CLIMATE CRUSADER Greta
Thunberg isn’t powerful in spite of her
youth; the Swedish 17-year-old’s message
resonates so deeply precisely because she
is so young. And she’s not alone. Women
and girls around the world, plenty of
whom haven’t graduated high school yet,
are fighting right alongside her, asking
everyone to do more to stop the growing
threat of a changing planet. Of course,
women have been on the front lines of
environmental activism for decades:
Rachel Carson wrote the groundbreaking
1962 book Silent Spring, which led to
federal pesticide regulation; 2004 Nobel
Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai of
Kenya founded Africa’s Green Belt Move-
ment, responsible for the planting of mil-
lions of trees on the continent. And then
there’s Thunberg herself, the founder of
Fridays for Future, a series of weekly
strikes demanding government action on
climate change. The United Nations esti-
mates that 80 percent of those displaced
by climate-change-related disasters are
women. Young women in particular will
face growing problems associated with a
warming world, as many nations (includ-
ing the U.S.) fail annually to shrink green-
house-gas emissions. Voters-to-be are un-
derstandably scared about the future, but
they’re turning that fear into action.
“The reason so many young people
have found their call to action in the cli-
mate crisis is the narrative has shifted
from ‘It’s affecting all of us and the earth
is going to die’ to something more fo-
cused on the youth,” says Rachel Lee, 16,
the co–head coordinator of Zero Hour
NYC, a youth climate-action collective.
While their specific interests and ap-
proaches may differ, many of these envi-
ronmental activists share a common
goal: government action. Sena Wazer, a
Connecticut native, has been fighting for
cleaner oceans since she was five and her
parents read her a book about whales.
Lately, the 16-year-old, already a college
sophomore, has been organizing rallies
to push her state’s governor, Ned Lamont,
to declare a climate emergency—and
she wants to see other young people put
These five young
people have turned
their fears of a
warming planet into
action and gotten
the world’s attention
in the process
BY CADY DRELL
leaders. I am
confident that
this year we will
turn the
corner. We have
the climate
solutions, and
they come with
endless benefits,
from safer
drinking water to
more bike paths
to new green
jobs. We have
work to do, but
I know we can
do it. We have to.
Because climate
change isn’t
about just polar
bears, remote
locations, or the
distant future.
It’s about us,
our families, our
friends, and our
health—today.
This is the year
we start winning
the battle.
N E X T G E N E R A T I O N
THE
Ayisha Siddiqa, 21
Alexandria Villaseñor, 14
Rachel Lee, 16
Mariana Vargas, 20
Sena Wazer, 16
—GINA MCCARTHY,
president and CEO of NRDC (Natural
Resources Defense Council) and
former administrator of the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)