by Lucy Diavolo
© 2021 Lucy Diavolo
Published in 2021 by
Haymarket Books
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Chicago, IL 60618
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ISBN: 978-1-64259-379-2
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This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and Wallace Action Fund.
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Cover design by Liz Coulbourn.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
For the most part, the voices included in this collection come from activists and artists ages ten to twenty-five. The ages of the people noted in individual chapters and the facts reported are accurate as of the time of publication. Sources of quoted material can be found online.
Contents
Foreword
Lindsay Peoples Wagner
Introduction: How Climate Justice Became a Pillar of Intersectional Youth Activism
Lucy Diavolo
SECTION ONE: REPORTING
Putting Science, Data, and Facts First in the Fight for Climate Justice
Alli Maloney
What Is Climate Change?
Emily Hernandez
The Climate Disaster We Fear Is Already Happening
Ruth Hopkins
The Fossil Fuel Industry Is Worsening the Global Plastics Crisis
Maia Wikler
Recycling Isn’t Going to Stop Plastic from Destroying the Earth
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
I Went to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This Is What I Saw.
Alli Maloney
How Climate Change Is Impacting Animals in the Canadian Arctic
Roxanna Pearl Beebe-Center
I Traveled to the Arctic to Witness Climate Disaster Firsthand
Maia Wikler
Publicly Owned Utilities Could Help Fight the Climate Crisis
Greta Moran
SECTION TWO: ACTIVISM
Climate Activism and Organizing Is Changing the World and Offering Hope
Allegra Kirkland
“We Should Care”: Young Climate Activists Share Why They’re on Strike
Sarah Emily Baum and Lucy Diavolo
Nine Teen Climate Activists Fighting for the Future of the Planet
Marilyn La Jeunesse
Greta Thunberg Wants You—Yes, You—to Join the Climate Strike
Lucy Diavolo
Behind the Scenes with the Climate Strike’s Teen Organizers
Sarah Emily Baum
I Protested for the Green New Deal at Mitch McConnell’s Office. Here’s Why.
Destine Grigsby
Five Youth-Led Climate Justice Groups Helping to Save the Environment
Maia Wikler
Teens Are Suing the U.S. Government over Climate Change. The Trump Administration Is Trying to Stop Them.
Rosalie Chan
How to Take Direct Action on the Climate Crisis at Your School This Year
Teen Vogue Staff
Two Generations of Climate Activists Dish about Making Powerful People Uncomfortable
Allegra Kirkland
SECTION THREE: INTERSECTIONALITY
Intersectionality in Climate Reporting and Activism
Samhita Mukhopadhyay
People of Color Deserve Credit for Their Work to Save the Environment
Jenn M. Jackson
What You Should Know about Environmental Racism
Lincoln Anthony Blades
Brooklyn’s Frontline Climate Strike Was Led by the Communities Hit Hardest by Climate Crisis
Denise Garcia
How Climate Change in Bangladesh Impacts Women and Girls
Kareeda Kabir
Climate Change Is Creating a New Atmosphere of Gender Inequality for Women in Malawi
Mélissa Godin
Climate Change Is Impacting Indigenous Peoples Around the World
Michael Charles
The Red Deal Is an Indigenous Climate Plan That Builds on the Green New Deal
Ray Levy-Uyeda
How Plastic Is a Function of Colonialism
Dr. Max Liboiron
Climate Disaster Is a Labor Issue: Here’s Why
Kim Kelly
Four Activists Explain Why Migrant Justice Is Climate Justice
Maia Wikler
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Said Climate Change and Immigration Are Connected—Here’s Why She’s Right
Lucy Diavolo
Acknowledgments
Glossary
Index
Contributor Biographies
FOREWORD
LINDSAY PEOPLES WAGNER
May 2020
When I started at Teen Vogue as an intern at the age of 17, there was almost no mention of climate change and sustainability in any print or online issues. But when I came back as editor in chief a decade later in 2018, it was clear that climate change was an urgent issue that required thorough coverage, especially for our young, engaged readers.
A common misconception I often hear when older people talk about young people’s passion for making change is that they’re naive and alarmist or that climate activism is over-the-top and distracting. What those older people fail to realize is that for young people, it’s tough to consider what their future looks like if the future of the planet is uncertain. If we destroy our planet, we have nowhere else to go. There is no Planet B.
The evidence of climate change is now too copious for even the biggest skeptics to deny with any credibility. We have compelling depictions of how our planet would deteriorate if sea levels continue to rise. We’ve already seen devastating increases in unpredictable weather patterns like droughts, which in turn create situations like famine. And all the while, ecosystems and species are still depleting rapidly. Simply put, as the planet gets hotter and we stand idly by, we are designing our destiny of fatality.
Too often, it takes things getting worse for things to get better. And too often, our broader culture can only see how bad things are getting through a white gaze. Back in 2016, when Mari Copeny was only twelve years old, she became an activist on behalf of Flint, Michigan, because of the discolored and undrinkable water, an environmental health crisis created by the city’s power brokers. Thousands of children were exposed to lead and at risk for developing severe long-term health issues. And that same year, Native American youth stood tall against the Dakota Access Pipeline that would endanger sacred sites and water supplies.
More recently, voices like Greta Thunberg, Jamie Margolin, Xiye Batista, and more have spoken truth to power and demanded justice for the climate. It wasn’t until this recent surge of activism in 2019—after weekly school strikes, student-led global days of action demanding action and accountability, and the largest gathering of youth protestors in history—that the world collectively started to take the issue seriously. In the process, they helped reframe the public’s understanding of the environment as a justice issue. Climate activist Elsa Mengistu said it best: “If we don’t work on climate justice, then we can’t work on any kind of justice. Protecting the planet is also about protecting the people on it.”
The time for action is now. Young people have shown they’re ready to lead the fight against climate change. Even as they do the necessary grassroots work in every corner of our planet, they continue to insist on global action.
To have an equal society and livable pl
anet for all people, we desperately need to understand how climate destruction impacts people from all walks of life. I hope that this book embodies Teen Vogue’s motto of making young people feel seen and heard all over the world. I hope that it forces their parents, communities, loved ones, friends, and—most importantly—those in power to see that the health of our planet depends on how quickly and drastically we change our behaviors. I hope it forces them all to respond.
Young people are no longer the future, asking for permission to make changes when it’s their turn. Young people are the right now; they are the present actively changing our future for the better on their own.
INTRODUCTION
How Climate Justice Became a Pillar of Intersectional Youth Activism
LUCY DIAVOLO
May 2020
My first day on the job as a political news editor at Teen Vogue was February 20, 2018—six days after a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, shocked the world. It was an intense time to begin covering politics for a teenage audience, full of heartbreaking stories and gut-wrenching details that were part of a larger, horrible picture about the nature of gun violence in this country.
Through the ensuing weeks and months of coverage of an issue that has stalked entire generations now, what kept me moored amid the churning seas of official inaction and policy debate was the rock-solid anchor provided by youth activists from Marjory Stoneman and the young people in communities all across the country they partnered with to expand the public’s understanding of gun violence. It was a trial by fire for me but was emblematic of how youth activism and organizing has always been the lifeblood of Teen Vogue’s political coverage.
By the time the Parkland anniversary rolled around in 2019, our political conversation had shifted. Activists trying to prevent gun violence were still hard at work, but the media’s focus had largely turned to a presidential election getting underway and the continued broadcasts of the narcissistic bluster coming out of the White House. At Teen Vogue, as we continued our mission of documenting youth activism, that still meant publishing stories about gun violence, but it also meant the chance to cover other kinds of activism more in-depth.
The climate crisis had always been a key plank in our coverage thanks to Alli Maloney, Teen Vogue’s first-ever digital politics editor. This was evident in the December 2018 editorial package, Plastic Planet, which covered the myriad ways plastic is destroying the world and much of which is included in this book. Thanks to Alli’s work, the climate was already a priority for us by the time we covered Greta Thunberg for the first time ever that same month, December 2018.
Little did I know then that when I asked one of my most reliable newswriters, Emily Bloch, to cover a fiery speech at a United Nations climate change summit, the young woman who schooled world leaders would become the focal point of a resurgent climate justice movement and that I’d get to interview her for a special issue cover story.
Luckily for all of us, the movement is much bigger than Greta. Alongside senior politics editor Allegra Kirkland, executive editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay, and editor in chief Lindsay Peoples Wagner (who made our cover shoot with Greta happen on a wing and a prayer), I’ve watched as youth-led organizations completely reset the urgency and often the stakes of our conversations about the climate crisis.
While only Greta was named Time’s 2019 Person of the Year, the new publicity for a movement all around her was very real, and in our efforts to cover it we’ve tried to be as representative as we can of its expansiveness. To re-create this for this book, I’ve organized the Teen Vogue pieces reproduced here into three sections: reporting, activism, and intersectionality.
The first is a section of reporting intended to put the science first—not just the numbers in isolation but spelling out what it all means. Knowledge is a form of power, and equipping the public with important information gives the people the power to respond to the world around them. For our readers, that means assuming that someone is in the know but never shaming someone who might not be. It means expanding, contextualizing, and connecting information and delivering it in a way that makes people want to keep reading and to share what they learn. Alli captures the ethical imperatives that drive this facts-first mode of operation, laying out how we’ve followed the lead of youth activists, organizers, and journalists.
The second section is about activism, the engine that has propelled our climate coverage forward. For us, journalism is often a conversation with the youth activists and organizers—not just giving them solid reporting but following their lead on what stories matter and how we should be discussing them. Allegra offers her perspective on documenting the moment 2019 presented and how it fits into the larger arc of climate activism, dating back to the 1970s and beyond.
The third and final section is not focused on an activity like reporting or activism but on Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersection-ality. Originally coined to describe discrimination in legal settings, the term’s use (and, at times, misuse) has expanded and has an essential application to the climate justice movement. Aspects of our world like race, class, and gender intersect with the climate crisis as the people already on the short end of the stick see the water rising around them. In her introduction, Samhita examines how activists understand both the ways climate injustice operates along existing axes of oppression like environmental racism and how the movement has come to center intersectionality in its perspectives, leadership, and priorities.
Together, these three aspects of the climate justice movement— reporting, activism, and intersectionality—form the guideposts for this collection just as they have guided and continue to guide our coverage day in and day out. Accuracy, advocacy, and equity are foundational pillars to any movement seeking justice, and the climate justice movement of these last several years has embodied them all.
The fact that young activists have centered these same concepts in their work offers a ready-made explanation for how this surge in climate organizing has become a pillar of the modern Left. We cannot afford to lose sight of this moment or lose the energy it has created, as every passing second sends us further into ecological ruin and planetary devastation.
We can trust that the ideas, individuals, and organizations chronicled here will continue to be vital to these discussions as we further attempt to avert, mitigate, and respond to the crisis. Even before the high-water mark moments of 2019, the tide of energy around climate justice was rising. We cannot let it simply roll back out.
I think often of the young Sunrise Movement organizer who joined me for a panel discussion at the Socialism 2019 conference in Chicago. At the end of our rousing discussion, she led a room of comrades in a song that went, “The oceans, they are rising, and so are we.”
I hear that chorus of voices in my head to this day, as it continues to be one of the highest honors of my life to document the people rising to this challenge.
Putting Science, Data, and Facts First in the Fight for Climate Justice
ALLI MALONEY
May 2020
Teen Vogue launched its news and politics section two months after the inauguration of a president who rejects and regularly misconstrues climate science. Including environmental coverage in our work was out of necessity: the impact of the climate crisis presents pressing questions concerning cause and effect, and young people were asking the big ones.
The vertical took shape as a commitment to youth struggle in a time of truth-denial against a backdrop of an obscured, erased, and politicized history. In 2017, as today, teens righteously raged against inherited conditions and those eager to dismiss their concerns about rising temperatures and sea levels, catastrophic weather events, and accelerating displacement of frontline communities around the world. The proof was on every continent and confirmed by experts for decades, yet deception and denial remained as calls for drastic measures from scientists and concerned global citizens grew louder.
As deregulation began to rapidl
y unfold under a new administration sympathetic to oil, gas, mining, and coal industries, the certitude and urgency of the climate justice movement grew. As a convergence of international peers began showing up for one another to share their stories, online advocates expanded their efforts to become on-the-ground organizers. A generation born into catastrophe became a knowledgeable collective fighting for justice and a stable future. All life, they explain, depends on this pursuit—and science backs them up.
Role models emerged. Around this time, water protectors camped out on the Standing Rock Reservation were holding firm in their resistance against a pipeline imposed on Native territory, a battle with implications for everyone who wants to stop the fossil fuel industry. They unapologetically commanded accurate coverage on the destructive impacts of pipelines like the one under construction on sacred lands. Working with elders and allies, young Indigenous revolutionaries exhibited social media and public relations savvy as they drew lines for the public to connect brutal extractive practices, accelerating climate change, and colonialism and white supremacy. In the process, they demonstrated how the empirical evidence of climate science is inextricable from the lived realities of social science, illustrating how we cannot survive on Earth without embodying our respect for this planet in our actions.
And when a movement or message centers science, coverage must do the same. Actively rejecting misinformation is a key undertaking of climate justice advocates and writers and, as a result, became our political approach. To meet our core readership where they’re at, we built the lens of our coverage around the one through which they showed us the world.
Their concerns manifested in self-schooling to inform resistance tactics and clarify messaging (and inspire clever protest signage, too). More activists and writers came to us with pitches for reported features and op-eds about the issues. This informed peer-to-peer education attracted an all-ages audience eager for reality in an existentially exhausting era of all-too-eager deceit and corporate spin.
We work to match the seemingly boundless energy of everyone who hears “fake news” about the climate disaster and calls bullshit. To refute the denialists’ noise and denounce leaders’ inaction, we’ve studied the subject matter and sought out narratives that give a face, a name, and a story to the images that take shape in data. On the ground in their communities and across the connections of a borderless online network, young organizers have stepped up, uniting peers to strike while citing the statistics and accounts that reveal the real circumstances of this crisis. In tandem, we’ve strived to recognize and analyze the radical and mainstream environmental movements and figureheads that came before our moment to learn from a past we can’t allow ourselves to be doomed to repeat.