I became interested in the issue of climate change shortly after experiencing the impacts of climate change firsthand when Hurricane Irma flooded my local South Beach neighborhood as well as the Ransom Everglades football field in 2017. In 2018, I founded We Are Forces of Nature, aiming to expand the climate conversation. Since then, I’ve tried to contribute through both advocacy and action, working with the United Nations’ oceans, climate and energy working groups to draft policy, and hoping someone reads it and takes action.

 

Fast forward to this year’s COP26. While the press waged a huge debate over whether COP26 was a failure, almost before it ever began, outside the conference thousands of angry youth protested. Youth, minorities from red-listed countries, and even Greta Thunberg were excluded from this year’s conference, likely because the conference leaders feared that youth might verbally disrupt world leaders. It’s true my generation is angry. We face a catastrophic problem we didn’t create.

 

At an intergenerational discussion with Dr. Jane Goodall, I shared with her the resentment and eco-anxiety I was hearing on the streets of Glasgow from my fellow youth. Not enough good can be said about her life’s work in environmentalism. If any life-saving action stopping climate change is ever reached, at least in part, we have her to thank. So, to have her actually want to hear what the youth felt was a huge invitation to the table. Dr. Goodall didn’t dismiss youth disenchantment but encouraged “the use of anger to fuel action – to make you say I will not give up.”

 

Speaking at a youth panel hosted by the U.S. Climate Action Hub, I was able to share our unique story of the impending risk to our school which is expected to flood regularly by 2070 if we don’t take action now to stop sea level rise. I also had a chance to attend a meeting with former President Barack Obama. He, too, warned against “the inactivity of hopelessness,” reminding us that our generation will be responsible over the next 30 years for the implementation of the pledges made at COP26.

 

My days at COP26 were incredibly busy. I spent time with Peruvian farmers who expressed that enacting climate change legislation will wipe them out economically, but unchecked climate change will exterminate them. I debated the economics of coastal solutions with small island nations, including the Minister of Fiji, who is far more well-versed than I. And I had an opportunity to listen to President Biden, Leonardo DiCaprio, Harrison Ford and Barack Obama, among others. But each night as the buses pulled away from COP, I listened to the youth on the outside of the fence, their groups dwindling to small numbers in the freezing rain. I heard the anger and despair in their chants. It is their voices that I will remember.

 

I left COP26 with an urgency that we must double down on our climate commitments, particularly our protections for developing countries who are least responsible for emissions but most affected by climate change. We must make every effort to amplify the voices of women, minorities and Gen Z. But I refuse to see the planet through a bleak lens. With a minute-before-midnight mentality, enough pledges were made by our world leaders to keep hope alive. As I boarded my plane back to the U.S., for the first time since I started my own climate work in 2018, limiting global warming to 1.8°C is within reach. It will be up to us to shoulder those pledges. We are the last generation who can end climate change. If we act now, we can – and we will – change our destiny.

 

– Will Charouhis ’24, Founder of We Are Forces of Nature