No Planet B

by Lucy Diavolo

  September 6, 2019, Two weeks until the Youth Climate Strike

  “I sure wasn’t doing that when I was their age,” a photographer says. On the sidewalk, kids are making their protest signs. Amanda Cabrera, an eight-year-old climate striker who lives in New York City, was writing climate justice slogans on her arms, but needed help from a friend because she wasn’t quite sure how to spell “planet.”

  “[The climate crisis] makes me feel angry because Earth is giving us life but we aren’t giving it life,” Amanda tells Teen Vogue. “We need the planet but the planet doesn’t need us.”

  She attends the strike that week with her friend, nine-year-old Aaron Thomases. “[I’ve been an activist] since the COP24, when my mom showed me the video of Greta Thunberg speaking,” Aaron says. “I want other kids to know [the climate emergency] is real, it’s happening, and if you want to be a superhero, now is your chance.”

  After an impromptu press conference next to Alexandria’s bench, where Greta fielded questions from reporters in multiple languages, the group moves to a nearby park. Even in New York, we can feel ripples from Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm that decimated the Bahamas. Wind blows signs across the street and inverts umbrellas in the rain. Still, the strikers hold strong.

  One student protestor talks about going to school for weeks without power after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Another, eighteen-year-old Shiv Soin, tells the crowd he had gotten ill from drought and sandstorms while visiting India, and he later realized this was yet another symptom of the climate emergency. And Clarabell Moses, a teen activist visiting New York from California, talked about her hometown of Paradise— the very same town where wildfires had given Alexandria Villaseñor an asthma attack and also launched Clarabell’s fight for climate justice.

  “My entire childhood home burned to the ground,” she says. “I watched the people around me lose their homes, loved ones, and even their lives. Civil disobedience like this is important because when we disrupt the system, we break it down and build it back up better than before.”

  “At the forefront of every revolution has been young people,” adds Ayisha Sidiqqa, a New York City student. “From the Greensboro sit-ins to the anti-Vietnam War protests, to the movement happening right now in Hong Kong—when students speak together, the whole world listens.”

  September 19, 2019, One day before the Youth Climate Strike

  The Amazon rainforest is burning. Time is running out.

  According to a recent count, more than ninety-three thousand fires were decimating the Amazon—burning more than one soccer field per minute, according to the INPE, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research.

  Forest fires are in fact worsened by the climate crisis, but these fires in particular are man-made. And the government is doing little to stop them.

  As kids around the world gear up for the Youth Climate Strike Friday, Brazil’s environmental minister awaits a meeting with climate change deniers, and the president of the country actively fights international efforts to extinguish the blaze.

  “It didn’t catch fire, it was set on fire by [those] who want to burn it down for agriculture and to make money,” seventeen-year-old climate activist Jamie Margolin, founder of Zero Hour, tells Teen Vogue ahead of the September 19 meeting. The Washington State native has also participated in the school strikes—and hers specifically focus on the Amazon rainforest, often called “the lungs of the planet.”

  “If we lose that, there’s no hope,” Jamie says.

  The Amazon rainforest is a carbon sink. This means it drains carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas associated with global warming, from the atmosphere. The gas accumulates in trees over time, meaning that when the Amazon burns those gases are suddenly released back into the atmosphere.

  “It’s a war on nature,” Jamie says. “It’s very targeted, purposeful violence against … our Earth.”

  She also says fighting the climate emergency means fighting the root causes: excessive capitalism, colonialism, and racism. It’s a sentiment not lost on her friend and fellow activist David, 19, of Medellín, Colombia, who is on the front lines of this fight. He asked that his full name not be used because he says environmental activists like him are frequently targeted by paramilitary groups and guerrilla forces in Latin America.

  “From the windows of my house, I can see the mountains burn,” David tells Teen Vogue. This past year, Colombia was ravaged by fires, flooding, and crop failure, yet another symptom of the climate emergency.

  “[The fires in the Amazon] make me feel like this strike is more necessary than ever,” Jamie says. “While mass public opinion calls for climate action, those at the top profit from mass destruction.”

  Still, Jamie is hopeful. “There’s only so long those in power can get away with going against the common good and the will of the people,” she says. “The tables will turn starting on September 20.”

  I Protested for the Green New Deal at Mitch McConnell’s Office. Here’s Why.

  DESTINE GRIGSBY

  February 27, 2019

  I never imagined I would sleep on the sidewalk outside my senator’s office. But on February 21 that is exactly what I and ten other people did. We were there to demand that my senator, Mitch McConnell (R-KY),come, look us in the eyes, and listen to the young Kentuckians who are demanding a Green New Deal. Sadly, it was easier to imagine McConnell ignoring us than listening to us.

  In reality, far too many people in my state do not have clean water, suffer from black lung disease, and feel they have no economic future. Many of these public health hazards are linked to our state’s relationship with the fossil fuel industry, which has polluted our environment and people’s bodies, and left many with no options after a lot of jobs the industry created have dried up.

  Despite the turmoil the fossil fuel industry has caused in Kentucky, McConnell has continued to accept a combined millions of dollars from the industry during his time in the Senate. I wonder if it weighs on him that some of his constituents go without clean water, clean air, and sustainable jobs, while he continues to collect money for his office. If McConnell cares about Kentucky coal miners so much, why has he failed year after year to pass federal bills that would repair coal mines, support disability for those with black lung disease, and ensure that miners have pensions? Why did he try to sell us on reducing EPA limitations on coal when analysts said these rollbacks would have little positive economic impact, which was McConnell’s reason for supporting them?

  Last week, I slept outside McConnell’s office because Kentuckians shouldn’t suffer. I have seen how climate change and fossil fuel industries hurt people in my home state. Across Kentucky, from coal-ash spills in eastern Kentucky to the urban heat island effect in Louisville, people have been used as pawns by politicians and the fossil fuel companies that line their pockets. Kentucky needs a Green New Deal to shift our state’s economy away from coal, ensure everyone the right to clean air and water, and retain the next generation of workers who are now suffering due to a lack of jobs.

  I knew that President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement in June 2017 would bring nothing but darkness to my state. It was at that moment, at sixteen years old, that I joined the Sunrise Movement, a group of young people organizing to make climate change an urgent political priority by planning a rally in Louisville to protest Trump’s decision. I had never done anything like that before. I rushed to mobilize young people in my city, and together we held one of the first rallies led solely by high schoolers that I had ever seen.

  On the day of the rally, it was pouring rain, but more than thirty young people were standing strong outside Metro Hall. We were united, singing, all holding up painted fists. We each wore a red bandana reading “For Our Future.” It may not have been the most organized rally, but it certainly had energy: we marched, chanted, and sang for hours in the rain. Three local news stations covered our actions, and the city got to see that young people are ready to fight.
For the first time, I understood that despite being high schoolers, despite not being old enough to vote, young people had the power to change the world.

  I didn’t know then that our rally would inspire young Kentuckians to keep mobilizing. But last December, more than seventy-five of us joined the Sunrise Movement in Washington, D.C., to support the Green New Deal, attracting the attention of national journalists. Within a week of making calls and posts and sending texts, we were able to fill up a bus of students to share their stories in D.C.; in fact, Kentucky brought more people to the action than any other state in attendance.

  For us, the fight against climate change is common sense. As Kentuckians, we know that a Green New Deal can create millions of good jobs guarantee clean water, clean air, and a hopeful future for our impoverished state. Despite our conservative government and the struggles we face, Kentuckians have shown up en masse, ready to fight.

  A few weeks ago, Senator McConnell announced that he would put the Green New Deal resolution to a vote in the Senate. This is not because he supports the resolution—he’s rushing it to a vote so that he can crush our momentum.

  So, on Monday, February 18, we went to McConnell’s Louisville office and demanded a meeting with him, that he meet us face-to-face and admit that he thinks the millions from fossil fuel industries are more important than my generation’s future. We were denied a meeting with McConnell and physically blocked from entering his actual office. I was infuriated. This was during Senate recess, but he didn’t even have the decency to speak with young Kentuckians who showed up at his door, the same constituents who will suffer the most from climate change.

  Little did he know, that was just the beginning.

  Every day of that week we stood outside McConnell’s office demanding a meeting, showing him that we will no longer be ignored. On Wednesday, young people with the Kentucky Student Environmental Coalition went to his office in Frankfort; Thursday was the day I camped outside overnight with ten others, where it was terribly cold and uncomfortable sleeping on concrete; on Friday, I walked out of school and rallied with students who had walked out of high schools and college classes at the University of Louisville.

  On Monday, February 25, a group of fifteen young Kentuckians traveled to Washington, D.C., and again demanded that McConnell listen to us.

  In the capital, hundreds of young people joined us in the halls of McConnell’s office building on Capitol Hill. Cameras from cable news stations across the country also crowded the hall outside McConnell’s office. I led the group into the office carrying a box containing more than one hundred thousand signatures from people around the country who want a Green New Deal. According to a recent poll, 80 percent of the public supports most of the measures in the resolution.

  Though we met with his office’s Kentucky director, we still wanted to face Senator McConnell in person. When I heard he wasn’t in his office, I wasn’t surprised. I think McConnell doesn’t have the courage to admit that he prioritizes the rich over our lives. Stories of pain and suffering in Kentucky, especially from kids, often go unheard. But that day, in his office, many Sunrise members were moved to tears as we shared our stories to show everyone why the Green New Deal is the only way to fight climate change, poverty, and pollution in Kentucky.

  My adrenaline was pumping. Bright camera lights beamed down on us. Police flooded the hallway, warning that they would arrest us. After an hour of sharing stories and singing songs in McConnell’s office, forty-two young people were taken into custody and, for the first time in a while, I felt hopeful. People I didn’t know were willing to get arrested to stand up for me and my state. This was the first time I understood that Kentucky was not alone in this fight.

  Afterward, those of us who hadn’t been arrested rallied outside. I listened to a fellow classmate, Oli, tell a story about why she is fighting for the Green New Deal. She talked about her family in the Philippines and those who can’t fight for themselves. She talked about how scared she is at the thought of her mother and father not being physically able to escape the next typhoon, which may pummel the Philippines harder now because of warmer ocean waters. When I first met Oli, she was shy and afraid of public speaking. I almost didn’t recognize the person in front of me raising her voice outside McConnell’s office, through tears, demanding he protect her family.

  These rallies aren’t just about chanting and being on the news. They are about us defending our right to be heard and our right to a home, to clean air and water, and to a livable future. Listening to Oli tell such an emotional and dire story cut through the noise and brought me back to earth. She reminded me that if we let McConnell play games with our future and do nothing, we lose. We all lose. But, if we fight back, if we share our stories, we can build a bigger movement and win.

  Five Youth-Led Climate Justice Groups Helping to Save the Environment

  MAIA WIKLER

  March 28, 2019

  We’ve seen youth rising to the call and become climate activists over the last year, and that’s largely because the stakes have never been higher.

  Young people around the world are demanding urgent action to address the ongoing climate change crisis, and are ramping up efforts. Greta Thunberg’s call to action at the United Nations climate change summit, which led to a Nobel Peace Prize nomination, Sunrise pushing forward the Green New Deal, and the ongoing school strikes around the world—including one held on March 15—have continued to show this generation’s commitment to the cause.

  These visionary leaders are creating radical change, fast. Hope not only exists in their bold and unapologetic approach but also in the sheer size of this generation. The Pew Research Center projected that millennials are set to surpass baby boomers in population size in 2019 and represent nearly 40 percent of the electorate by 2020, according to Center for American Progress.

  To honor their efforts, Teen Vogue spoke with five youth-led climate justice groups for a glimpse into the many ways young people can get involved.

  1. SustainUS

  While politicians congratulate themselves for addressing the climate crisis with the Paris Climate Agreement, the fossil industry is still able to wield access and power in the negotiating spaces at the U.N. Through symbolic and direct actions, SustainUS brings youth to international negotiations to dismantle the political elite’s narrative and demand stronger, urgent action.

  Most recently, SustainUS sent youth delegates to the World Bank meetings in Bali, Indonesia, to speak out on fossil fuel corruption. In 2017, the group organized an action that went viral when youth delegates disrupted the White House panel promoting fossil fuels at the U.N. climate change conference in Bonn, Germany.

  Daniel Jubelirer, COP24 delegation leader for the annual United Nations climate conference, spoke to Teen Vogue about the key strategy and role of SustainUS. “We wield storytelling as a weapon against complacency. We are bringing young people who have a lot of lived experience with injustice from climate impacts and racial injustice,” he said.

  Phillip Brown, a twenty-year-old queer immigrant from Jamaica and SustainUS COP24 youth delegate tells Teen Vogue, “My presence there was a tangible form of reparation in the sense that Black and brown people don’t have the resources to make it into these spaces, even though we are some of the most impacted by climate crises. By showing up in these international spaces, I am reclaiming what’s been taken from us for centuries, our right to take up space and voice our demands for solutions that center the needs of our most vulnerable communities.”

  2. Those leading lawsuits in defense of the climate

  Youth around the world are using litigation to hold governments accountable to stop climate change and address environmental injustice.

  In the U.S., twenty-one young plaintiffs are suing the U.S. government for violating constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property by allowing and promoting the use of fossil fuels despite knowing they are directly causing the climate crisis.

  In Canada, youth recently l
aunched a class-action lawsuit in Quebec arguing that the government is violating the rights of young people by failing to take urgent climate action.

  “People under thirty-five will be most affected, we will be here to experience the worst impacts of climate change. It might take ten years to get a final decision from the court but this lawsuit sends a clear signal to all governments that they need to take climate change seriously,” Catherine Gauthier, executive director of ENvironnement JEUnesse and the representative plaintiff in the case, tells Teen Vogue.

  3. Uplift

  Vast areas of the Southwest have been dubbed “energy sacrifice zones,” which means millions of acres of federal land are being used and polluted for energy extraction. The Southwest is already experiencing some of the most dire impacts of climate change with massive heat waves, megadroughts, and rapidly diminishing water sources. Uplift, an award-winning collective of youth grassroots leaders, is tackling this ongoing crisis.

  Brooke Larsen, executive coordinator of Uplift, tells Teen Vogue that the organization is unique because they center voices from the front lines. “We take on a radical stance,” she says, focusing on colonialism and capitalism as the group builds alliances with different groups in the struggle against climate change.

  Uplift strives to be a connective force for the region by organizing an annual three-day outdoor climate convergence on the Colorado Plateau, training youth leaders in grassroots organizing skills, and using storytelling to amplify marginalized voices across the Southwest. Georgie, a young Hopi woman and Uplift organizer, tells Teen Vogue that her community’s core values are “from the Earth in reciprocity, respect.”

  “I grew up with that way of living. Here in Hopi, we have Peabody Coal. There is mining, oil, and gas all in our backyards, on our sacred lands. Uplift creates a political space that brings people together from all over the Southwest, connected by the fact that we are all affected one way or another.”