By Brooke Anderson, Photo: Brooke Anderson, Teen Vogue, April 11, 2023
Lizbeth Ibarra, 18, grew up in the shadow of the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California. She was eight years old when the refinery exploded, sending 15,000 people to area hospitals with breathing troubles. Later, her grandmother, who worked nights as a janitor at the refinery, got cancer. Her dad developed asthma, as did many of Ibarra’s childhood friends.
“Still, growing up, we’d talk about Chevron in a good way. They give scholarships, sponsor the newspaper, and employ hella people,” Ibarra recalls. It wasn’t until Youth vs. Apocalypse (YVA) came to her class that it clicked for her: “They’re poisoning our lungs, the air, the soil. Refineries are often placed in communities, like Richmond, with low-income people of color. You don’t see that where there’s mostly white people. It’s environmental racism.”
YVA is a youth-led, Bay Area-based collective of young climate justice activists. Ibarra says she and many of her peers were compelled to join the climate justice movement because of YVA’s ability to connect the lived-daily experiences of pollution, poverty, and racism to accelerating climate chaos.
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