just dying of laughter right now,” she said.
Fain picked up her baby shrub and walked over to a spot less than a hundred feet away. Piper, the 14-year-old president of the group, helped her transfer the plant into the new soil and described his conversation with Gregoire.
“You know what I noticed with the kindergartners?” Fain asked Piper. At lunchtime, Fain said, kindergartners always made sure to get every drop of milk out of their cartons before tossing them into recycling. But one day she saw a teacher only dump some of a carton of milk out before throwing the rest into the recycling bin.
“Adults get lazier as they get older,” Fain sighed. “I don’t know why. I thought you’d get more careful as you get older.”
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