We are running out of time to take action on climate change, says Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
In a speech titled “Two Years to Save the World,” Stiell emphasized that governments, development banks and business leaders must take steps to avert much more serious impacts of the climate crisis within that time frame, reported Reuters.
“For those who say that climate change is only one of many priorities, like ending poverty, ending hunger, ending pandemics, or improving education, I simply say this: none of these crucial tasks — indeed none of the Sustainable Development Goals — will be possible unless we get the climate crisis under control,” Stiell said in the speech, delivered at London thinktank Chatham House.
“As of today, national climate plans — called Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs — in aggregate will barely cut emissions at all by 2030,” Stiell said. “We still have a chance to make greenhouse gas emissions tumble, with a new generation of national climate plans. But we need these stronger plans, now. And while every country must submit a new plan, the reality is G20 emissions are around 80% of global emissions.”
The focus of the UN COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, will be for nations to come up with new climate finance goals to support developing countries in tackling climate change and making the transition away from fossil fuels, Reuters reported.
“A quantum leap this year in climate finance is both essential and entirely achievable. Every day, finance ministers, CEOs, investors, and development bankers direct trillions of dollars. It’s time to shift those dollars from the energy and infrastructure of the past, towards that of a cleaner, more resilient future… And to ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable countries benefit,” Stiell said at Chatham House.
The climate chief recommended debt relief, shipping emissions taxes, less expensive financing for more impoverished countries and International Monetary Fund and World Bank reforms be used to raise more funds for climate finance, reported Reuters.
“The transformative potential of bold climate action — in tandem with steps to advance gender equality — is one of the fastest ways to move away from business as usual,” Stiell said in the speech. “In fact, business-as-usual will further entrench the gross inequalities between the world’s richest and poorest countries and communities that unchecked climate impacts are making much worse.”
“To start curing this global cancer of inequality, we need to enable bold new national climate plans by all nations that protect people, boost jobs and drive inclusive economic growth. And we need them by early next year,” Stiell added.
Stiell stressed that the necessary changes don’t just sit with governments and lawmakers, but with individuals everywhere.
“A recent survey by Gallup of 130,000 people in 125 countries found that 89% want stronger climate action by governments. Yet too often we’re seeing signs of climate action slipping down cabinet agendas,” Stiell said. “The only surefire way to get climate up the cabinet agenda is if enough people raise their voices. So my final message today is for people everywhere. Every voice matters. Yours have never been more important. If you want bolder climate action, now is the time to make yours count.”
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued the first-ever nationwide, legally enforceable limits on harmful per- polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — known as “forever chemicals” — in drinking water.
The rule is the biggest leap so far in EPA’s PFAS Strategic Roadmap and will lower exposure to the toxic substances for roughly 100 million people, a press release from EPA said.
“Drinking water contaminated with PFAS has plagued communities across this country for too long,” said Michael S. Regan, EPA administrator, in the press release. “Our PFAS Strategic Roadmap marshals the full breadth of EPA’s authority and resources to protect people from these harmful forever chemicals. Today, I am proud to finalize this critical piece of our Roadmap, and in doing so, save thousands of lives and help ensure our children grow up healthier.”
PFAS exposure has been associated with cancer, heart and liver disease and damage to the development and immune systems of children and infants. The new rules will lead to tens of thousands of fewer related health issues while preventing thousands of fatalities.
EPA is making funding available to implement the new rule through the Biden-Harris administration’s Investing in America agenda. Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, nearly $1 billion will be accessible to assist states and territories with carrying out testing for PFAS, public water system treatment and help for private well owners with addressing contamination from forever chemicals. A total of $9 billion is being invested to assist communities with PFAS and other contaminants in drinking water, as well as $12 billion for general improvements to drinking water.
Last year, a study by the U.S. Geological Survey found PFAS in almost half of tap water samples in the country.
“The first national drinking water standards for PFAS marks a significant step towards delivering on the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to advancing environmental justice, protecting communities, and securing clean water for people across the country,” said Brenda Mallory, White House Council on Environmental Quality chair, in the press release.
The new rule establishes limits for PFOA, PFNA, PFOS, PFHxS and HFPO-DA — known as “GenX Chemicals.”
“For PFOA and PFOS, EPA is setting a Maximum Contaminant Level Goal, a non-enforceable health-based goal, at zero. This reflects the latest science showing that there is no level of exposure to these contaminants without risk of health impacts, including certain cancers,” the press release said.
For each of PFOS and PFOA, the enforceable maximum levels will be four parts per trillion (ppt).
“This standard will reduce exposure from these PFAS in our drinking water to the lowest levels that are feasible for effective implementation,” according to the press release.
Maximum levels for PFHxS, PFNA and GenX Chemicals will be 10 ppt.
The EPA rule also limits mixtures of two or more of PFNA, PFBS, PFHxS and GenX chemicals.
“We learned about GenX and other PFAS in our tap water six years ago. I raised my children on this water and watched loved ones suffer from rare or recurrent cancers. No one should ever worry if their tap water will make them sick or give them cancer,” said Emily Donovan, Clean Cape Fear co-founder. “We will keep fighting until all exposures to PFAS end and the chemical companies responsible for business-related human rights abuses are held fully accountable.”
Approximately six to 10 percent of the public drinking water systems — 66,000 of them — subject to the new rule may need to take steps to reduce PFAS in order to meet the new standards. Public water systems will have three years to finish their initial monitoring for forever chemicals. Meanwhile, they will be required to inform the public of PFAS levels in their drinking water. When PFAS is detected at levels in excess of the standards, solutions must be implemented within five years.
“The new limits in this rule are achievable using a range of available technologies and approaches including granular activated carbon, reverse osmosis, and ion exchange systems,” the press release said. “For example, the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, serving Wilmington, NC — one of the communities most heavily impacted by PFAS contamination — has effectively deployed a granular activated carbon system to remove PFAS regulated by this rule. Drinking water systems will have flexibility to determine the best solution for their community.”
EPA will host informational webinars available to the public in the coming weeks. Information is available on the PFAS drinking water regulation website.
“For decades, the American people have been exposed to the family of incredibly toxic ‘forever chemicals’ known as PFAS with no protection from their government. Those chemicals now contaminate virtually all Americans from birth. That’s because for generations, PFAS chemicals slid off of every federal environmental law like a fried egg off a Teflon pan,” said Ken Cook, president and co-founder of Environmental Working Group, in the press release. “There is much work yet to be done to end PFAS pollution.”
Examples of how PFAS enter the environment and water, from a U.S. GAO report published in 2021. U.S. Government Accountability Office
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized clean air standards that will limit the toxic pollutants released by chemical plants. According to the agency, the new standards will reduce the number of people with increased cancer risks in vulnerable communities near these chemical plants by 96%.
The rule sets out to limit toxic air pollution, including from ethylene oxide and chloroprene. EPA announced that these clean air standards are expected to reduce toxic air pollution from chemical plants by 6,200 tons each year and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by 23,700 tons annually.
“This is a game changer any way you look at it,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said at a press event, as reported by NPR. “This is a game changer for the health. It’s a game changer for the prosperity. It’s a game changer for children in these communities nationwide.”
The standards are slated to reduce ethylene oxide and chloroprene emissions from chemical plant processes and equipment by about 80%. Other toxic pollutants covered by the new rule include benzene, 1,3-butadiene, ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride.
The rule will cover about 200 plants, most of which are in Louisiana and Texas, known for making synthetic organic chemicals, polymers and resins. In particular, the rule is expected to impact the Denka Performance Elastomer plant in LaPlace, Louisiana. As The Associated Press reported, this facility is the largest source of chloroprene emissions in the U.S.
“Today marks a victory in the pursuit for environmental justice, with the final rule poised to significantly reduce the toxic air pollution that harms communities in Texas’s Gulf Coast, Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, and throughout the U.S.,” Patrice Simms, Earthjustice vice president for healthy communities, said in a statement. “Setting protective air standards for over 200 chemical plants and requiring fenceline monitoring for some of the most toxic emissions shows a commitment to protecting public health. We look forward to the EPA’s swift implementation and rigorous enforcement of this critical rule.”
As part of the new standards, the EPA will also require fenceline monitoring of the toxic pollutants. Synthetic organic chemical plants will have a two-year deadline to implement their fenceline monitoring programs, while facilities manufacturing neoprene will have 90 days to begin fenceline monitoring for chloroprene emissions.
The public will be able to access the data from the monitoring programs via WebFIRE, a tool made available by the EPA.
Humans have an enormous impact on planet Earth, but from both an animal welfare and an environmental perspective, perhaps nothing is more important than our diets.
In 2022, more than 82 billion livestock animals were slaughtered for meat, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United States, with the majority of those animals being factory farmed. In addition to enormous animal welfare implications, the practice of farming animals is estimated to account for somewhere between 11% and 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
All things considered, what is the most ethical diet? According to utilitarian moral philosopher Peter Singer, it’s one that includes zero — or at least very few — animal products.
Singer is among the most influential living philosophers and is widely credited for putting animal ethics on the map with his controversial 1975 book, Animal Liberation. Because most nonhuman animals have the capacity to suffer, Singer argues, we should not exploit their suffering for our own good, particularly with the horrific conditions of practices like factory farming.
More recently, he published an extensively revised version, Animal Liberation Now, which brings to light the brutal living conditions for tens of billions of animals today.
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Singer and discussing speciesism, the conditions of factory farming and how to have an ethical diet.
You’re widely regarded as the father of the animal rights, or as you may prefer, the animal liberation movement. Can you make your case for the pursuit of animal liberation?
The case for the animal liberation movement is that to disregard or discard the interests of beings because they’re not members of our species is indefensible. I use the term “speciesism” to describe that, and that is intended to make the parallel between other -isms such as racism and sexism that most people — certainly I hope the audience that I’m addressing — reject and say that although the analogy is obviously not complete, in all of these cases there’s been a dominant group which has developed an ideology to enable it to justify using a group that it dominates. In one case, nonwhites, in another case, women, and then in this case, nonhumans. To justify using that group for its own purposes in ways that are clearly very harmful to the group, but somewhat beneficial to the dominant group.
So I think we ought to be able to see that the difference in species is not relevant to how bad it is when a being is suffering, if the being is capable of suffering. What matters is how much the being is suffering, what kind of suffering that is — can we compare it with the suffering that we humans may experience? To some extent, I believe we can. And when we make that comparison, it’s not difficult to see that there are many areas in which we inflict immense suffering on nonhuman animals for either no benefits or minor benefits to humans. So I think it follows from the idea of equal consideration of similar interests — which is a principle that I think should hold irrespective of species — it follows from that that many of the things we do to animals are unjustifiable, and that’s the case for animal liberation, or if people want to so put it in terms of recognizing the rights of animals, or, I would say, the case for equal consideration for similar interests across species.
Should we all become vegan or vegetarian?
I would say not in absolutely all circumstances, but if we’re thinking about the situation of somebody who has the option of nourishing themselves well, having an adequate diet, being healthy without consuming animal products, and if those animal products come from commercial enterprises where there’s a profit motive for not being concerned about the wellbeing of the animal beyond productivity of the enterprise, then I think it does follow that we ought not to be consuming those products.
So as I say, there are various other circumstances — that would be circumstances of people who can’t nourish themselves adequately without eating animal products — they have a much larger sacrifice to make than others. And there may be cases where you’re not getting your animal products from large commercial enterprises where the animals have good lives and are humanely killed that would need separate consideration, but the claim I make is one that obviously applies to billions of people in the world today, so that’s enough, I think, to try to get that changed.
You first published Animal Liberation in 1975. And then in May of 2023, you published an updated version, Animal Liberation Now. Surely, much has changed in terms of factory farming practices, the state of animal welfare, among many other factors. In your view, what are some of the most significant changes since 1975, and what made you decide that it was time to publish a revision of Animal Liberation?
Obviously there has been a lot of changes and that’s why it’s really virtually a new book, rather than just a new edition because I’d say probably about half of the text is new. And not so much on the philosophical argument that I just gave you. I think that that has stood up very well to criticism and discussion. But the two longest chapters of Animal Liberation are largely factual where I’m describing research done on animals, and the other describing factory farm conditions. Those chapters had to be completely rewritten. And then there were other discussions about climate change, for example — which was not on my radar or not on many people’s radars in 1975 — had to be brought in because that’s very relevant to the ethics of eating animal products. And I wanted to talk a bit about the progress that the animal movement has made and the progress that it has not made. So those are important changes to the book, and I wanted to talk about that — the new discussion about ethical questions relating to animals, which again was very much a neglected issue, hardly an issue that anybody touched upon in 1975, but now has quite a major literature. So a lot of different things. And also, I should add, there’s more research on animal sentience. So I think we can have more confidence in saying that fish, for example, are sentient, which is something that some people questioned after the first edition was published. And the sentience of octopuses, and even some crustaceans, like lobsters, I think is now much more firmly established than it was. So there’s been a lot of science that has supported the view that I was taking about animal sentience and actually has extended it.
Peter Singer with a previous version of Animal Liberation, on Sept. 22, 2022. Derek Goodwin Photography
In terms of the most significant changes, well, I think some things have gotten better and some things have gotten worse. I talked about the improvements in regulation of factory farming in a few places, most notably the European Union. Also some states of the U.S., but only a minority, particularly California, which passed stricter legislation. So those are good things, but there have also been negative developments. In the case of the chicken industry — chickens are, by far, the most numerous of the land-based vertebrate animals we raise for food — that’s gotten worse because chickens have been bred to grow even faster. And this causes all sorts of problems for them and causes skeletal abnormalities. And they put on weight so fast now that their legs are immaterial for bearing their weight. Chickens are slaughtered when they’re very, very young birds — about six weeks old when they’re slaughtered. And so they’re really babies and their leg bones just aren’t strong enough to support the weight that they’ve put on because they’ve been bred to eat so much and grow so fast. So there’s actually a new cause of pain to bear. They have difficulty bearing their weight, difficulty standing up and walking around because of how fast they’ve been bred to grow. So there are new developments, like that, that make factory farming even worse in some respects than it was.
You describe yourself as a flexible vegan. So you must believe that there’s at least some wiggle room when it comes to having an ethical diet.
That’s because, you know, my ethics are utilitarian or consequentialist. I’m always looking at the consequences of what I do, and my ethics is not about rigid rules. So for me, being vegan is not like somebody — a religious person — who will only eat halal or kosher meat and will think it doesn’t matter how much non-kosher or non-halal meat you eat. It’s just wrong to do it and the wrong would be as great if you ate more of it or less of it. But for me, I want to not be complicit in supporting these industries that treat animals so badly. And the degree of complicity obviously varies by how much I’m spending — to what extent my dollars are supporting those industries. So if for most of my everyday shopping, I avoid animal products, but sometimes when I’m traveling there’s nothing much to eat that doesn’t have some, you know, something like a dairy product, let’s say in it. It’s not a significant contribution that I’m making, and if it’s going to be really difficult for me to get anything to eat that doesn’t contain an animal product — or if I’m in social circumstances where it would disturb the group if I said no, I can’t eat anything here — I’ll eat something that’s vegetarian but not vegan. So that’s the sense in which I’m flexible.
So for people who recognize the cruelty of factory farms and the climate implications of factory farms, and even the climate implications of organic animal farms, but don’t feel ready to commit fully to veganism or vegetarianism, how can those people eat more ethically?
Well, they can still avoid factory farmed products which I think is really important, because that’s where the vast majority of the suffering we inflict on nonhuman animals is. So I would say, depending on how much you feel you want to eat in terms of animal products, I think if you’re talking about the most affluent countries, including the United States, the animal product that perhaps is most easy to get in a form that is not ideal, but is still acceptable, would be eggs from pasture-raised hens. So if you can find a farm that is producing eggs, and the hens really are out on pasture — it’s not just that they’re cage-free, which still might mean that they’re locked up in a big shed — but they’re actually able to go outside and exercise, chase insects, dust bathe, all of those things that are natural for the hens, then you could at least say, well, if the hens are having a reasonably good life here (and sure they’re going to get killed prematurely, and sure the male chicks of that breed are going to get killed immediately on hatching because they’re of no commercial value), it’s a better product definitely than products from animals who are inside all of their lives, very crowded. So I would start with that.
After that, it does get harder. Many people will say, well, what about dairy products from organically raised cows — cows who are outside on pasture again. And that’s certainly better from an animal welfare point of view — as for that matter is beef from grass-fed cows — but it’s worse for the climate, because cows are ruminants and they emit a lot of methane. And the fact that they’re on grass doesn’t really help in terms of reducing their methane output. It’s still there. And in fact, some studies suggest that with grass-fed beef, it’s actually higher, because if you don’t feed them on grain as most beef is fed, for at least the last six months of their lives, they put on weight more slowly, and so for each pound of beef produced there’s more digesting and more methane produced. So you know, that’s a dilemma. But again, if people say, well, I just want to do this occasionally as I need it, or I’m not prepared to go without it, maybe eating small quantities of grass-raised or pasture-raised dairy or beef products might be the next thing to do.
I understand that you’ve recently stepped back from your teaching role at Princeton. So if you don’t mind sharing, what’s next for you?
Yeah, you’re right, I taught my last semester at Princeton now but I’m I’ve got plenty of opportunities to write, to speak, to give interviews like this one. And I’ve got offers of taking visiting positions in other parts of the world which I plan to do, the first of those probably going to Singapore for about a month during 2024. There are other possible places that I will be going to and speaking out in Europe and possibly in Asia. So yeah, I’m planning to keep pretty busy.
That’s all the questions that I had prepared for you. But I’d also like to ask if there’s anything else you’d like to share? Maybe something that we haven’t touched on that you’d like to add?
Oh, I think we’ve covered quite a lot. Obviously, I have a broader interest in bioethics beyond what we’ve spoken about. And so there are a variety of things I’m interested in and I’m continuing to work with the organization The Life You Can Save, which tries to encourage people to give to the most effective charities helping people in extreme poverty. So I think that’s also an important thing to do. And if people want to know more about my work there, they can have a look at my website, petersinger.info, or also go to thelifeyoucansave.org where they can download a free digital copy or audio copy of my book The Life You Can Save and learn more about my work for people in extreme poverty.
We want to thank you all for being a part of this community. Whether you’ve been a subscriber since day one or this is the very first newsletter to hit your inbox, we are glad you’re here!
To celebrate 100 issues of Looking Forward, we’re rounding up some superlatives — senior yearbook style. My editor challenged me to pick a winning story in several categories: most surprising, most actionable, most fun … you get the idea. So take a look back (or a look for the first time!) at some of the topics that have stuck with me, and resonated with your fellow readers.
And, to honor our persisting love for the drabble form, we’re also excited to announce a special opportunity. We’re launching a mini drabble contest, dedicated to Looking Forward’s mission of envisioning a clean, green, just future. Find the deets below!
Climate change is a global problem. But its impacts — and, often, its solutions — happen locally. In the very first issue of Looking Forward, we explored how the simple act of making friends with your neighbors can be part of a crucial infrastructure for climate resilience. I still think back to this newsletter as setting the tone for how we view and discuss what makes a climate solution, because of how it changed my perspective.
Puerto Rico-based climate activist Christine Nieves Rodriguez told me about her experience weathering the disaster of Hurricane Maria — and how the bonds between neighbors and friends made all the difference in the aftermath of the storm. “The people who are closest to you physically will become the most important people of your life when everything collapses,” Nieves said. Read the story here.
In this first-person feature, former Grist fellow Marigo Farr wrote about her experience transitioning to climate-friendly banking and investment options — and offered a range of avenues through which readers might begin to do the same. (Ando, the bank Marigo was using at the time, has since closed. But the other companies and resources she explored are still active.) Inspired in part by Marigo’s inclusive, approachable advice, I tried this myself. I had already been using a sustainability-oriented bank called Aspiration, which offers a pretty low-key investment fund (the minimum is $10). I decided to start with $100, just to get a feel for doing something international with my dollars, instead of stashing them in a cardboard box in my attic (I’m kidding, of course. But barely). Read the story here.
In March of 2023, an organization called Third Act staged a nationwide day of marches, rallies, and sit-ins outside of big banks to protest their continued funding of fossil fuels. The twist: These activists were sitting in rocking chairs. The organization, founded by author and environmentalist Bill McKibben, is specifically for those older than 60.
For this newsletter, I interviewed Lani Ritter Hall, who was a first-time protestor when she joined the Third Act demonstrations. Our conversation was both fun and thought-provoking — I could tell how galvanizing the experience had been for her, and how meaningful it was to do it with a group that proudly emphasized their advanced age. “For the first time in 76 years, I was out on the street with a sign in front of a bank in Cleveland, Ohio,” she told me. “It was like, Oh, my gosh, am I really doing this? Yes, you are!” As a youngish person myself, I was fascinated to hear how being closer to the end of life has in some ways been a driver to activism for her and other Third Actors — “all of a sudden there’s so much more urgency about trying to really make a difference so that the world will be better for future generations.” Read the Q&A here.
This piece by Syris Valentine explored the concept of deconstruction — taking buildings apart and reusing or recycling the materials, rather than demolishing them and sending the waste to landfills — and how a growing number of cities are beginning to mandate the practice. The topic seemed to hit home — this newsletter holds the record for most reader replies!
This note from Brian Hart has particularly stayed with me:
“I would first point out that those of us who were forming households in the late ’60s and early ’70s, were building with tons of recycled materials. (More extreme versions were labeled “hippie,” by some.) When my late wife and I bought a shack on the edge of the Fraser River, in 1971, we had a minuscule budget for making it habitable. Recycled material made it possible; to wit: All of the doors and windows in our home were originally the suite entry doors from a 1930s office building, complete with frames and transoms and hardware, that were already on a truck to the dump; I paid the driver to dump them at my place. (A unique feature, at the time, was every window and door in our house had a mail slot.)”
The list went on, from the bathroom sink to the kitchen cabinets. And several other readers responded to share about local initiatives in their cities, their interest in ReStores, and some of the secondhand or upcycled items most near and dear to them. Read the story here.
This might be my all-time personal favorite newsletter. Although I have since moved to Seattle, I was a proud Baltimorean in the spring of 2023, and keen to celebrate (and share with all of you) a weird and delightful local phenomenon: It was the ninth birthday of Mr. Trash Wheel, the googly-eyed, mouthlike machine who sits in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, gobbling up trash before it can make it out to sea — and he was having a party. Mr. Trash Wheel now has a family of look-alikes in different parts of Baltimore, and the concept has even spread to other cities. And, in addition to directly removing trash, the wheels’ celebrity has turned into an advocacy tool for the end of single-use plastics. Read the story here.
In honor of 100 issues of Looking Forward, we are excited to launch a mini drabble contest.
Drabbles, little 100-word pieces of fiction, have been a mainstay of Looking Forward since the beginning. We’ve always aimed to document the work being done today to address the causes and impacts of the climate crisis, while also envisioning what the future could look like if we get it right. That’s where drabbles come in. So, we’re going to celebrate 100 issues with an ode to the 100-word form. Send us a drabble imagining the world in 100 years for a chance to win presents!
Here’s the prompt: Choose one climate solution that excites you, and show us how you hope it will evolve over the next 100 years to contribute to building a clean, green, just future.
We’ve covered a boatload of solutions you could draw from (100, to be exact!) — so if you need some inspiration, peruse the full Looking Forward archive here, or check out some of the issues linked above.
Drabbles offer a little glimpse of the future we dream about, so paint us a compelling picture of how you hope the world, and our lives on it, will evolve.
Here’s what we’ll be looking for:
Descriptive writing that makes us feel immersed in the scene and setting.
A sense of time. You don’t have to put a specific timestamp on your piece, but give us some clue that we are in the future (not an alternate reality), approximately 100 years from now, and that certain things have changed.
A sense of feeling. Is this vignette about joy? Frustration? Excitement? Nervousness? The mundane pleasure of living in a world where needs are met? Make us feel something!
100 words on the dot.
The winning drabbleswill be published in Looking Forward in May, and the winners will receive presents! Some Grist-y swag, and a book of your choice lovingly packaged and mailed to you by Claire.
To submit: Send your drabble to lookingforward@grist.org with “Drabble contest” in the subject line, by the end of Friday, April 26.
We look forward to reading your visions for a clean, green, just future!
A parting shot
For our 100th parting shot, we’re sharing a reflection from Mia Torres, the editorial designer responsible for Looking Forward’s look and feel:
“I scrolled through our archive and pulled this illustration from November 2022. It was for our issue on sustainable holiday gifting, and marked the transition from the collage style we launched the newsletter with to the bright, poppy hand-drawn approach I use today. It’s sweet taking a moment to reflect on how much our art has evolved over the past two-and-a-half years. Cheers to the next 100 issues!”
IMAGE CREDITS
Vision: Grist
Spotlight: Grist / Getty Images; Grist / Adam Lindquist
Some 70 years after they entered widespread chemical use, the federal government is finally regulating the so-called “forever chemicals” found in everything from nonstick cookware to menstrual products.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced the nation’s first drinking water standards for six types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS. These long-lasting synthetic chemicals don’t break down naturally in the environment and have been linked to cancer, heart and liver problems, developmental damage, and other health issues.
Under the new rule, drinking water concentrations of two of the most thoroughly studied and prevalent of these substances — PFOA and PFOS — will be capped at the lowest limit that the EPA believes is technologically possible, about 4 parts per trillion, reflecting scientists’ understanding that there is no safe exposure level for them. Three other common PFAS will be limited to 10 parts per trillion, either measured on their own, in combination with each other, or with one otherwise unregulated chemical.
The compounds being regulated represent a fraction of the entire class of chemicals — more than 15,000 distinct variants fall under the PFAS umbrella. Still, the EPA estimates that its new rules will protect some 100 million people from exposure and prevent tens of thousands of serious illnesses, especially cancers.
“We are one huge step closer to shutting off the tap for forever chemicals once and for all,” agency head Michael Regan told reporters on Tuesday. He also announced nearly $1 billion in funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to help states and private well owners test for and clean up any contamination. The funding adds to the $21 billion that Congress already made available through the legislation to improve drinking water systems, $9 billion of which had been earmarked specifically for cleaning up this class of chemicals.
The regulations announced Tuesday represent the EPA’s strongest action yet to address the threat of forever chemicals, one likely motivated by escalating concerns about ubiquitous contamination in people’s bodies and the environment. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, virtually all Americans have PFAS in their blood, and researchers have found the chemicals in people’s brains, placentas, livers, and umbilical cords.
Forever chemicals have grown so widespread that rainwater in most places on Earth contains unsafe concentrations. A study published this week found harmful levels in 31 percent of groundwater tested around the world — even though the samples were taken far from any obvious source of contamination.
Chemical companies knew as early as the 1970s that PFAS were building up in people’s bodies and could cause serious consequences but continued to use them for decades. Big U.S. manufacturers like 3M voluntarily stopped producing the chemicals in the early 2000s, but face potentially billions of dollars in damages from consumer protection lawsuits filed by more than half of the attorneys general in the United States.
A family receives bottled water deliveries after high levels of PFAS were detected in their tap. Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
“How do you regulate something that’s already out of the box?” asked Daniel Jones, associate director for the Michigan State University Center for PFAS Research. “They’re still in the environment, in the soil, and in the water.” Now, he says, the focus is on cleaning up.
In 2016, the EPA published a nonbinding public health advisory recommending that drinking water contain no more than 70 parts per trillion of PFOA and PFOS. In 2021, it began working on a “strategic roadmap” to formalize regulations and released a proposal last year that drew some 120,000 comments. The final regulation adds maximum contaminant levels for PFNA, PFHxS, and GenX chemicals, rather than just restricting their combined use as previously proposed, although at higher concentrations than allowed for PFOA and PFOS.
While the EPA deliberated, at least 11 states adopted rules limiting PFAS in drinking water. Those regulations will be superseded by the federal guideline.
Environmental and public health experts cheered the rule, even as they acknowledged its shortcomings. Katie Pelch, an environmental health scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said regulating PFAS on a chemical-by-chemical basis is risky. Manufacturers could swap a restricted compound for something similar that might be less studied yet equally hazardous.
“We need to define PFAS more broadly and take action on the entire class of chemicals, so we’re not just trading one toxic chemical for another,” Pelch told Grist. Although the EPA is testing for over two dozen of the chemicals in drinking water, a 2023 study by Pelch and her colleagues found a dozen compounds that the agency isn’t including. The other problem is the sheer amount of time it would take to evaluate every PFAS individually — potentially many lifetimes.
The EPA did not respond to Grist’s request for comment, but a senior Biden administration implied during a press call that, to make the most robust policy possible, the agency chose to address chemicals for which there is the largest body of evidence proving their toxicity.
“We feel very confident that we have designed a very durable rule, well within our statutory authority, that begins to protect people from harmful pollutants that are showing up in their drinking water,” the official said.
States have five years to comply with the new drinking water standards — three years to test their water supplies and two to reduce concentrations of the regulated PFAS, if necessary. For up to 10 percent of the 66,000 water systems subject to the rule, that could mean upgrading their filtering processes, according to the EPA. Available options, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, include common filtration methods already in use today, such as a granular activated carbon system, similar to a charcoal filter, or reverse osmosis which filters out contaminants using a semi-permeable membrane.
The agency lets utilities decide which method works best for their community. In Wilmington, North Carolina, a granular activated carbon system has already been effective in removing the PFAS targeted by the EPA’s rule, and the same technology may help remove others that are not subject to the regulation.
“The state that you live in shouldn’t influence whether or not PFAS are in your drinking water,” said Pelch. “The EPA will help us address that.” Although the new rules don’t fully reign in the sprawling blanket of forever chemicals in our environment, every step forward matters.
Editor’s note: The Natural Resources Defense Council is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
This story was produced by Grist and co-published with Slate.
When Henri Kunz was growing up in West Germany in the 1980s, he used to drink an instant coffee substitute called Caro, a blend of barley, chicory root, and rye roasted to approximate the deep color and invigorating flavor of real coffee. “We kids drank it,” Kunz remembered recently. “It had no caffeine, but it tasted like coffee.”
As an adult, Kunz loves real coffee. But he also believes its days are numbered. Climate change is expected to shift the areas where coffee can grow, with some researchers estimating that the most suitable land for coffee will shrink by more than half by 2050, and hotter temperatures will make the plants more vulnerable to pests, blight, and other threats. At the same time, demand for coffee is growing, as upwardly mobile people in traditionally tea-drinking countries in Asia develop a taste for java.
“The difference between demand and supply will go like that,” Kunz put it during a Zoom interview, crossing his arms in front of his chest to form an X, like the “no good” emoji. Small farmers could face crop failures just as millions of new people develop a daily habit, potentially sending coffee prices soaring to levels that only the wealthy will be able to afford.
To stave off the looming threats, some agricultural scientists are hard at work breeding climate-resilient, high-yield varieties of coffee. Kunz, the founder and chair of a “flavor engineering” company called Stem, thinks he can solve many of these problems by growing coffee cells in a laboratory instead of on a tree. A number of other entrepreneurs are taking a look at coffee substitutes of yore, like the barley beverage Kunz grew up drinking, with the aim of using sustainable ingredients to solve coffee’s environmental problems — and adding caffeine to reproduce its signature jolt.
Stem’s cell-cultured coffee powder is prepared, roasted, and extracted. Courtesy ofJaroslav Monchak / STEM
A crop of startups, with names like Atomo, Northern Wonder, and Prefer, is calling this category of throwbacks “beanless coffee,” even though in some cases their products contain legumes. Beanless coffee “gives you that legendary coffee taste and all the morning pick-me-up you crave, while also leaving you proud that you’re doing your part to help unf–k the planet,” as the San-Francisco based beanless coffee company Minus puts it. But it’s unclear whether coffee drinkers — deeply attached to the drink’s particular, ineffable taste and aroma — will embrace beanless varieties voluntarily, or only after the coming climate-induced coffee apocalypse forces their hand.
Coffea arabica — the plant species most commonly cultivated for drinking — has been likened to Goldilocks. It thrives in shady environments with consistent, moderate rainfall and in temperatures between 64 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit, conditions often found in the highlands of tropical countries like Guatemala, Ethiopia, and Indonesia. Although coffee plantations can be sustainably integrated into tropical forests, growing coffee leads to environmental destruction more often than not. Farmers cut down trees both to make room for coffee plants and to fuel wood-burning dryers used to process the beans, making coffee one of the top six agricultural drivers of deforestation. When all of a coffee tree’s finicky needs are met, it can produce harvestable beans after three to five years of growth, and eventually yields 1 to 2 pounds of green coffee beans per year.
A worker picks coffee berries in Karnataka, India. Rising temperatures and erratic weather patterns are forcing India’s coffee growers to change the way they farm, leading to reduced crop yields and concerns with quality. Abhishek Chinnappa / Getty Images
If arabica is Goldilocks, climate change is an angry bear. For some 200 years, humans have been burning fossil fuels, spewing planet-warming carbon dioxide into the air. The resulting floods, droughts, and heatwaves, as well as the climate-driven proliferation of coffee borer beetles and fungal infections, are all predicted to make many of today’s coffee-growing areas inhospitable to the crop, destroy coffee farmers’ razor-thin profit margins, and sow chaos in the world’s coffee markets. That shift is already underway: Extreme weather in Brazil sent commodity coffee prices to an 11-year high of $2.58 per pound in 2022. And as coffee growers venture into new regions, they’ll tear down more trees, threatening biodiversity and transforming even more forests from carbon sinks into carbon sources.
At many times in the past, coffee has been out of reach for most people, so they found cheaper, albeit caffeine-free, alternatives. Caro and other quaint instant beverage mixes, like Postum in the U.S. and caffè d’orzo in Italy, were popular during World War II and in the following years, when coffee was rationed or otherwise hard to come by. But the practice of brewing non-caffeinated, ersatz coffee out of other plants is even older than that. In the Middle East, people have used date seeds to brew a hot, dark drink for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years. In pre-Columbian Central America, Mayans drank a similar beverage made from the seeds of ramón trees found in the rainforest. In Europe and Western Asia, drinks have been made out of chicory, chickpeas, dandelion root, figs, grains, lupin beans, and soybeans. These ingredients have historically been more accessible than coffee, and sometimes confer purported health benefits.
An illustrated advertisement from 1902 for Postum by the Postum Cereal Company of Battle Creek, Michigan.
Jay Paull / Getty Images
Today’s beanless-coffee startups are attempting to put a modern spin on these time-honored, low-tech coffee substitutes. Northern Wonder, based in the Netherlands, makes its product primarily out of lupin beans — also known as lupini — along with chickpeas and chicory. Atomo, headquartered in Seattle, infuses date seeds with a proprietary marinade that produces “the same 28 compounds” as coffee, Atomo boasts. Singapore-based Prefer makes its brew out of a byproduct of soymilk, surplus bread, and spent barley from beer breweries, which are then fermented with microbes. Minus also uses fermentation to bring coffee-like flavors out of “upcycled pits, roots, and seeds.” All these brands add caffeine to at least some of their blends, aiming to offer consumers the same energizing effects they get from the real deal.
“We’ve tried all of the coffee alternatives,” said Maricel Saenz, the CEO of Minus. “And what we realize is that they give us some resemblance to coffee, but it ultimately ends up tasting like toasted grains more than it tastes like coffee.”
A Prefer company display of its “beanless” coffee raw ingredients, including bread, barley, and soy.
Courtesy of Prefer
In trying to explain what makes today’s beanless coffees different from the oldfangled kind, David Klingen, Northern Wonder’s CEO, compared the relationship to the one between modern meat substitutes and more traditional soybean products like tofu and tempeh. Many plant-based meats contain soybeans, but they’re highly processed and combined with other ingredients to create a convincing meat-like texture and flavor. So it is with beanless coffee, relative to Caro-style grain beverages. Klingen emphasized that he and his colleagues mapped out the attributes of various ingredients — bitterness, sweetness, smokiness, the ability to form a foam similar to the crema that crowns a shot of espresso — and tried to combine them in a way that produced a well-rounded coffee facsimile, then added caffeine.
By contrast, traditional coffee alternatives like chicory and barley brews have nothing to offer a caffeine addict; Atomo, Minus, Northern Wonder, and Prefer are promising a reliable daily fix.
“Coffee is a ritual and it’s a result,” said Andy Kleitsch, the CEO of Atomo. “And that’s what we’re replicating.”
An espresso shot made with Atomo beanless coffee. Courtesy of Atomo Coffee
Each of these new beanless coffee companies has a slightly different definition of sustainability. Northern Wonder’s guiding light is non-tropical ingredients, “because we want to make a claim that our product is 100 percent deforestation free,” Klingen said. Almost all its ingredients are annual crops from Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Turkey, countries whose forests are not at substantial risk of destruction from agriculture. Annual crops grow more efficiently than coffee trees, which require years of growth before they begin producing beans. A life cycle analysis of Northern Wonder’s environmental impacts, paid for by the company, shows that its beanless coffee uses approximately a twentieth of the water, generates less than a quarter of the carbon emissions, and requires about a third of the land area associated with real coffee agriculture.
Michael Hoffmann, professor emeritus at Cornell University and the coauthor of Our Changing Menu: Climate Change and the Foods We Love and Need, said he was impressed with Northern Wonder’s life cycle analysis, which he described as nuanced and transparent about the limitations of its data. He praised the idea of using efficient crops, saying that some of those used by beanless coffee companies “yield far more per unit area than coffee, which is also a big plus.”
An aerial view of a coffee plantation near Ribeirao Preto in Sao Paulo, Brazil. DeAgostini / Getty Images
But there are trade-offs associated with higher yields. Daniel El Chami, an agricultural engineer who is the head of sustainability research and innovation for the Italian subsidiary of the fertilizer and plant nutrition company Timac Agro International, pointed out that higher-yield crops tend to use more fertilizer, which is manufactured using fossil fuels in a process that emits carbon. Crops that use land and other resources efficiently can require several times more fertilizer than sustainably grown coffee, he said. For this reason, El Chami just didn’t see how Northern Wonder could wind up emitting less than a quarter of coffee’s emissions.
Other beanless coffee companies are staking their sustainability pitch on their repurposing of agricultural waste. Atomo’s green cred is premised on the fact that its central ingredients, date seeds, are “upcycled” from farms in California’s Coachella Valley. Whereas date farmers typically throw seeds away after pitting, Atomo pays farmers to store the pits in food-safe tote bags that get picked up daily. Atomo’s current recipe also includes crops from farther afield, like ramón seeds from Guatemala and caffeine derived from green tea grown in India, but Kleitsch said they’re looking to add even more upcycled ingredients.
Atomo beanless coffee grounds include date seeds “upcycled” from farms in California’s Coachella Valley.
Courtesy of Atomo Coffee
Food waste is a major contributor to climate change, and Hoffmann, the Cornell professor, said repurposing it for beanless coffee is “a very good approach.” Minus, which also uses upcycled date pits, claims its first product, a canned beanless cold brew (which is not yet available in stores), uses 94 percent less water and produces 86 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than the real thing. Those numbers are based on a life cycle analysis that Saenz, Minus’ CEO, declined to share with Grist because it was being updated.
(Atomo expects to release a life cycle analysis this spring, and Prefer is planning to conduct a study sometime this year.)
Despite beanless coffee companies’ impressive sustainability claims, not everyone is convinced that building an alternative coffee industry from scratch is better than trying to make the existing coffee industry more sustainable — by, for instance, helping farmers grow coffee interspersed with native trees, or dry their beans using renewable energy.
El Chami thinks the conclusion that coffee supply will dwindle in an overheating world is uncertain: A review of the research he coauthored found that modelers have reached contradictory conclusions about how climate change will change the amount of land suitable for growing coffee. Although rising temperatures are certainly affecting agriculture, “climate change pressures are overblown from a marketing point of view by private interests seeking to create new needs with higher profit margins,” El Chami said. He added that the multinational companies that buy coffee from small farmers need to help their suppliers implement sustainable practices — and he hoped beanless coffee companies would do the same.
Whether demand for beanless coffee will increase depends a great deal on how much consumers like the taste.
I, for one, enjoyed the $5 Atomo latte that I tried at the Midtown Manhattan location of an Australian cafe chain called Gumption Coffee — the only place on Earth where Atomo is being sold. The pale, frothy concoction tasted slightly sweet and very smooth. Atomo describes its espresso blend as having notes of “dark chocolate, dried fruit, and graham cracker.” If I hadn’t known it was made with date seeds instead of coffee beans, I would have said it was a regular latte with a dash of caramel syrup added.
My $5 latte made with Atomo beanless grounds. L.V. Anderson / Grist
The Northern Wonder filter blend that I ordered from the Netherlands (about $12 for a little more than a pound of grounds, plus about $27 for international shipping) had to overcome a tougher test: I wanted to drink it black, the way I do my regular morning coffee. I brewed it in my pour-over Chemex carafe, and the dark liquid dripping through the filter certainly looked like coffee. But the aroma was closer to chickpeas roasting in the oven — not an unpleasant smell, just miles away from the transcendent scent of arabica beans. The flavor was also off, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong. Was it a lack of acidity, or a lack of sweetness? It wasn’t too bitter, and it left a convincing tannic aftertaste in my mouth. After a few sips, I found myself warming up to it, even though it obviously wasn’t coffee. My Grist colleague Jake Bittle had a similar experience with Northern Wonder, describing the flavor it settled into as “weird Folgers.” If real coffee suddenly became scarce or exorbitantly priced, I could see myself drinking Northern Wonder or something like it. It would certainly be better than forgoing coffee’s flavor and caffeine entirely by drinking nothing at all in the morning, or acclimating to the entirely different ritual and taste of tea.
Klingen concedes that the aroma of beanless coffee needs work. Northern Wonder is developing a bean-like product that, when put through a coffee grinder, releases volatile compounds similar to those that give real coffee its powerful fragrance, like various aldehydes and pyrazines. But beanless coffee could win over some fans even if it doesn’t mimic coffee’s every attribute. Klingen said drinkers often rate his product higher for how much they like it than for how similar it is to coffee. “With Oatly, oat milks or [other] alt milks, there you see the same,” he said. When you ask consumers if oat milk tastes like milk, they say, “‘Eh, I don’t know.’ But is it tasty? ‘Yes.’”
Northern Wonder cofounder and CEO David Klingen drinks a “Coffee Free Coffee” oat latte. Courtesy of Northern Wonder
Just as the dairy industry has tried to prevent alternative milk companies from calling their products “milk,” some people raise an eyebrow at the term “beanless coffee.” Kunz — the German entrepreneur who grew up drinking Caro and is now trying to grow coffee bean cells in a lab — takes issue with using the word coffee to describe products made out of grains, fruits, and legumes. “What we do — taking a coffee plant part, specifically a leaf from a coffee tree — it is coffee, because it’s the cell origin of coffee,” Kunz said. Drinks made from anything else, he insists, shouldn’t use the word. Kunz’s cell-cultured coffee product hasn’t been finalized yet and, much like lab-grown meat, faces fairly steep regulatory hurdles before it can be sold in Europe or the United States.
The specter of plant-based meat and dairy looms large over the nascent beanless coffee industry. A slew of startups like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods hit the scene in the mid-2010s with products that they touted as convincing enough to be able to put animal agriculture out of business. But in recent years, these companies have faced declining sales in the face of concerns about health, taste, and price.
Jake Berber, the CEO and cofounder of Prefer, fears something similar could happen to beanless coffee businesses. “My hope for everyone in the industry is to keep pushing out really delicious products that people enjoy so that the whole industry of beanless coffee, bean-free coffee, can profit from that, and we can sort of help each other out,” he said.
A Prefer worker lays out fermented base for roasting. Courtesy of Prefer
Different beanless coffee companies are staking out different markets, with some positioning themselves as premium brands. Saenz wouldn’t say how much Minus wants to charge for its canned cold brew, but she said it will be comparable to the “high-end side of coffee, because we believe we compete there in terms of quality.” Atomo is putting the finishing touches on a factory in Seattle with plans to sell its beanless espresso to coffee shops for $20.99 per pound — comparable to a specialty roast.
“The best way to enjoy coffee is to go to a coffee shop and have a barista make you your own lovingly made product,” Kleitsch said. Atomo is aiming to give consumers a “great experience that they can’t get at home.”
In contrast, Northern Wonder and Prefer are targeting the mass market. Northern Wonder is sold in 534 grocery stores in the Netherlands and recently became available at a leading supermarket in Switzerland. Prefer, meanwhile, is selling its blend to coffee houses, restaurants, hotels, and other clients in Singapore with a promise to beat the price of their cheapest arabica beans. Berber predicts that proposition will get more and more appealing to buyers and consumers in the coming years as the cost of even a no-frills, mediocre espresso drink approaches, and then surpasses, $10. A warming planet will help turn coffee beans into a luxury product, and middle-class customers will get priced out. Then, Prefer’s bet on a climate-proof coffee replacement will pay off.
“We will, in the future, be the commodity of coffee,” Berber said.
Young people have for generations signed their names in history’s ledger as agents of change. James Monroe and Alexander Hamilton celebrated their 25th birthdays during the Revolutionary War. Nearly two centuries later, college-age Black men and women mobilized for the rights they had been denied since the nation’s founding. The youth of today have seized the baton passed to them by their elders. They have raised their voices in urgent anger to demand action for the defining issue of their lives: the climate emergency.
Yet only a few governments at any level, in any country, have answered their demands for action. On Wednesday, to help address that, Bloomberg Philanthropies — the nonprofit funded by former New York Mayor and one-time Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg — has launched the Youth Climate Action Fund. It intends to help 100 cities worldwide better incorporate the voices and visions of young people into how they imagine and enact policies.
“We want to help bring more and more powerful voices into climate activism,” said James Anderson, who leads the philanthropy’s government innovation programs and helped design the fund. “And we also want to make sure and help local governments invite all of the people that want to make a difference in their city on climate into the effort in ways that are meaningful to them.”
The funds it has awarded to cities in 38 countries across six continents should enable just that kind of involvement. With the announcement, each city will receive an initial disbursement of $50,000. Should any mayor respond with adequate urgency and commit, within six months, the money to programs or projects that involve youth leadership in local climate action, their city will receive an additional $100,000 to further support youth-led efforts.
When typical funding announcements for climate efforts often reach into the millions and billions or even hundreds of billions, a five- or six-figure payout might sound paltry. Yet it can make an enormous impact — especially in cities and countries that need it most.
“I’m shocked. I’m shocked, but in a good way, because that money is a lot, especially here in Zimbabwe, and I believe that it could do a lot of great things in our city,” said Nozinhle Gumede, a 21-year-old climate activist from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Bulawayo, a city of 1.2 million in the country’s southwest, is among those selected for the Youth Climate Action Fund. Gumede hopes to see the money used to support youth-led organizations actively helping local communities to adapt to climate change, and to create capacity at the city level for young people to advise the mayor.
“We are the custodians of the future,” Gumede said. “So I believe that we have a right to be a part of some sort of leadership or advisory board to see how this money shapes our future.”
Several cities have already sought to establish climate councils populated by youth to ensure that they can help mold the plans and policies that will define the boundaries of their futures.
Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, the mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, has made climate resilience a foundational priority for her work leading the country’s capital and largest city, which was also selected for the Youth Climate Action Fund. She’s also made it a point to center youth in her work. “We work with the adage, ‘nothing for me without me,’” she said, so “when, in your city, 70 percent of your population are under the age of 35, you don’t do anything without the youth.”
A child indulges his curiosity at a borehole tap in Nyamandlovu, Zimbabwe. The government commissioned 20 boreholes at the Nyamandlovu Aquifer to supplement the water supply in Bulawayo, which experienced its worst water crisis in 2020. KB Mpofu/Getty Images
To further cement the essential status of youth involvement in the city’s structure, Aki-Sawyerr expects to launch a youth climate council later this year to provide a structured and ongoing forum to engage young people. This council will also help inform and shape how Freetown’s climate action strategy unfolds.
In cities like Freetown and Bulawayo, climate action is dissimilar to what cities throughout the United States and Europe concern themselves with. When she met with Freetown’s local chapter of Fridays for Future — the organization founded by Greta Thunberg to spread her Friday school strikes to other cities and countries — it forced Aki-Sawyerr to realize “how different our situations are, and how there should be no one-size-fits-all when it comes to youth movements.” In Freetown, “nobody cares if you go to school,” she said. “You don’t even get enough school time. You don’t get enough contact with teachers.”
Moreover, many young people in Freetown face a myriad of immediate concerns from food insecurity to forced marriages. “In the midst of all of that,” Aki-Sawyerr said, “their lives are being significantly, adversely impacted by climate change.” Yet, they get none of the benefits those in the Global North have accrued as they polluted the planet and exposed previously colonized countries to grave dangers. “You don’t get the light. You don’t get Broadway. You don’t get the fancy cars,” Aki-Sawyerr said. “But you get the impact of the emissions that come from all of that.”
As a result, their focus is not on mitigating a problem that they did not cause, but adapting to it. Already, Freetown has faced tragedies that climate change may make more common. In 2017, days of torrential rain triggered a landslide that killed over 1,000 people. Such rainfall is expected to become more common in places like Freetown. And in Bulawayo, Gumede said that the biggest concern is extreme heat, something residents already struggle with.
As these cities and others throughout the Global South seek to reinforce their resilience to climate change, the youth of the Global North face a daunting task: putting more pressure on polluters. In leveraging the resources of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Youth Climate Action Fund, cities in developed countries must learn to channel the energy and ambitions of youth to accelerate their actions to eliminate emissions.
A youth activist at a demonstration organized by Extinction Rebellion on May 19th, 2022. Romy Arroyo Fernandez/NurPhoto
Several young climate organizers in the United States spoke to the drive and vision that they and their peers bring to this work. Holly Swiglo, a freshman at Oberlin College in Ohio who helps lead the college’s chapter of the Sunrise Movement, said that youth who see their future defined by a worsening climate crisis stand unwilling to allow the burdens of bureaucracy to obstruct the pace and scale of change that they believe is not only possible but necessary. For cities and mayors to harness that energy, they cannot merely offer performative actions of allyship. Kristy Drutman, a New Jersey-based climate activist and communicator who serves on the EPA’s youth advisory council, said that such empty actions leave young people frustrated and disillusioned. But cities like Mesa, Arizona testify to how mayors and city council members can take to heart their role as public servants.
The city’s Republican mayor, John Giles, has listened to the climate concerns of his constituents since shortly after he entered office when local climate activists questioned him about his plans for the city’s climate agenda. The climate action plan that Mesa then developed contains the typical points — goals for carbon neutrality, renewable energy, and reducing waste — but it includes a fourth pillar that Giles considers critical to achieving the others: community engagement. Mesa residents have already shaped the city’s approach to climate action, including its proposal to the Youth Climate Action Fund, which emerged directly from its “Hacktivate” program that gives high schoolers the opportunity to understand the issues facing their communities and devise solutions.
Such initiatives provide an outlet for the pent up energy and anger of a generation desperate for action. The Youth Climate Fund hopes to encourage many more like them. Such efforts are needed, because today’s activists have in so many ways made clear that they have heeded the lessons of those who came before and will do whatever it takes to bring about the change they wish to see.
