Meet the 10-year-old from Satellite Beach suing the state over climate change | Rangel

Levi Draheim is 10 years old and has sued government officials twice over their alleged complicity in causing climate change through their support of fossil fuel.

He's the youngest of eight Florida youth who are part of a lawsuit filed Monday against the state, Gov. Rick Scott, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam and several agencies. The complaint alleges the "defendants’ unconstitutional contributions to climate change and creation and operation of a fossil fuel-based energy system" violated the children's rights to a stable environment in violation of the Florida Constitution.

The lawsuit's goal is to force the state to keep an inventory of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions and come up with a plan to phase out fossil fuel consumption.

Levi also is the youngest of among 21 young people from across the nation who are plaintiffs in a similar 2015 pending lawsuit filed in Oregon against the federal government. He's even traveled to San Francisco to appear in a hearing in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the Trump administration's attempt to throw out the lawsuit in March. A trial is scheduled for Oct. 29 in Eugene, Oregon.

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Levi's home in Satellite Beach is 3 feet above sea level and is projected to be under water between 2065 and 2083 as the sea level rises as a result of a warmer planet, the state lawsuit filed in Leon County states. His family likely will be forced to move before that because of the increased frequency in flooding and infrastructure failure in the home from storm surges.

Levi, who's home schooled by his mother, Leigh-Ann Draheim, because he has food allergies, remembers how his home flooded with 18 inches of water after Hurricane Irma.

"I'm the kind of kid who likes to be outside and go to the beach all the time," he said. "I realized that if climate change continues I might not have a beach and a home here because I've already seen flooding on our street and up my doorstep a week after Hurricane Irma."

His mother first heard about the federal lawsuit at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Brevard in West Melbourne, which the family has attended since Levi was a toddler. The organization Our Children's Trust, which has helped bring on the lawsuit, was looking for plaintiffs in Florida, and she decided to email Levi's information. The group is behind similar lawsuit across the nation to force governments to address climate change.

Although Levi was only 7 when he joined he had already heard about climate change from his mother and people at the church.

Levi has grown up vegan and is part of a group of local kids started by his mother who do beach cleanups and grow a vegetable garden. They have grown dill, tomatoes, chocolate mint and lemongrass. Leigh-Ann turns the family's organic trash into compost and uses a book about climate change in Levi's science lessons.

She said she's been concerned about the environment since she was a child. Her father's work in the finance industry took the family across the world, and for a while they lived in Hong Hong, where she became alarmed by air pollution and the fact the city didn't recycle at the time. Her urge to save the planet as a child and her love for traveling have transferred to her son. His bedroom wall is covered in pictures of the family's trips to New York City, Lake Tahoe and Maine.

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So when the opportunity to join the lawsuit presented itself three years ago, it was a no-brainer for Leigh-Ann. Levi is used to speaking in public and being in front of the camera. He has worked as a model and his face is on a Ron Jon Surf Shop billboard off Interstate 95 in north-central Brevard.

Leigh-Ann said the responses to the lawsuit have been mixed, and some accused her of using her son as a "puppet." She's also used to climate-change science deniers.

"We’ve had people say, 'I don’t believe you,'" Leigh-Ann Draheim said, "'It's ridiculous you're putting your kid through this.'"

A large number of climate scientists — and 68 percent of the public, according to a March Gallup poll — believe in the link between the emission of carbon dioxide and climate change. The current concentration of atmospheric CO2 is the highest in 3 million years and Florida, the lawsuit states. But many elected officials deny human actions are behind a warmer planet.

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President Trump has said climate change is a hoax created by the Chinese to undermine American industrial progress. But under his administration the Environmental Protection Agency released a federally mandated report in November that showed greenhouse gas emissions are "extremely likely" to be a major cause of global warming. The only solution to the problem is to reduce such emissions, the reports states.

Scott, who's running for the U.S. Senate, has said "I'm not a scientist" when asked about the issue, and a Florida Center for Investigative Reporting 2015 report found he banned the use of the term "climate change" or "global warming" in Department of Environmental Protection communications, which he has denied.

Levi has dealt with some of the criticism he's mother has faced. On his plane ride from San Francisco, as he wore a "climate change is real" t-shirt, a flight attendant told him the lawsuit is "dumb."

"I said, 'Well climate change is real and you can have your own opinion, but I can have my opinion and your opinion is not necessarily true,' " Levi said. "I have scientific evidence that climate change is real and I know scientists that have all this different evidence that climate change is real. I know that climate change is real."

Isadora Rangel is FLORIDA TODAY's public affairs and engagement editor and a member of the Editorial Board. Her columns reflect her opinion. Readers may reach her at irangel@floridatoday.com, by phone at 321-242-3631 or via Facebook at /IsadoraSalaRangel.