There is no escaping the damage we have done to our planet. Not when Southern California is being redefined by deadly wildfires, punishing droughts and massive whiplash floods and mudslides. Not when a summer heat wave threatens to push the thermometer up to 119, and the civic conversation turns to the desperate need for refrigeration units.
We have been warned. Sometimes we listened. In 2015, nearly 200 nations agreed to try to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius – or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit – above pre-industrial levels as part of the Paris climate agreement. The UN called the agreement a “covenant of hope”.
But June 2024 it was 12th month in a row where global warming hit – or climbed higher – than the agreed limit. “At this point, it’s really hard to see a path to keeping warming below 1.5 degrees,” Kristina Dahl, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Times reporter Hayley Smith earlier this year. To do that, Dahl said, would require a more than 40% reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, a “pace of emissions reductions that is really inconsistent with what we’re seeing on the planet so far.”
But Dahl’s most important message was this: Keep trying.
In this issue of ‘Our Climate Change Challenge’, The Times profiles some of the people who are taking her message to heart. Many of them are young – the young people who will be the stewards of Planet Earth for decades to come. They are organizers and disruptors, optimists and skeptics, some of them sizing up the current political landscape and looking for reasons to hope and others demanding – to the highest degree – immediate action.
Climate activists approach the task from myriad perspectives: Block a senator’s office door. Demand better climate curricula in our schools. Cut down on plastic use and stop indulging in fast fashion. Acknowledge climate anxiety – climate grief, for some – and fix the individualism that breeds it. Offer someone a seat at the table or hold your feet to the fire.
Their work reminds us that there is still time to take control of our collective destiny. You can find their stories on this page.
—Alice Short
Buy a printed copy of “Our Climate Change Challenge” at shoplatimes.com/climatechange.