Category Archives: Media

Power and Powerlessness (The Dartmouth)

(This media piece was published in The Dartmouth.)

Our voices matter.

The gravity of this realization shouldn’t be lost on us: we are powerful as young people. We can shape this world into whatever vision we carry for it.

It’s sometimes hard, though, to embody this statement. How can our voices matter in a world that is meant to silence them? How can we speak up about issues that matter to our generation if we are told these very issues are too large, too complex, too systemic to handle?

I think about climate change all the time. Those who know me on campus know that this issue has defined my four years at Dartmouth, particularly through my involvement with Divest Dartmouth. I see the ways in which this problem will affect our futures: hundreds of millions forcibly displaced due to sea level rise and natural resource conflict. The rise of vector-borne viruses such as Lyme disease and Zika. We’ll have the resources to adapt in New York City, but Manila will be underwater. Climate change will affect our health, our economy and our society — and it will disproportionately affect communities that are already on the front lines of socioeconomic, racial and gender-based injustices.

The reality of climate change is very insistent. But it is complex and difficult and systemic — how can we solve a problem that is so wicked?

This question has guided my research this year as a senior fellow. I spend my days agonizing over it and have come to realize how much our ability to solve monumental problems is rooted in the power we wield to shift society.

Do young people have power? I have been conducting interviews for my research, and asking my research subjects — scientists, policy makers and activists working on climate change — this question. Of the many insightful answers, one sticks out: “People feel empowered when the responsibility they feel for a problem is equal to the power they have to solve it.”

When it comes to big problems, we as young people oftentimes feel this responsibility most strongly. I know that I myself feel this viscerally: I cannot accept the futures that scientists are predicting for us under unchecked climate change. I recognize the rights of my generation to live in a world that has at least as many opportunities as the one into which the generations before us were born.

What about power?

It isn’t always obvious to see the ways in which power is exerted over us. In particular, we don’t think about how the way certain institutions are structured influences how empowered we feel.

Think about the D-Plan: We’ve come to accept this quarterly structure as a given, despite the fact that it has only been implemented for about forty years. And yet, the D-Plan affects us in ways that we may not always be aware of. For example, most of us realize its impact on our ability to maintain relationships. It’s hard to have a relationship between two people at Dartmouth who might not see each other for the better part of a year.

Why should we care about systems of power? Institutional change is a core part of Dartmouth’s tradition. Our College has been shaped by a rich history of students before us who wanted it to be better — from women who fought for the inclusion of “daughters of Dartmouth” in the alma mater, to students who fought (and are still fighting) for the abolition of the Indian head symbol to students who founded the Dartmouth Outing Club.

When we realize that we not only carry a responsibility to make this world better, but that we are indeed capable of changing it, we become empowered to forge ahead working on problems that may seem too significant to challenge. When we realize we are powerful, we push ourselves to do things that terrify us because we know they are important, and we grow. When we start noticing the structures that disempower us, we can go about changing them to create the world we seek.

Our voices matter.

Standing at a Crossroads (The Dartmouth)

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(This media piece was published in The Dartmouth.)

“Nobody has the right to gamble with your future.”

Ahmad Alhendawi, the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Youth, said these words to a group of young people attending the UN climate talks in Paris this December.

The talks — the biggest UN climate summit this decade — were anticipated to be a shining moment in history, a time where the world came together to negotiate a binding, ambitious, universal agreement on climate change. This was my ninth such UN conference and I came to Paris with a sense of tempered optimism, realistic about what the conference would deliver, but hopeful for a positive outcome.

To many young people who were there — including myself — the conference meant so much more: a chance to act on climate change so that we could have a future worth looking forward to. In the face of injustices caused by the burning of fossil fuels including the loss of indigenous lands and disproportionate negative health effects inflicted on already vulnerable communities — we couldn’t afford to leave Paris empty-handed.

The conference was a blockbuster event. More world leaders were under one roof than any other time in history. Everyone from President Barack Obama , to Arnold Schwarzenegger, to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Jane Goodall, urged countries to reach an agreement in order to act swiftly on climate change.

Despite this, I saw my future being gambled away as the conference progressed . I saw the way that our governments paid lip service to climate action while ensuring that the Paris Agreement lacked any real commitment to a more sustainable future. As a young person, I saw the future I wanted for the world — one with clean energy, healthier communities, racial and socioeconomic justice — being replaced by a future with more suffering and frequent food and energy crises. I saw the beginnings of a downward spiral toward ecological and social devastation.

For us young people, the future is not some abstract concept, but a better world we can choose to create and inhabit.

We have long looked to our elected representatives and world leaders to solve this crisis, but it is becoming increasingly clear that they do not represent our best interests. Instead, the fossil fuel industry’s deliberate misinformation, corporate lobbying and corruption stand in the way of the political willpower we need from our decision-makers. For example, ExxonMobil —— in addition to other companies — internally discussed global warming amongst its own scientists as early as 1977, yet still continues to fund misinformation campaigns that cast doubts on the certainty of human-caused climate change. The tobacco industry used the same tactics to mask the harm caused by their products . It is time we see fossil fuel corporations as equally morally reprehensible.

At Dartmouth, we have so much more potential than we realize. With influential alumni and world-renowned faculty, our actions and words resonate far beyond the confines of Hanover. Therefore, it is our responsibility to act. Climate change is one of the defining issues of our generation. These years will be remembered by history as either the time we chose to act on overwhelming scientific evidence or the time we chose to ignore it.

It is for all these reasons — my experiences at these UN conferences and my awareness as a Dartmouth student, in addition to the climate science and policy research I have been conducting since my first year at the College -— that I know Dartmouth must divest from the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies by proven reserves. COP21 was a signal: the fossil fuel era is coming to a rapid close . In Paris, countries agreed to phase out fossil fuels by 2050, which would render a large portion of fossil fuel stocks valueless.

Divestment matters, because it represents a moment in which young people can regain their power . Divestment matters, because it gives us agency as students in the face of a society that tells us our age renders us insignificant. Divestment matters, because it reflects the urgency of a problem that cannot wait for us to graduate college to be solved.

There is a growing contingent of young people, faculty and alumni who are pushing the Dartmouth administration to have a conversation with us on divestment. Yet, despite this growing demand for dialogue and compelling financial and moral evidence for divestment, the administration has continued to stall throughout our nearly four year campaign. We are still waiting to meet with the Board of Trustees.

Here at Dartmouth, we stand at a crossroads. We can continue to maintain the status quo — say that we are doing enough to fight climate change while being physically and financially invested in fossil fuel companies -— or we can divest the College’s endowment from fossil fuel holdings and transition our heating sources to renewable energy (and no, fracked gas is not a option). We can indeed make this future a reality, if we so desire it, but we need to get to work.

This is a call to action.

Love This World Till It Hurts (Thought Catalog)

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(This media piece was published in Thought Catalog.)

I have been having dreams about sleeping through my alarms lately. The dreams always end the same way – in them, I wake up startled, realizing what has happened, but by then it is already too late.

In my waking life, I hear alarms all the time.

I study climate change. I am a budding scientist. I am a community organizer. I am a twenty-two year old who is all too aware of what greenhouse gases mean for my generation: we will be living the consequences of a problem so monumental, it will affect every aspect of our future.

Most of my research has been in the Arctic. I remember the first time I saw glaciers calving in Greenland.

It was 2AM. The sun was out – as it always was in summer – and low on the horizon. I was hiking with other research assistants, walking along treeless tundra. I could see for miles. Every step I took left a deep imprint in the grasses. I felt the weight of my feet – knowing the Arctic landscape, I was acutely aware that those footprints would last for years, at least.

We perched on a mountain ridge and sat facing the ice sheet.

We waited.

And, then, it came – immense thunder in a cloudless sky. Then, a piercing crack.

Before it could even register, five skyscrapers tore off and turned into icebergs. Never in my life have I felt more like a speck of dust.

Most of us know all too well what climate change means for our generation. We are told by the most respected, serious, and intellectual people that we will have no future to live for unless society comes together as one common humanity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Then, we are told by decision makers, adults, this same society, that our youth renders us powerless. How can we live with the grief of knowing we have no lives to look forward to? Should we even consider bringing children into this world when we know the world is betraying their own right to live?

Today, world leaders gathered in Paris to kick off the COP 21 United Nations climate talks – the biggest climate change conference of this decade. More Heads of State were in one place today than any other time in history.

I sat with other young people in these same halls. We collectively held our breath as we watched Barack Obama, François Hollande, Vladimir Putin, and Justin Trudeau speak.

“I believe, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that there is such a thing as being too late,” President Obama said. “And when it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us. But if we act here, if we act now, if we place our own short-term interests behind the air that our young people will breathe, and the food that they will eat, and the water that they will drink, and the hopes and dreams that sustain their lives, then we won’t be too late for them.”
All the while, the United States is still a country deliberately undermining the U.N. climate process.

We are young, and terrified.

Our fear is rooted in the immense love we have for this world.

My biggest fear in life is to see our world leaders act on climate change – to see our governments acknowledge what it means to be human and to feel the suffering of others, to show compassion – to cry happy tears, and then to wake up.

We are all young and seeking meaning – we have barely established our own identities.

How can we love ourselves, love each other, in such a broken world?

How can we love this world if it is so broken? How can we hope when, as we speak, world leaders are holding hands as they walk into oblivion? They are negotiating our futures away.

Love this world till it hurts. Foster an aching love for everything around us – clear skies, dandelions, untouched snow, sunshine, the feeling of bouncy grass against our bare soles.

Find it within you to love this world in spite of its brokenness. Love it because it is broken.

In the face of climate change, love is all we have left. There is hope at the heart of this all – we are young, but we know what the future can look like, and our love for the world pushes us to continue working on making it better.

The alarm bells are ringing.

Arctic Climate Summit: Do Leaders Love Their Children Enough? (ClimateHome)

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(This media piece was published in ClimateHome.)

President Obama spoke of his daughters at the Glacier meeting in Alaska, but it was a cab driver whose words hit home

Receding glaciers on the North Face of Aleyska, in Alaska, with fireweed in the foreground. Credit: Leehi Yona

By Leehi Yona

I spent the past few days in Anchorage, Alaska – sometimes in the same room as John Kerry and Barack Obama – but the most incredible words I heard came from a cab driver.

The conference I attended, the Glacier (Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement, and Resilience) summit, brought together foreign ministers from twenty Arctic and observer nations. It was billed as a crowning moment for climate change, with both the United States secretary of state and president as keynote speakers, among a list of other high-profile attendees.

Yet, the conference has ended mere hours ago and all I can remember are the words of Agron, a kind cab driver I’d briefly met while traveling on Sunday.

(Anchorage Yellow Taxi, if you’re reading this – give the man a raise.)

Agron was remarkable not only because of what he said, but also because he said it without knowing that I was even going to the conference, let alone that I am a climate justice organiser.

“Something is going on here,” he said. “I’ve been in Alaska seventeen years, and every year it is getting warmer. I didn’t even use my snowblower once this winter.”

But here’s where it gets better: “We need to do something, but people are scared of what climate change will do and scared of changing. Don’t get me wrong. I love my 700 horse power car. You have no idea what muscle cars I have right now. I love cars like Jay Leno.

“But I have three kids. I think of my children and grandchildren, and I’d be willing to give it up for them. People are selfish and greedy, but we need to care for future generations.”

And, the kicker: “I’m not a scientist, but there are some facts you can’t ignore. You gotta be a dumb*ss not to realize something is happening.”

When I told him I was going to Glacier, he encouraged me in a way that no adult has before, let alone a complete stranger. “Raise your voice! Wherever you go! No matter how important the people there are. Young people, this is your future!”

Young people.

We are young, and terrified. President Obama delivered a speech documenting how bad things would get in the Arctic. “We will condemn our children to a planet beyond their capacity to repair,” he said.

My future. Our future. My generation. Much as I hate to admit it, tears rolled down my cheeks.

But beyond the sob story, the tokenising of young people as “the future”, we were left voiceless at this conference. We were sidelined, kept for photo opportunities.

An Arctic Youth Ambassador program was created, so young people could “blog” and “tweet” but not be given a seat at the table. Of the dozens and dozens of speakers at Glacier, not a single person was young, let alone a young woman and/or person of colour. In fact, while ceremonial statements were delivered, not a single tangible action served as an outcome to the conference.

What does that say about how much these world leaders value our future?

Obama and Kerry spoke of us. They spoke of the horrors their generation is bequesting to us. Obama spoke of his daughters, of the need for us to act in Paris this December for future generations. He spoke of what was at stake.

But I wonder if government officials love their children enough. I wonder if they love us enough to act beyond rhetoric and commit to the ambitious targets the Paris intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) were created to motivate. I wonder if they love us enough to freeze new fossil fuel infrastructure projects, to divest, to ban Arctic drilling. I wonder if they love us enough to invest in the adaptation some of us will now require. I wonder if they love us at all.

When I came to Alaska last week, I went hiking. Only when I saw glaciers again did I realize that I’d left parts of my soul strewn across the Arctic, scattered among the fireweed.

My heart breaks for the immense love and fear I hold for this place. I wonder how long it will take for decision makers’ love for their children, for the world, to overcome their fear of change.

Do we love ourselves enough to leap and make this world better?

As I left the cab Sunday, I thanked Agron and asked him to keep talking to his riders, especially if he comes across a government representative.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I plan on talking to all the old farts about this.”