Over 50 years after the 1969 Santa Barbara Channel oil spill spurred the modern environmental movement, young activists continue to carry the torch, like Santa Barbara student Ethan Maday.

Maday, 15, is a founder and leader of 805 Action, a new grassroots youth organization that encourages young people to become engaged in environmental advocacy.

Maday told Noozhawk that his early love of the ocean has grown into an interest in environmental activism. Today, he works with various local environmental groups and attends protests and county policy meetings.

“I started surfing when I was at Leadbetter, pretty much before I could walk,” Maday said. “I would be out at Leadbetter (and) my dad would push me into waves on a foam board.”

Maday discovered his interest in the environment in the seventh grade as a student at Santa Barbara Middle School. There, he began a new club dedicated to helping the environment.

He also began working with the Community Environmental Council (CEC) and other environmentally-focused groups.

By the time Maday was in high school, President Donald Trump was re-elected to office. The Trump administration began rolling back federal environmental policies and funding for renewable energy production and scientific departments, among others, New York Times reported.

Maday described the rollbacks as a shock to the system. He also became aware of Sable Offshore Corp. and its attempts to restart the pipeline at the center of the 2015 Refugio Oil Spill.

Sable’s actions led to Maday, then 14, speaking at his first meeting in front of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors.

Before the meeting, he put together a petition with 50 signatures from students at his school, which he presented to the board.

“It just was a really eye-opening moment for me to be a part of something like that, and to stand there in front of the Board of Supervisors as a 14-year-old and pretty much say, ‘Hey, we’re scared. This is going to hurt our future,’” Maday said.

Maday said he hopes to continue his activism in the future, even if he does not focus primarily on environmental issues. He plans to study political science in college.

Local high schoolers like Maday aren’t the only members of Generation Alpha and Generation Z joining the local environmental activism movement.

At nearby UC Santa Barbara and Isla Vista — the university’s bordering college town — groups like the Policy Committee of the Surfrider Foundation, Isla Vista chapter, and the Environmental Affairs Board (EAB) had major roles in encouraging student involvement in the “Stop Sable” campaign.

Working alongside groups like CALPIRG and the Environmental Law Club, the student-led EAB launched a “Stop Sable” campaign and an Instagram handle, @ucsbstopsable, to spread their message.

EAB Advocacy Chair Vivienne Chankai, a third-year UCSB student, joined the advocacy team during her sophomore year.

Looking to combat the “just a student” mindset, Chankai said she works to empower students to make their voices heard by emphasizing “how unifying this issue can be.”

She said the “kind of dangers that this pipeline posed to the marine ecosystems and the environments and people and community of Santa Barbara” is a “really important issue for us to focus on.”

EAB holds free, public meetings before hearings to outline specific ways students can be engaged with environmental advocacy outside their busy schedules. Chankai and the advocacy team aim to show students there are many ways they can get involved.

Chankai said seeing high schoolers, college students and members of the larger community gather at a vigil organized by the EAB and Santa Barbara high school students in response to the Sable pipeline restart was a “powerful moment.”

“…Seeing how much the work I was doing was affecting students and motivating them to speak up… it goes back to legitimizing the student perspective in community issues,” Chankai said. 

Like Chankai, Katy Fyvie, a fourth-year UCSB student, said that being a student can sometimes feel like a disadvantage in the larger environmental movement.

There are constantly new voices coming and going because students typically only reside in Isla Vista for two to four years, she said.

Fyvie is acting co-chair of the Surfrider Policy Committee, Isla Vista chapter. The Surfrider Foundation, founded in 1984, focuses on the protection and conservation of the world’s oceans and beaches.

Fyvie has been involved with Surfrider for two years now. She shares the latest information on Sable operations with the larger Surfrider chapter every week and updates calendars on public hearings, petitions and Zoom meetings.

The Policy Committee also creates social media posts, organizes carpools, and helps write email-in public comments during Isla Vista Surfrider general meetings.

Fyvie emphasized the importance of respect in the Sable discussion. She said she has pride in the way “students are engaging with it respectfully and responsibly” and noted that while environmentalists are fighting for their oceans, Sable employees are trying to protect their livelihoods.

With this in mind, Fyvie said she approaches her activism empathetically, while still fighting for what she believes in. 

“It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been here for or how long you’re going to stay. Getting involved and advocating for things you care about is important no matter how long you are staying,” she said. 

Surfrider Policy Committee member Kylan Hobart, a third-year UC Santa Barbara student, has also been advocating against the Sable pipeline restart.

Before becoming involved in Surfrider, she joined the board for the Isla Vista Community Services District (IVCSD), doing environmental advocacy work. 

She said she represented the district at Sable hearings and co-drafted a resolution against the restart of the pipeline.

She also created a timeline of the history of the pipeline for IVCSD, which she brought to one of her first Policy Committee meetings. 

Some of Hobart’s professors offer extra credit or excuse students for missing class to go to the hearings or protests. She also explained that students typically have more flexibility than those who work full-time to show up to meetings and spend time in courtrooms. 

“It’s nice to see people are capable of showing up and engaging with those kinds of things. It really also comes into the faculty being open to sharing those kinds of messages,” Hobart said.

Hobart understands the frustration of feeling too small to make a difference, especially from a student standpoint.  

“I think sometimes state and federal issues going on feel so out of reach. It feels like your voice gets drowned out. It’s really rewarding to put in the work and to see that it impacts things at the local level,” she said. 

For young people, Maday stressed the need to be politically active and to make their voices heard.

Maday said that the world being built today is the world his generation will inherit in the future.

“I believe we should have a seat at the table, and we should be able to make our voices heard on the state and national level,” he said. “Because every single decision made by leaders today impacts us the most, and it will impact us for the rest of our lives, and that has to be taken seriously.”