OutsideOnline.com, October 21, 2021 - Feeling pessimistic about the environment? If so, here’s a cure—or seven. Earlier this week in San Francisco, the Earth Island Institute doled out its annual Brower Youth Awards to seven of the country’s boldest young environmental leaders, teens and early 20-somethings who aren’t sitting around bitching about problems but are actually doing something about them. Now there’s an idea.

Take Kyle Thiermann, a 21-year-old pro surfer and environmental filmmaker. Raised in Santa Monica by documentary-filmmaker parents, Kyle learned to skateboard at 6, built a skate ramp in his backyard when he was nine, and started surfing local breaks and traveling the world—to Peru, Australia, and El Salvador, among others—by the time he was 11. At 19, he landed sponsorships with sustainable bigwigs Patagonia and Sector 9 and turned pro.

But Kyle’s not your average surf dude. For starters, he doesn’t compete in contests on the pro circuit. Instead, he travels the world to ride waves and make short films about global environmental issues, like coal plants, single-use plastic pollution, offshore drilling, and nuclear power. In his first video in his Surfing for Change series, “Claim Your Change,” which came out in 2009, he exposes the link between large multinational banks and the coal industry. In just over four minutes, the blonde-haired, preternaturally perky Kyle explains that by putting your money in big national banks, you may be unwittingly supporting financial organizations that fund coal projects, like a proposed plant in Chile bankrolled by Bank of America. Gloomy as it sounds, Kyle doesn't go in for hopeless hand wringing. Instead, he offers straightforward “daily decisions” that will make a difference. In the two years since “Claim Your Change” debuted, he estimates that $340 million of lending power has been moved out of Bank of America and into local institutions that invest in more sustainable community projects.

In his most recent short "Where is 'Away'?" about tons of plastic pollution washing up like "toxic tumbleweeds" on Hawaii's beaches, Kyle talks trash with fellow surfer and singer Jack Johnson and advocates a simple, doable solution: reduce plastic consumption first, then recycle. That means saying no to plastic bags and bottles. I caught up with Kyle this week to find out what fuels his activist fires, why adventure and environmentalism go hand in hand, and how to inspire the next generation of earth-conscious go-getters. (Next week: a conversation with Brower Youth Award winner Victor Davila, 17, who’s using skateboarding to promote environmental justice and beat obesity in the South Bronx.)

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