No Planet B

by Lucy Diavolo

  Bozuwa, of the Democracy Collaborative, sees the current moment as an opportunity to learn from public utilities’ mistakes and push this model in a new, bolder direction. “Public ownership is built within the context of the people who are organizing for it,” said Bozuwa. This grants the system its power and, historically, its limitations.

  A New Era of Energy Democracy

  Today’s emerging campaigns are calling for a new system of “energy democracy” altogether and share an overarching goal of climate justice. What this entails takes many forms.

  For instance, the #NationalizeGrid campaign in Rhode Island has been fighting, alongside its coalition partner, the George Wiley Center, for statewide public power.

  “It’s a pretty simple piece of legislation [requiring] a very minor tax increase across the state, [that would mean] low-income payers would only need to pay a certain percentage of their monthly income as their utilities payment,” explained Corey Krajewski, an activist with the campaign.

  Boston’s Take Back the Grid campaign has been focused on ensuring workers and communities of color in Boston benefit from the shift to a publicly owned renewable grid.

  Similarly, Northern California’s Let’s Own PG&E campaign has been thinking through ways to ensure that the PG&E workers are included in the new energy system. One idea they’ve been considering is a proposed ballot measure to protect these workers’ pensions, explained Emily Algire, one of the organizers in the campaign.

  In Maine, the local power supplier has been accused of erroneously charging customers. In response to disproportionately high rates, a group of over six hundred rate-payers is suing the Central Maine Power Company, while also backing a bill to replace the two main power providers in the state with a statewide public utility, introduced by Representative Seth Berry. For Berry, it’s a major opportunity to address the climate crisis.

  “Basically, we have to electrify our entire economy, and we have to do that really fast,” Berry said. “It’s like the foundation that we’re building our home on for the future.”

  Climate Activism and Organizing Is Changing the World and Offering Hope

  ALLEGRA KIRKLAND

  May 2020

  This is what democracy looks like: thousands of young people— from rural farm towns and dense urban centers, frontline communities and Ivy League institutions—coming together to fight for climate justice.

  Teen Vogue has documented the rise of the youth climate movement over the past few years, as it has grown from smaller, campus- and community-based efforts to a social media–fueled global powerhouse. We’ve followed the lead of the young activists elevating this issue and come at this story from the many different angles that now represent our core areas of coverage: social justice, immigration, youth activism, and inequality.

  Today’s youth climate movement harkens back to the spirit of the original Earth Day in 1970. Contemporary activists, like those who once helped secure the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Water Act, approach our environmental crises from an intersectional lens. They want to stop sea level rise and mitigate blazing wildfires, but they also want justice for those who have borne the brunt of environmental disaster for decades. They want to lift up the voices of women, people of color, and Indigenous communities. They want to create a climate justice movement that is forward-looking and truly representative.

  So we’ve tried to tell the stories of who these activists are and why the important work they’re doing matters. We’ve run stories profiling individual organizers and representatives of some of the major groups, like Extinction Rebellion and Zero Hour. We want to know what their personal backgrounds look like and what’s driven them to act. We’ve listened in on their conversations with friends, and they’ve told us what they’re thinking when they occupy lawmakers’ offices or spend long days protesting on hot city streets.

  For one of my favorite climate pieces we’ve ever run, Sarah Emily Baum spent weeks with the organizers of the 2019 New York City Youth Climate Strike. Sarah documented their planning meetings in rec room basements and watched them design signs and map out programming for the main event. Their work culminated in a massive global march that saw over four million people participate in what was estimated to be the largest climate protest in world history. Teen Vogue staff left the office early on the sunny September Friday afternoon to join the floods of people crowding the streets of Manhattan’s Battery Park to watch Greta Thunberg take the stage.

  And we profiled Greta herself—the enigmatic, eloquent, righteously angry Swedish youth activist who has become one of the most prominent faces of the global climate movement. Greta’s School Strikes for Climate inspired countless young people to give up their childhoods and their schooling to take a weekly stand against the most pressing issue facing humanity. And she helped make room for those who felt hopeless in the face of a frightening future, and apart from their peers. As she told Teen Vogue, “People who are different are so necessary, because they contribute so much. Therefore, we need to really look after the people who are different and who may not be heard. We need to listen to those and to look after each other.”

  Beyond providing moral leadership, youth activists have been taking concrete steps towards change. They have fought for divestment and helped eliminate the use of single-use plastics on their school campuses. They’ve organized for the passage of a Green New Deal. And some even sued the federal government for enabling the destruction of the planet with their subsidies of the fossil fuel industry and other major polluters.

  We know some degree of climate disaster is already baked in. The waters will rise, the wildfires will burn, the plains will flood. But all is not lost. Crucial work is still being done; hearts and laws are still being changed. And we will owe the future we inherit to the fearless, groundbreaking activism of the youth organizers who fought for us to have one.

  “We Should Care”

  Young Climate Activists Share Why They’re on Strike

  SARAH EMILY BAUM AND LUCY DIAVOLO

  September 20, 2019

  Hundreds of thousands of people across the world went on strike on Friday, September 20, 2019. Upset by inaction by world leaders and eager to take action on climate change before it’s too late, the Youth Climate Strike participants took to the streets to make their voices heard. Teen Vogue caught up with attendees at the New York City rally to learn why they’re striking.

  Genevieve Rodgers, 19, Columbia University class of 2022, from Se-wanee, Tennessee

  “It is beyond time for something to be done. This is our future. If we don’t do something about it, no one will.”

  Grace Goldstein, 17, Stuyvesant High School senior, from Manhattan

  “I’m striking for frontline communities and I’m striking for every generation that will follow ours…. We should care about ourselves, we should care about each other, we should care about the fact that climate change is affecting real people and communities right now as we speak. And if it doesn’t affect you now, it affects you next.”

  Shirel Salinas, 16, from Norwalk, Connecticut

  “A bunch of kids from our school decided to come here today because we were tired of not being able to have anyone speak up for us. We decided to come and have the school environmental club and Democratic club get together; we’re all here now.”

  Sophia Murphy, 18, Binghamton University student of environmental studies policy and law, and biology, from Brooklyn

  “I’m a freshman, but I’m taking time off to organize climate activism. I’m striking today so I can have a future and so I can graduate law school and have kids—so I can live to see 85. And so people who are in the position that I am in can have safe, healthy futures and time to live and not be terrified that they’re going to die in the next ten years.”

  Sharon Damian, 14, from Queens

  “We have so many problems, and we can’t just make this one when it’s so easy to control by recycling and making new s
olutions.”

  Nowshin Quader, 16, John Dewey High School, from Brooklyn

  “The world is ending and we have to stop it.”

  Teen Vogue: What do you say to those who say striking is pointless or that this doesn’t matter?

  “We live in this world and it does matter. When we will be dying, you’ll see it will matter,” Nowshin adds.

  Vincent, 15, from Manhattan, and Chloé, 15, from Brooklyn

  Chloé: “I came out to strike today because climate change is gonna really affect our earth, and it’s probably gonna shorten our lives because it’ll shorten the planet’s life, and when that happens we’ll have no place to live. I also think we live in America and people come here to live the American dream, but how are we going to live an American dream, or a worldly dream if we have no world to live on?”

  Vincent: “I’m here because a lot of bad stuff is going to happen to our earth if we don’t do something about it—all sorts of natural disasters. Just look at Cuba and Florida. Why stay at school when I can spread the word with my homies?”

  Nine Teen Climate Activists Fighting for the Future of the Planet

  MARILYN LA JEUNESSE

  July 24, 2019

  From a dedicated episode on the HBO drama Big Little Lies to the policy platforms of 2020 Democratic candidates, the inescapable reality of the climate crisis is at the forefront of everyone’s mind— and for good reason. Since 1880, the global temperature has risen by 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit, with a majority of this warming happening in the past thirty-five years.

  While 1.9 degrees may seem marginal, this increase has led to major changes in climate and negatively impacts the environment. Scientists have reported a nearly 13 percent decrease per decade in the Arctic sea ice minimum, an increase in stronger, more destructive storms, and an increase in extinction and animal endangerment, all as a result of climate change.

  As politicians begin to discuss life-changing legislation like the Green New Deal, another group of environmental activists have begun the fight for immediate change. Taking cues from their predecessors, Generation Z has taken on the enormous task of saving the planet from future destruction—and ensuring they have a future to look forward to.

  Get to know some of the Gen Z environmental activists hoping to change the world, one step at a time.

  1. Greta Thunberg, 16

  A Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Greta Thunberg is the Swedish teen who’s quickly made her way to the forefront of the climate-justice movement. In 2018, Thunberg spoke about the importance of climate activism in front of a group of world leaders at the United Nations.

  “Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago,” Greta said at the summit. “We have to understand what the older generation has dealt to us, what mess they have created that we have to clean up and live with. We have to make our voices heard.”

  Thunberg has since led a number of school strikes globally and has spoken in support of the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations. The teen recently announced that she would speak at the U.N. Climate Summit in New York in September and the COP25 in Santiago, Chile, but not in person. Thunberg doesn’t fly at all due to the “enormous climate impact of aviation.”

  2. Katie Eder, 19

  The executive director of Future Coalition, the largest network of youth-led organizations and youth organizers across the country, Katie Eder organized two climate strikes and aided the formation of the #AllEyesOnJuliana campaign by age 19.

  Eder told Teen Vogue her quest for environmental justice began in sixth grade, after she read Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

  “I was so confused, at that age, how a problem like climate change could be so large and yet it seemed like nothing was being done to address the issue,” she said. “I thought that the only way this could be happening was because no one knew about it, and so for much of middle school I dedicated myself to educating people about climate change.”

  Eder notes that throughout history, young people have been the catalyst for change.

  “This is the revolution that’s going to save our planet,” she said. “Our generation is not going to sit around as our futures are destroyed around us.”

  3. Jamie Margolin, 17

  “Life as we know it is coming to an end thanks to climate change and rapid environmental destruction,” Jamie Margolin told Teen Vogue. “As a young person, I am always asked and expected to plan for my future. How am I supposed to plan and care about my future when my leaders aren’t doing the same, and instead leaving my generation and all future generations with a planet that is inhospitable and impossible to sustain civilization?”

  The cofounder and co-executive director of Zero Hour, a movement dedicated to giving a voice to Generation Z on climate change, Margolin believes the key to all justice is climate justice, telling Teen Vogue that correctly solving climate change means “dismantling all the systems of oppression that caused it in the first place.” The motivation behind her movement is to promote a brighter future, not emphasize a “giant existential crisis.”

  Since founding her movement in 2017, Zero Hour has organized several actions, including lobby days, protests, and becoming a full-fledged organization.

  “We’re not a movement that happened overnight,” Margolin said. And it’s not one that’s disappearing any time soon.

  4. Nadia Nazar, 17

  Cofounder, co-executive, and art director of Zero Hour, Nadia Nazar joined Margolin in bringing this environmental movement to life. Together, the girls helped lead a three-day event that centered on climate change activism in D.C.

  For Nazar, animals first inspired her involvement in the fight for climate justice.

  “When I learned about how species are being pushed to extinction due to climate change, I knew I had to take action,” Nazar told Teen Vogue. A dedicated vegetarian, Nazar believes industrial animal agriculture is an overlooked aspect of the climate movement, explaining that the industry accounts for 14.5 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. “Corporations have corrupted our lifestyles and normalized so many toxic things that not only hurt our planet, but the people and wildlife living on this planet,” she said.

  Since helping to organize the D.C. Youth Climate Strike this year, Nazar has become the Maryland state lead for U.S. Youth Climate Strikes. First up was the Youth Climate Summit that took place from July 12 to 14 in Miami.

  5. Isra Hirsi, 16

  With a deep passion for changing the world, Isra Hirsi first got involved with climate justice in high school, when she had the opportunity to learn more about the earth and its environment. Since then, she has joined fellow teen environmentalist Haven Coleman in co-founding and co-executive directing the U.S. Youth Climate Strike this year. The organization’s first demonstration was held in March and saw thousands of people around the world join in the movement.

  “If we don’t stop the climate crisis soon, those already impacted will be hit even more and generations like mine won’t have a livable future,” Hirsi told Teen Vogue.

  Currently, Hirsi, whose mother is U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), is helping U.S. Youth Climate Strike try to organize a climate debate to help educate of-age voters on presidential candidates’ stances on climate change.

  6. Alexandria Villaseñor, 14

  At fourteen years old, Alexandria Villaseñor has already made a name for herself as a teenage environmentalist. Dedicated to climate activism, the teen is best known for her individual protests outside the U.N. on Fridays, when she skips school to sit on a park bench outside the building. Her strike began as a sign of solidarity with Greta Thun-berg’s call for school strikes in Europe.

  Villaseñor is also involved with the U.S. Youth Climate Strike and is the founder of Earth Uprising, an organization dedicated to fighting climate change.

  Villaseñor told Teen Vogue her activism began shortly after the devastating Camp Fire in California last year. At the time, sh
e was visiting family in Northern California.

  “I have asthma and, for my safety, my family had to send me back to New York City. When I returned, I began to research the connection between climate change and wildfires and learned that wildfires are burning longer and hotter because of climate change,” Villaseñor explained. “I also saw Greta’s COP24 speech, and I thought that world leaders would take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. When they didn’t, I was upset, and it was on the last day of COP24, December 14, that I began my strike at the U.N.”

  This summer, Villaseñor is helping Earth Uprising launch the campaign #ClimateStrikeSummer, where participants spend eight Fridays striking outside various companies that need to address climate change.

  7. Haven Coleman, 13

  Sloths were the main motivator for Haven Coleman’s dive into environmental activism. She told Teen Vogue that a fifth-grade lesson about deforestation was the catalyst for her commitment to ending climate change.

  “I was so mad that we were making the world so sick and hurting so many people, killing so many people. I knew that it was not about saving the sloths, it was about saving all the organisms that live on it,” Coleman told Teen Vogue. “I started educating myself, then my parents, then the kids at different schools by doing presentations; then I started talking to politicians, speaking at rallies and events. I was doing everything I could do.”

  Having participated in climate work since she was ten, Cole-man’s transition to founding her own climate-focused organization was only natural.

  “Millions of people will be displaced, millions will starve, billions of plants, animals, and organisms will go extinct,” she said. “So much pain and suffering for all the things living on this earth—all made by us. This is a fight that will determine life and death for so many; this is a fight that is worth fighting for.”