Transcript:

Many high school students spend time after school writing papers, singing in a choir, or playing baseball.

But Nathan Tan, a junior at Saint Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas, devotes much of his time to environmental causes – like advocating for clean air and restoring wildlife habitat.

Tan: “We as young people really need to take a stand, and … I think it’s very important that we take that action and continue inspiring people that are many generations older than us.”

Last year, Tan founded the Shared Skies Initiative, a nonprofit that’s monitoring air pollution in parts of Dallas.

Many neighborhoods near factories or highways are heavily polluted. So the nonprofit is installing air quality sensors to collect data that can be used to advocate for change.

Tan also works with his school’s prairie restoration crew, which plants native wildflowers and grasses to help rebuild patches of the original prairie ecosystem, much of which has been lost to sprawl and farming.

He encourages young people who are worried about the environment to spend some time reading news about people implementing solutions.

Tan: “Understanding that there is … progress being made across the entire world can be really inspiring.”

And he urges young people to pick an issue they care about and start taking small steps.

Reporting credit: Ethan Freedman / ChavoBart Digital Media