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By Janna Irons
Last year, 20-year-old Kyle Thiermann took a surf trip to Southern Chile, where he planned to spend a few weeks sampling the pointbreak perfection of Constitucion. But soon he realized it would become more than just a carefree jaunt through the lefts of South America. In the small town where he stayed, in an area whose livelihood depended upon fishing, a coal power plant was proposed that would potentially decimate the fish in the area, among a slew of other environmentally detrimental consequences. Rather than sit idle, Kyle researched the situation and found out that Bank of America was funding the project. He started a campaign called “Claim Your Change” which emphasized the power that surfers in particular have to keep their money in a local banks, an effort that will help grow the local economy rather fund things like coal power plants. According to Kyle, “over $110,000,000 worth of lending power has been moved out of Bank of America and into local banks around the country.” Now, Kyle has embarked on another cause aimed specifically at the surf community, so we caught up with the young Santa Cruz local to find out about it.