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Our climate change challenge

Earth is in peril. Will we sacrifice enough today to ensure future generations can survive?

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It's up to us.

There’s no escaping the damage we’ve done to our planet. Not when Southern California is being redefined by deadly wildfires, punishing drought and massive whiplash floods and mudslides. Not when a summer heat wave threatens to drive the thermometer up to 119, and the civic conversation turns to the desperate need for cooling centers.

We’ve been warned. Sometimes we heeded. In 2015, almost 200 nations agreed to try to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius — or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit — above preindustrial levels as part of the Paris climate accord. The United Nations called the agreement a “covenant of hope.”

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But June 2024 was the 12th consecutive month in which global warming hit — or climbed higher — than that agreed-upon limit. “At this point, it is really difficult to see a path to keeping warming below 1.5 degrees,” Kristina Dahl, a principal climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Times reporter Hayley Smith earlier this year. To do so, Dahl said, would necessitate a more than 40% reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, a “pace of emissions reductions that’s really inconsistent with what we see on the planet to date.”

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 youth who will be the stewards of Planet Earth in the decades to come. They are organizers and disruptors, optimists and skeptics, some of them sizing up the current political landscape looking for reasons to hope and others demanding — at the top of their lungs — immediate action.

Climate activists approach the task at hand from myriad perspectives: Blockade a senator’s office door. Demand better climate curriculum in our schools. Cut back on plastic use and stop indulging in fast fashion. Acknowledge climate anxiety — climate grief, for some — and fix the individualism that feeds it. Offer someone a seat at the table or hold their feet to the fire.

Their work reminds us there’s still time to seize control of our collective destiny. You can find their stories on this page.

— Alice Short

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Buy a print copy of “Our Climate Change Challenge” at shoplatimes.com/climatechange.


‘Even small acts help in the long run for slowing the pace of climate change.’

— David Luong, freshman at Cal State Fullerton

‘I have hope because recently, local governments have been consulting Indigenous nations about hundred-year-old problems using thousand-year-old solutions.’

— Isaac Michael Ybarra, artist and storyteller


What, exactly, is climate anxiety? And how should we cope? Environmental reporter Rosanna Xia explores the many dimensions to our existential dread.

‘Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question’ asks: With American society feeling more socially and politically polarized than ever, is it right to bring another person into the world?

It’s hard to care about anything when you are in a pit of climate anxiety. Then I remember the beautiful, bittersweet world I want to show the next generation.


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Proponents of ‘forest schools’ say children immersed in nature are happier and healthier — and may be poised to become the next generation of climate warriors.


Will we be living in a fiery landscape with sizzling sidewalks, or will our penchant for innovation be our salvation?

How did the vice president engineer such a dramatic turnaround? It’s about the messenger as much as the message.


Young activists on social media stress the urgency of climate change: ‘Once you start seeing it in your life, then you have no option but to act.’


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Credits

Project editor: Alice Short
Columnists and writers: Tony Briscoe, Melissa Gomez, Russ Mitchell, Corinne Purtill, Sammy Roth, Susanne Rust, Sonja Sharp, Lila Seidman, Hayley Smith, Alex Wigglesworth, Rosanna Xia, Stephanie Yang
Editor at large: Scott Kraft
Assistant managing editor: Ruthanne Salido
Editors: Monte Morin, Matt Ballinger

Director of photography: Kim Chapin
Photography editor: Kelvin Kuo
Photographers: Michael Blackshire, Zo? Cranfill, Robert Gauthier, Christina House, Dania Maxwell, Genaro Molina, Allen J. Schaben, Brian van der Brug
Photo specialist: Jason Neubert

Creative director: Amy King
Design director: Taylor Le
Deputy design director: Allison Hong
Senior art director: Nicole Vas
Art director: Alejandro Vazquez
Cover typography: Anna Mills
Illustrations: Kaylynn Kim, Abby Ouellette, Helen Quach

Copy chief: Anne Elisabeth Dillon,
Copy editors: Rubaina Azhar, Jim Buzinski, Minh Dang, Rachel Dunn, Lisa Horowitz, Marina Levario, Kevin Leung, Gerard Lim, Hannah Ly, Lynn Meersman, John Penner, Don Ragland, Lee Rogers, Ananya Thyagarajan, Evita Timmons, Kevin Ueda, Paul Ybarrondo

Digital production: Lora Victorio, Beto Alvarez
Audience engagement: Seth Liss

Contributors: Corie Brown, Abigail Siatkowski
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