Our climate change challenge

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.”

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

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

How do we fix our warming planet? 12 young essayists share their hopes, their outrage and strategies for change

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

— David Luong, freshman at Cal State Fullerton

My town became environmentally conscious and so did I

By Alyssa Jaipursaud

Sometimes we have to escalate to be heard when demanding a livable future

By Sim Bilal

‘Pick up a rake, get dirty, and then you’ll be protecting the land’

By Isaac Michael Ybarra

What will happen if someone you love has asthma and can’t breathe?

by Madar Mee

Meet the Long Beach student who fought for green schools — and won

By Diana Michaelson

Just out of high school and blockading the door to JD Vance’s office

By Simon Aron

‘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

How do I feel? Terrified — but action is essential

By David Luong

Climate change and the case for nuclear fusion

By Abbot Swartz

Plastic is what’s forming our future, and it’s killing us

By Sophia Perez

We should brainstorm ways to reduce, reuse and recycle

By Calvin Hong

He started his climate activism in kindergarten

By Declan McAdams

Greenhouse gases are bad for the Earth

By Alden Hong

To fix climate anxiety (and also climate change), we first have to fix individualism

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

‘It’s almost shameful to want to have children’

‘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?

Feeling climate anxiety? These books offer glimmers of hope — and much-needed wisdom

Comic: Emerging from environmental dissociation

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.

Some L.A. teachers, tired of waiting, are creating their own climate curriculum

An oasis where kids learn to be climate literate amid trees, flower beds and herbs

Welcome to the farm where cows, pigs and sheep are part of the climate curriculum

Lessons in (fifth-grade) chemistry: Earth ‘has a fever’ from burning fossil fuels

‘Social justice and equity are built into everything we teach’

Children are glued to screens. Are ‘forest schools’ the antidote?

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.

Hotter, drier and all-around different: How climate change will alter your life in L.A.

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

Column: Young climate voters were tired of Biden. They’ve embraced Harris — mostly

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

For these California kids, the fight against climate change is personal

From protests to court and legislative campaigns, California youths have been loud voices against climate change. They’ve experienced environmental disasters firsthand.

Climate warriors fighting some of humanity’s ‘greatest crises’

A key ally in the battle against climate change? People over 60

Gen Z: Will they finally solve the plastic crisis?

Protest is everywhere. But climate activists have the monopoly on art — for now

Climate disasters can elicit despair when they go viral. These activists found inspiration

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.’

Scientists become a source of hope and information on TikTok, Instagram

How can we save ourselves from drowning in garbage?

Try to save the planet from burning up in this board game

How to navigate the green economy: Here are four success stories

The fast fashion mountain of shame is real

Our discarded clothing continues to clog waterways, char the skies with toxic smoke and ruin places where other people live, including Chile and Ghana.

The great paradox in retail: Great prices but bad-for-the-planet fast fashion

Can anything slow fast fashion down? Lawmakers are giving it a go

They escaped a world of fast fashion to teach L.A. how to give old clothes new life