For many students, their only exposure to climate change has been an occasional presentation in advisory or a trending topic on Twitter. The Environmental Action/Food Justice Club hopes to change this, and it’s heavily dependent on their petition.

The Environmental Action/Food Justice Club is submitting the Graduate Green Petition to the School Committee on Dec. 16th, following a campaign by the club that amassed 667 signatures. The petition strives to radically change how students learn about climate change and also asks the town to declare climate change an emergency.

Head Organizer Neda Sabeva said she hopes that the petition will put the progressive values often boasted by Brookline residents and politicians to the test.

“I personally feel like a lot of times, Brookline prides itself on having very progressive values and being very progressive in terms of climate action. But I think we saw this lack of action,” Sabeva said.

Sabeva said the teaching of climate change is vital, especially due to the effect it will have on the current students and the world around them.

“It has and will continue to affect our health, physically mentally, and emotionally,” Sabeva said.

Sabeva said she hopes that, if the petition passes, the climate education brought to the high school will be more effective than the current system, which mainly revolves around occasional presentations in advisory.

“I think that there just really isn’t that much climate education. I think a lot of it in the past, we’ve done through advisory and that’s just kind of been difficult to engage with students. It just feels like students aren’t really like in advisory, just in general, they’re not really learning or engaged with the content,” Sabeva said.

Junior Tal Canetti, who helped out in the campaign, said she strongly supports the education reforms the petition proposes. She hopes that the school will focus on teaching students more about the crisis than what is currently taught.

“It’s just incredibly important to teach. And [climate education] currently is honestly kind of this vague thing that’s going to happen if you don’t do anything about it.,” Canetti said.

According to Canetti, intersectionality, how climate change will affect poorer and more marginalized communities at a greater rate and higher magnitude, is central to the cause of the petition.

“It’s a crisis, and any type of crisis that comes is going to affect the people who are the most oppressed in the society, and who have the least things to fall back on the most. I think it’s so important not only when talking about my future, it’s also important to focus on people who climate change is affecting right now,” Canetti said.

Sabeva said she is hopeful about the petition’s outcome following it’s presentation to the school committee on Dec. 16th, mostly due to the reforms they’re suggesting being broad in nature.

“I think it’ll be received pretty positively, I think most of the goals we set are pretty reasonable. There’s a lot of room for the school committee to adopt it, as it’s not exceptionally specific to the point where they would have a lot of issues with it,” Sabeva said.

Sabeva said though petitions can be effective, structural change is needed for such a large, deep issue.

“I think the most important part is getting structural change, and that is really, really difficult,” Sabeva said. “And usually, slow moving, which is kind of hard for a crisis that is very time-dependent.”