Hello Giggles - Morgan Noll
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In recent years, the
climate change conversation has advanced beyond the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” catchphrase.
Though
individual lifestyle changes
can have a positive impact over time, the youth activists at the
forefront of the climate movement aren’t leading climate strikes
in
order to get the everyday individual to switch to reusable straws.
They’re showing up with demands for government officials and
policymakers to put people over profit, raise their voices to ask
leaders to care about the future of the planet, and communicate a common
message: We’re running out of time.
Zero Hour,
an education-focused youth climate and environmental justice movement,
has a running countdown on the homepage of its site. Less than nine
years and 253 days remain on the clock.
That’s how much time is left
before the worst impacts of climate change will be irreversible,
according to a
2018 special report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Though so much of the
climate movement is made up of children and teenaged activists who may not even be eligible to vote yet, they’re pushing for immediate government action because of this sense of urgency.
“A lot of us feel like we have no choice, because we feel like unless we do it, who else is gonna do it?” says
Ivy Jaguzny, the 18-year-old press lead for Zero Hour.
If you’re not
immersed in the movement, however, the information can be daunting—and
it can be hard to figure out exactly what you can do. So we asked
climate activists to break down the most important climate justice
policies, how to check candidates on their environmental agendas, and
how to join the movement.
Their answers boiled
down to two main initiatives: getting the Green New Deal worked into the
country’s infrastructure and getting fossil fuels out.
So, what is the Green New Deal and why does it matter?
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The idea of a “Green New Deal” has been around for a while.
Investopedia reports that Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman coined the term in a
New York Times
column in January 2007, where he argued for a transition away from
fossil fuels and toward clean, renewable energy through government
action.
The name is a reference to former President Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s domestic programs—
the New Deal—which he designed as a response to the Great Depression.
Since the idea was
first conceived, the Green New Deal has become somewhat of an umbrella
term for environmental policies, with various politicians adding
interpretations of the deal to their platforms. In recent years,
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has brought widespread attention
to the Green New Deal by putting it at the center of her platform,
introducing a policy package in Congress in February 2019.
The
14-page document
calls for a “10-year national mobilization” plan that aims to rework
current U.S. infrastructure in order to transition to 100% clean and
renewable energy. Those 10 years weren’t selected at random: The plan is
a direct response to that 2018 report mentioned above, and it’s a
proposed answer for beating the clock—and avoiding the point of no
return.
As
The New York Times
reports, the Green New Deal also “calls on the federal government to
dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions; create high-paying jobs;
ensure that clean air, clean water, and healthy food are basic human
rights; and end all forms of oppression.”
The Green New Deal is central to the platform of
Sunrise Movement,
a youth-powered organization dedicated to fighting climate change and
creating “millions of good jobs in the process,” as its website reads.
Ritwik Tati,
a 16-year-old coordinator for the South Jersey hub of Sunrise Movement,
says the group is dedicated to both advocating for and educating people
on the policy package.
He likes to explain, however, that the Green New
Deal is a vision rather than a specific piece of legislation.
“[At Sunrise
Movement,] we’re not necessarily having people unpack what the Green New
Deal specifically is and what each climate policy is, but making them
understand that we need an aggressive climate solution,” Tati says.
Any climate
legislation that aligns with the values of the Green New Deal can be
considered a part of it, Tati says. Those values include things like
efforts to provide living wages for workers and protect marginalized
communities, in addition to more climate-specific policies like bans on
fossil fuels and fracking.
Climate activists like Tati also emphasize how important it is to understand climate change as an intersectional issue, one that is as connected to systemic racism as it is the environment.
At Zero
Hour, Jaguzny says that they see the current coronavirus (COVID-19)
pandemic as somewhat of a “dress rehearsal,” showing all of the issues
the climate crisis will exacerbate if it’s not addressed.
When we talk
about the climate crisis, Jaguzny says, “we don’t talk about the people
[who] are actually being hurt by this, which is working people, Black
and Brown people, Indigenous people, [and] the same people [who] are
being [disproportionately] affected by COVID-19.”
Like the current
pandemic, Jaguzny says the climate crisis is going to put pressure on
our infrastructure and healthcare system and that, if we’re not
prepared, “the people [who] are most vulnerable in this country are
going to be really negatively impacted.”
She believes that implementing
the Green New Deal is the way to be prepared because of how it addresses
the underlying systems of oppression that cause and perpetuate the
crisis.
One way the Green New
Deal does this is in how it plans for a just transition. The plan
acknowledges the fact that many workers will lose their jobs if fossil
fuel industries are taken down.
So, a just transition makes sure that
these workers—many of whom are from low-income, marginalized
communities—aren’t simply laid off and ignored, but are supplied with
the training and resources to access jobs in the clean energy industry.
The plan also pushes for those jobs to offer benefits and living wages.
If implemented,
climate activists believe the Green New Deal could provide a holistic
approach to reversing the climate crisis. But there’s one major thing
standing in its way.
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“The biggest thing blocking a Green New Deal is the investment in fossil fuels,” Jaguzny says.
The environmentalism
movement has long advocated for a ban on fossil fuels due to their
negative impact on the environment.
When fossil fuels are burned, they
release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the environment,
making them a primary contributor to global warming and climate change,
according to
National Geographic.
To make matters worse, fossil fuel companies are significant
stakeholders in the climate conversation, which can halt any large-scale
progress.
Climate activist
Ayisha Siddiqa
has seen this dynamic play out firsthand. Siddiqa was one of the lead
organizers of the September 20th New York City Climate Strike, which
attracted 250,000 people, according to
Vox. “
We did all of our homework,” she says. “Me and my peers worked day in, day out for three entire months planning.”
At the age of 21,
Siddiqa says she’s learned things that people usually learn in their
late thirties, things like: how to get a permit for an event, how to
write a press release, how to lobby. She and her peers put in tireless
work to gain momentum for the protests and the climate movement. Then, a
few days later, the U.N. Climate Action Summit happened.
“We came in
with packets of information that we wanted to say, and we were met with
Instagram influencers, people teaching us how to use Photoshop and Adobe
Flash Player at the U.N. And policy was not even spoken about,” Siddiqa
says.
The same thing happened a few months later at
COP25,
the 25th United Nations Climate Change Conference. Climate activists
showed up, ready to talk policy, and they were shut out from having
serious conversations. And Siddiqa has a pretty a good idea for why this
happened: COP25 was sponsored by some of Spain’s biggest greenhouse gas
polluters and fossil fuel companies.
“If you can
understand what’s happening, it’s actually very scary,” Siddiqa says.
“The body of government, the place where decisions are supposed to be
made, are being sponsored by fossil fuels. How in the world are you
supposed to expect actual change if the same people responsible for
causing the damage are [controlling the decision-making]?”
The short answer? You can’t. That’s why Siddiqa co-founded
Polluters Out,
an organization fighting for a conflict of interest policy that would
remove the influence of the fossil fuel industry from the places where
climate decisions are made.
So, what can you do to support these movements?
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For starters, you can join them.
Polluters Out,
Sunrise Movement, and
Zero Hour all have various options on their site for those who are interested in taking action to fight climate change.
Extinction Rebellion,
350.org, and
Fridays For Future are more groups with goals to fight the climate crisis.
Siddiqa also urges people to sign Polluters Out’s
petition,
which demands that “Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary to the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), refuse
funding from fossil fuel corporations for COP26.”
On a more local level, Tati recommends that people focus on getting their elected officials to sign the
No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge.
The pledge is intended to get politicians to refuse to take any
contributions over $200 from oil, gas, and coal industry executives,
lobbyists, or PACs.
Jaguzny also wants to
see a commitment from the government to stop bailing out fossil fuel
companies when they’re in debt and to start holding them accountable.
“
Stop
giving these companies tax breaks. Stop allowing them to destroy
communities and not pay for it,” she says. “The effects of fossil fuels
are local, like there are local communities all over the United States
that are being hurt by these companies and the companies don’t do
anything. They just turn away.
“
So Jaguzny’s advice
for individuals is to help raise awareness about how these companies are
affecting their local communities and to put the pressure on their
local governments to divest from fossil fuels.
When it comes to
selecting a candidate to endorse or vote for, Tati says that Sunrise
Movement looks for “climate champions,” candidates who support the Green
New Deal and have shown a commitment to climate legislation in the
past.
This election cycle, the movement
has endorsed Senate candidates
like Kentucky State Representative Charles Booker, former Speaker of
the Colorado House of Representatives Andrew Romanoff, and Senator Ed
Markey (who sponsored the Green New Deal alongside AOC).
As far as the presidential election goes, with Bernie Sanders now out of the race, Tati says, “
I
think it’s important that we see that a [Joe] Biden presidency is
exponentially better than a Trump presidency, even if it doesn’t align
with the goals of the climate movement.”
Biden doesn’t see that as top
priority, however./
“Focusing on
congressional elections and state legislature elections [are] more
important because we may have a Democratic president in office, but none
of this progressive policy can be passed without a Congress that is
more progressive and is majority Democrat,” Tati says.
Below is a checklist of what Tati and Jaguzny believe a climate champion candidate should look like.
A climate champion candidate:
1. Supports the Green New Deal
Though there is some
room for interpretation with the Green New Deal, Tati says it’s
important not to compromise for a less aggressive version.
This would be
one that involves changes, like allowing for a more lenient timeline on
reducing emissions,
or one that compromises any of the
fundamental values which prioritize people over profit.
For example,
Tati explains that some Democrats (like
Nancy Pelosi and
Biden) are advocating for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, which, according to the IPCC’s timeline, will be too late.
2. Supports a ban on fracking and divestment from fossil fuels
Fracking, short for
hydraulic fracturing, is a method of extracting natural gas and oil by
fracturing the earth with pressurized liquid.
Though some argue that
fracking natural gas is a cleaner option than drilling for oil or coal,
climate activists argue that the health risks far outweigh any
comparative benefits.
According to
Greenpeace,
a non-governmental environmental organization, fracking can cause a
serious threat to local water resources, and some of the chemicals used
in the process have been identified as cancer-causing contaminants.
A
2017 study published in the journal
Science Advances also found that infants born within about two miles of fracking sites are more likely to suffer from poor health.
As far as divestment from fossil fuels goes, Jaguzny wants to see candidates “
acknowledging
that the era of fossil fuels is ending and acknowledging that we really
cannot get anywhere if we’re still hanging onto fossil fuels.”
3. Supports an economy that is driven by small businesses and localized production
“One thing that
COVID-19 has made abundantly clear is that having these huge
multinational corporations running the show isn’t economically
sustainable, and as soon as any pressure is applied it totally falls
apart in a crisis,” Jaguzny says.
She argues that an economy driven by
local businesses is far more sustainable, since there’s no shipping
overseas or exploitation of workers in other countries.
4. Supports universal healthcare
“Climate change is a
healthcare issue,” Tati asserts. “And if we don’t have Medicare for all,
the Green New Deal won’t be able to sustain itself.”
The Environmental Protection Agency put out an
analysis in 2017
of the impacts of climate change on human health. The findings showed
correlations with medical issues like heatstroke, respiratory illness,
and an increased risk of the spread of disease.
“The severity of these
health risks will depend on the ability of public health and safety
systems to address or prepare for these changing threats, as well as
factors such as an individual’s behavior, age, gender, and economic
status,” the report reads.
5. Shows a willingness to pay for the demands of the Green New Deal
Jaguzny
says she’s heard countless legislators tell her, “We can’t pay for your
demands.” Based on things like the recent federal relief package and
other ways she’s seen the government pull together resources, she says,
“We see that and we kind of call bullshit.”
AOC has made it clear
that the Green New Deal will be expensive, but she argues that the
economic benefits will outweigh the costs. Though the specific costs of
the policy package aren’t entirely clear, some evaluations have aligned
with AOC’s argument.
For example, the Green New Deal advocates for a
smart power grid for the entire country. A
2011 study
by the Electric Power Research Institute found that this could cost as
much as $476 billion, but it could lead to $2 trillion in benefits.
6. Uplifts marginalized voices
Tati emphasizes the
importance of endorsing a candidate who gives voice to underrepresented
communities, especially Indigenous communities.
“Not only did we steal
land that wasn’t rightfully ours” from them, Tati says, but Indigenous
communities have also historically shown a deeper connection with the
environment.
“W
e need to make sure that their voices are represented and that they have a stake in this.”
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