In June of 2024, I attended Capitol Hill Ocean Week as a delegate for Sea Youth Rise Up (SYRUP), joining 25 other young environmental advocates. I carried a notebook to every lobby meeting, panel discussion and conversation with legislators, marked with a big colorful sticker declaring “Sea Youth Rise Up.”
Its pages held policy notes, interesting ideas, but, above all, the names of politicians shaping environmental legislation, ranging from Ed Markey to Bernie Sanders.
This notebook raises a fundamental question: Who owns knowledge? Are the individuals within my notebook pages—policymakers, advisors, and legislators—its rightful owners? Or do the young activists, armed with lived experience and advocacy, possess knowledge of equal weight?
One can compare this politician-activist relationship with the conflict between Descartes’ rationalism, the idea that knowledge is achieved through logic, and Locke’s empiricism, the belief that knowledge comes from experience. When speaking about environmental policy, politicians may possess extensive knowledge on legislations and laws, but lack the experiential knowledge of those directly affected by climate change. Given that both empiricism and rationalism are simply different paths to knowledge acquisition, not limitations to it, then both the owners of SYRUP notebooks and the names in them have environmental knowledge.
However, is knowledge ownership truly a question of who possesses knowledge, or does it extend to who has the authority to act upon it?
The bright SYRUP sticker symbolizes our movement; however, it may also craft an image that conflicts with authority and power. A politician, holding the same notes in an official binder, might be seen as a knowledge-owner, while we, despite possessing the same information, remain “activists” rather than experts.
Ultimately, the SYRUP notebook represents a paradox: it is filled with knowledge, yet those who carried it were not seen as its rightful owners. Whether knowledge is held through logic or experience, its ownership is often decided by those with institutional power, and by those who fit the image of someone who should.
