we have persuaded ourselves we’re living in a
post-truth world, and these kids are saying, ‘We
believe in facts. We believe in science. What you
are telling us is not an alternative reality; it’s a
lie,’” she says. “It’s breathtaking.”
It’s easy to forget that, for all their media
savvy and tactical organizing skills, many of
the climate activists are still just children. Many
struggle with anxiety and depression. Their
attention is riveted on alarming reports—a
2018 UN analysis that concluded carbon emis-
sions must be cut almost in half by 2030 to
hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7
degrees Fahrenheit), and research by the World
Meteorological Organization and the journal
Nature published late last year warning that
temperatures rising beyond that threshold will
lead to worsening hurricanes, floods,
droughts, and wildfires, as well as
agricultural disasters that could
shrink the world’s food supply.
“It’s not hard to find kids who say
they don’t want to have children
because of the chaos they believe the
world will be in,” says Lise Van Sus-
teren, a psychiatrist who has studied
how youth are coping with climate
change. “This is a shaky time for
children. They have seen it for them-
selves. They have seen the fires. They
have seen the storms. They’re not stu-
pid, and they are angry.”
Alexandria Villaseñor, 14, who
has skipped school on Fridays since
December 2018 to strike at UN head-
quarters in New York, and Jamie
Margolin, 18, founder of the group Zero Hour,
candidly described their fears for the future at
a symposium last fall at Twitter’s Washington,
D.C., office. Villaseñor said she’s worried that, by
the time she’s able to vote and help elect leaders
who will act on climate change, it will already be
too late. Margolin, who lives in Seattle, described
bouts of despair that have sent her to bed. “Cli-
mate anxiety is real for me,” she said.
WILL THE MOVEMENT finally succeed? History
argues against it. Social movements waged
against identifiable villains, such as despots,
often succeed. But it’s more difficult to force
societies to make structural changes, which can
consume decades. Remaking the world’s energy
system presents an almost Sisyphean task.
Staff writer Laura Parker covers climate change
and marine environments. Her last feature arti-
cle in the magazine, in May 2019, was about how
microplastics are harming fish in the ocean.“The hallmarks of a movement that is going to
be successful are sustaining it and turning it into
public policy,” says Kathleen Rogers, president of
the Earth Day Network and a longtime environ-
mental activist. “If you don’t turn it into political
power, it will just die.”
In Europe, activists have changed the polit-
ical landscape more easily than they have
in the United States. “In Germany, there has
been a fundamental shift in policy and scale,”
Finkbeiner says. “Every German politician has
understood that elections can no longer be won
without green policies.”
Severn Cullis-Suzuki, now 40, doesn’t fear the
climate movement will fizzle. “What strikes me
now is how much right now feels like where we
were back in 1992. Rio was a success. We got allthe leaders to sign on,” she says. “We’re back at
that same moment. Awareness has been raised.
We now have to translate that into nothing short
of a revolution.”
Cullis-Suzuki, who earned a degree in ecology,
now lives with her husband and two children on
Haida Gwaii, an island cluster off the coast of Brit-
ish Columbia, Canada. She’s working on a doc-
torate in linguistic anthropology, studying the
language and culture of the Haida, an indigenous
people whose stewardship of their environment
has enabled them to endure for more than 10,000
years. She pauses. Does she need to say more? j‘IT IS INCREDIBLE THAT
KINDERGARTNERS
CAN GRASP THIS
AS A PROBLEM
AND POLITICIANS CAN’T.’
DELANEY REYNOLDSFIGHTING FOR THEIR FUTURE 79