JM: “It’s so funny; when I was in college I was studying political science, and I remember somebody saying, ‘How come you’re so involved?’ And I remember saying, ‘How can you not be?’ The more you learn and the more you understand, the more, I agree, you have to get involved.”
XB: “It’s weird when people say, ‘Why are you so passionate about the climate crisis?’ And I’m like, ‘This is a ticking time bomb; how are you not trying to dismantle it?’”
KE: “I’m curious to know, from getting to watch and being involved in the climate movement for so long, how you see it shifting and if there are things you’re really excited to see or things you wish you could see?”
JM: “I think now what you’re starting to see is much more of the connecting and much more of the understanding that we all actually have very similar opponents. The root causes of what we’re all trying to address are the same: this kind of short-term, profit-driven economy. In the past I think that was almost too scary to name for some, and I think the movement has gone from trying to defeat coal-powered power plants, plant by plant, to trying to address the underlying root causes….
I also think it’s gone from being a very faraway problem to a very current problem. So I think the thing that has an impact on the movement, but also on the whole debate, is what’s happening now; is what the scientists thought was going to be happening in 10, 20, 40 years. So I think that’s petrifying, but also really makes it very local.”
KE: “I’ve definitely noticed that. I think for a long time, climate change felt very abstract — this kind of scientific, very futuristic thing.”
XB: “Like big waves on a globe.”
KE: “Yeah, but I think in the last few years, or just months in the U.S. alone, there have been wildfires, hurricanes, flooding in the Midwest. I think they add up. I think people look at their communities and they say, ‘Okay, all of us are going to be affected in one way or another.’ So I think it is becoming more concrete in people’s minds. We just have to make the solutions more concrete in people’s minds too.”
XB: “We don’t want people to have to experience the climate crisis to realize that it is a crisis. And that’s what we’re fighting for. For less people to be affected and more people to be aware. We want consciousness, we want action, and we want just a complete breakthrough of solutions.”
Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Attacks on Greta Thunberg Come From a Coordinated Network of Climate Change Deniers
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