2021 High School Winners

Tian Hsu is a Year 12 student at St. Paul’s Girls’ School in London, England where is was also born and raised. Tian found the World of 7 Billion contest while searching online for environmental and sustainability related competitions. She decided to create and submit a video to the Promoting Environmental Justice category after a friend suggested that she read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article “The Case for Reparations” in the wake of George Floyd’s death. The article, which features a color-saturated map of redlined neighborhoods in Chicago during the 1930s, explains how white property owners took advantage of black families, setting up these families for economic downfall through the discriminatory housing practice of redlining. Coates’ piece resonated with Tian, who told us, “It was an image and story which really saddened me and has been stuck in my mind ever since. That’s why I immediately wanted to tell a story about achieving justice through my film and entered the Promoting Environmental Justice category.” Although Tian had a thorough understanding of how population growth contributes to global warming, it was through the contest that she realized the social implications. “Global warming, in fact, exacerbates social inequalities. Historically redlined neighborhoods are disproportionately hotter than their white-counterparts in the summer, and this is not right.”

Tian has some prior experience in filmmaking from producing campaign videos for events such as the U.K. Youth Climate Summit to making videos for her school’s environmental assemblies. “I participated in a climate story-telling workshop run by Bill Finnegan, a researcher at Oxford University,” she shared. “Whenever I watch back the film I made then, I cringe a little because I used stock images, awkward cross-cuts and comic sans font! But I like to think that that experience was a learning curve and allowed me to make better videos related to climate change.” Despite her experience, the World of 7 Billion contest’s 60-second requirement presented a challenge for Tian, who also suggests that future contest participants “think carefully about which phrases, sentences and words will deliver the most punch when you make your video. You want people to remember it!” Tian is interested in a future contest topic related to ‘Informing Climate Change’ because as population increases, and technology advances, more and more young children are using social media. She said, “this influences the way they learn about climate change, and increases their exposure to false information. It would be interesting to see what kind of solutions there are to this problem.”

While Tian isn’t entirely sure yet what she will do with her prize earnings, she is considering either saving the money to use as a start-up fund for a future environmental initiative or donating it to the St Paul’s Environmental Action Committee. She does, however, plan to spend a small portion of the money on adding a snake plant to her recently started potted plant collection. During the pandemic and as an upside to remote learning, Tian has had more time outside of class for her hobbies which include going on nature walks, cycling around London, baking banana bread, and playing the trumpet.

Tian is already looking toward the future and shared that she hopes to study architecture in the United States with a focus on sustainable design. She finds a lot of inspiration in architect Bjarke Ingels, “who not only has designed some of the most outrageously imaginative, bold and beautiful buildings in the world, but also designs with an incredible environmental conscious.”