Documentary details Long Island high schoolers lobbying for climate action

Brightwaters-based filmmaker Peter Judge hoped for the perfect ending after he started a film documenting Students for Climate Action.

The Sayville-based nonprofit had recruited Judge’s Stray Hare Media to direct and produce a short documentary, one about local teenagers advocating for legislation that extends the time — from 18 years to 25 — school districts have to pay back bonds for renewable energy projects.

Judge and the close to 75 students involved in the multiyear production were optimistic — after previous setbacks — the documentary's portrayal of high schoolers seeing the bill through to its final passage would leave viewers sensing the next generation would be equipped to help deal with a warming planet.

That was before reality set in and they learned that after stalling out in three straight Assembly sessions, the bill didn't even make it to the floor before the fourth ended in June. The State Senate has already voted in favor of the bill multiple times.

"It reframed the story, that's for sure," Judge said of the stalled legislation. "I was holding out for that kind of payoff. But seeing them repeat the process and keep trying ... became its own story."

The finished product chronicles students' efforts to get the Students for Solar Act passed, their frustration at the sometimes snaillike pace of the legislative process, but also their satisfaction at taking an active role in that process.

Judge’s 30-minute film, "Rising Tides, Rising Voices," debuts with a sold-out screening at 7 p.m. Thursday at The Plaza Cinema & Media Arts Center in Patchogue. The documentary won Best Environmental Short Film at this year’s Seattle Film Festival. It's also been selected for the 2024 London Global Film Awards.

Once its film festival runs end later this year, the film will be available for free on the Students for Climate Action website, according to co-founder and executive director Melissa Parrott.

Judge said he filmed students for only five days over a nearly three-year period but incorporated students' cellphone footage as well as their Zoom interviews with program mentors and elected leaders.

"Their story is all about young people learning how to pull on the levers of politics, starting locally but working all the way up to the state level," Judge said. He added that the film highlights how students "educate each other and learn from mentors."

Students for Climate Action, often abbreviated as S4CA, formed as the Suffolk Student Climate Action Committee at Sayville High School in 2017. Since then, it has grown to become a united front of Long Island high schoolers who meet nearly every other week, Parrott said. For seven years, the nonprofit has promoted climate change-related education opportunities for its students and their communities, coordinated with other local and long-standing environmental groups, and urged municipalities to adopt greener energy policies.

The Students for Solar Act, Parrott said, represented "the first time we saw the students really rise up to the challenge" after they learned state law only grants schools a bond payback period of 18 years.

Harrison Bench, S4CA 's deputy director, who is now attending law school, recalled that, as a high school sophomore, he was surprised to learn this short payback period was a barrier to implementing renewable energy projects.

So, Bench and his peers soon met with State Sen. Monica Martinez (D-Brentwood) and other elected officials, and the act, which would extend the payback period to 25 years, was eventually introduced in the Senate. That body unanimously passed the bill on June 7, 2021, again on March 21, 2022, and one more time, May 22, 2023, but stalled out in the Assembly on all three occasions.

Without a payback extension to 25 years, students, Judge and others involved in the project said, school districts would be so financially strapped by the outstanding loan balances, they would have to forgo additional renewal energy programs.

"It’s disappointing; it was frustrating," recalled Erin Peskin, who was involved in the program for three years before graduating from Longwood High School in 2023 and appears in the short film.

"When it was getting down to the wire, we would call a bunch of Assembly members' offices," Peskin said. "We had a script that we read and talked about what it was about and asked them to please put it on the floor and discuss it ... We were definitely persistent if nothing else."

Peskin, who studies environmental biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, recalled speaking before the Brookhaven Town Board as a high school student as "a really empowering experience."

"I had never really felt like I could make a difference, especially as someone who was too young to vote at the time," she said. "This was a great opportunity to not only learn more about renewable energy and our government ... but to get our voices heard and speak to people who can make differences."

CORRECTION: Harrison Bench studies environmental law and graduated from Sayville High School in 2019. A prior version of this story incorrectly described his current academic status.