Indiana students demand action on climate change. Lawmakers respond with hard 'no.'

It’s obvious to a lot of people. To the Indiana cities that are taking steps to cut their emissions. To the Hoosier farmers who are seeing reduced crop yields from wetter springs and hotter summers. To the high school students who are scared for what their future may look like, demanding Indiana leaders make a change. 

And yet, the state legislature seems to have blinders on when it comes to climate change, according to environmental experts and advocates. 

Three pieces of legislation have been proposed this session. Two bills would create task forces to tackle climate change issues. The other is a resolution that says “the Indiana General Assembly acknowledges climate change as a serious problem for Indiana.”

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Neither the bills nor the resolution, however, have even been scheduled for a hearing in the environmental committees they’ve been assigned to. The deadline to do so is this week. 

Environmental groups across the state are frustrated, but not surprised. 

“This says that Indiana has a long way to go in taking climate change seriously as a threat to our economy, our environment and Hoosiers,” said Sean Mobley, the senior policy associate for climate and clean energy at The Nature Conservancy in Indiana. 

Many actions are being undertaken by the private sector and everyday Hoosiers, he said, “but until the state starts supporting these actions and incentivizing others to do the same, we have work to do.” 

Sen. Mark Messmer, R-Jasper, who chairs the Senate Environmental Affairs Committee, told IndyStar he does not plan to hear the senate legislation. The chair of the House committee, Rep. Mike Speedy, R-Indianapolis, did not respond to IndyStar requests for comment.

Climate change is an Indiana problem

One bill in each the House and Senate would establish a bipartisan commission or task force with experts to make recommendations on steps Indiana can take to address climate change. Senate Bill 255 is authored by Sen. Ron Alting, R-Lafayette, and House Bill 1287 is authored by Rep. Carey Hamilton, D-Indianapolis. 

Alting also authored Senate Concurrent Resolution 3, which recognizes climate change and says “all Hoosiers, particularly those most vulnerable to changes in Indiana’s climate, must be protected through adaptive climate solutions.” 

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The driving force behind these bills is a student group called Confront the Climate Crisis, which launched in West Lafayette in 2020. The student-run organization now has students from communities across Indiana including Evansville, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis and Gary. 

They worked closely with Alting, who represents the West Lafayette area, to draft the resolution and the Senate bill calling for a climate change task force. 

“We’re the ones who will grow up and inherit the state and deal with the future they are leaving for us,” said Rahul Durai, a sophomore at West Lafayette Jr./Sr. High School who also serves as a legislative director for the group. 

That future looks challenging, according to research from Purdue University's Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment. 

The state has already warmed and temperatures are expected to rise an additional 6 degrees Fahrenheit by mid-century, according to the assessment. That can reduce crop yields and create more favorable conditions for pests such as mosquitos and ticks as well as invasive species. 

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The number of extreme heat days is expected to more than quadruple in some areas of the state, causing issues with heat-related illnesses, particularly for young and elderly people in city areas, the assessment found.

Average annual precipitation has already increased by nearly 6 inches in Indiana and winter and spring will continue to get even wetter. That rain is coming in heavier downpours, the assessment says, with the potential to cause floods, make it more difficult to plant crops and pollute the waters with additional sewer overflows and fertilizer runoff.

Not only are the impacts clear, so too is Indiana’s role in it. Indiana emits some of the most carbon dioxide — a climate change-causing greenhouse gas — of any state in the nation. That's because much of Indiana's energy comes from fossil fuels and the state is the most manufacturing-intensive in the nation. Emissions from transportation and agriculture also contribute.

Durai said there are lots of opportunities to address these issues and many important decisions to be made.

“But we haven’t seen enough action from the state government,” he continued. “That’s why we as youth are leading the charge, but we do think the older generation needs to step up because they are the ones in power.” 

'Start the climate conversation' 

Confront the Climate Crisis held an action day at the Statehouse on Tuesday, talking with legislators about the bills and trying to build support. Durai and his fellow students said they had hoped to speak with Messmer to discuss hearing the bills, but never got the chance. 

Messmer told IndyStar Wednesday that he does not plan to hear the task force bill or the resolution. 

He said that he felt the task force bill was redundant because those issues could be addressed in an interim committee or through the 21st Century Energy Policy Task Force. But there's no guarantee an interim committee will address the topic and the chair of the energy task force has said more than once that the group's purpose is not to discuss climate change.

Even if the energy task force were to discuss aspects of climate change, that would be limited to just one sector: energy and utilities. Durai said there are many other areas that need attention, too, such as agriculture, manufacturing and transportation.

As for the resolution, Messmer said he didn’t have a problem with the resolution language itself, but took issue with some aspects of the preamble — though he could not point to any specifics. The preamble of the resolution points to Purdue’s research and lists national bodies such as the U.S. Department of Defense that have found climate change to be a risk. 

Unlike the state, cities across Indiana are recognizing climate change as a threat. Some are conducting studies to inventory their emissions and implementing strategies to reduce those emissions. Others are setting goals to be carbon neutral.

While those actions are important, the nature conservancy's Mobley said they are not enough without climate-mitigation incentives from the state.

Jonathan Siskind, a senior at West Lafayette Jr./Sr. High School, said students have heard a lot more noes than yeses from state lawmakers. 

The Confront the Climate Crisis students acknowledge climate has long been a dividing issue, though they don’t understand why — it affects everyone regardless of a person’s political beliefs, they said. 

Still, they hoped that working with Alting, a Republican and one of Indiana’s longer-serving legislators, would have helped put more weight behind the bill and resolution. Alting did not respond to IndyStar’s requests for comment. 

Siskind said he and his colleagues have put hundreds of hours of work into this legislation and building a coalition.

“Our number one goal was to start the climate change conversation in Indiana,” he said. “The fact that Indiana is a very conservative state, we want to make more Hoosiers open to this.”

Need to act now

Not only is the state legislature not taking action on climate change, it sometimes has taken steps in the opposite direction during recent sessions, according to climate advocates. 

Last year, the General Assembly passed a law prohibiting municipalities from putting restrictions on natural gas in new development. It also approved a bill stripping protections for wetlands, which serve a crucial role in filtering water and preventing flooding.

In previous years, the legislature has also eliminated Indiana’s energy efficiency program and phased out a mechanism called net metering that is meant to help more homeowners install solar panels.

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The fact that the legislature won’t even hear or consider legislation on climate change is ironic, said Kerwin Olson, executive director of consumer-advocacy group Citizens Action Coalition. That’s because several other bills being discussed this session — ones about building nuclear reactors in Indiana or capturing and storing carbon dioxide underground — rely on the claim these technologies are needed to help reduce carbon emissions that cause climate change.

“The state of Indiana only wants to capitalize on a small piece of this rather than looking at the big picture,” Olson said. “Let’s hope the older generation starts to listen to the younger generation, because this is one of the main issues where we are passing on a huge debt to our children.”

Sen. Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, agrees. Yoder serves as the ranking minority member on the Senate Environmental Affairs Committee and she said she wished these bills would get a hearing: “It’s about time, we need this.”

Yoder said she finds it “absolutely atrocious” that her generation isn’t doing more and is saying “bravo” and “we are proud of you” to the next generation for their work on climate change.

“They don’t want our pride. They want our activism, they want our voice, and they want us to actively pass bills to create a future for them,” she said. “They can’t wait until our generation is out so they can actually make a difference. They need us to act now to create the future they are asking for and demanding.”

Durai said every year without action is a missed opportunity to start making changes. Without making changes now, the United Nations said the world won’t be able to avoid warming beyond dangerous levels that could further exacerbate climate disasters, hunger and drought worldwide.

Still, the students plan to come back every year until the Indiana legislature listens.

“We will have to strategize about if we push for something more ambitious that meets the moment,” Durai said. “But we are persistent, and our movement isn’t going anywhere.” 

Call IndyStar reporter Sarah Bowman at 317-444-6129 or email at sarah.bowman@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook: @IndyStarSarah. Connect with IndyStar’s environmental reporters: Join The Scrub on Facebook.

IndyStar's environmental reporting project is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.