Teens Battle Global Warming

At the age of 17, California native Mary Doerr has founded the nonprofit Inconvenient Youth to educate her peers about the climate crisis and what they can do to help prevent global warming. This weekend, 75 students from across the country will gather at the group's first training session at Stanford University.

A presentation based on former Vice President Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth will be featured—Doerr says Gore is a family friend—with the hope that students will take the slideshow and their newfound knowledge back to educate their hometown communities.

The group seems to think the country's "deciders"—read the older and more powerful—may not have their future interests at heart and have resolved to take matters into their own hands. "We believe that, given the urgency of this incredible problem, we can no longer rely on others to take responsibility on our behalf," says the group's mission page. "We know that as a generation, we can solve it."