Climate Generation was founded in 2006 after polar explorer Will Steger’s eyewitness account of climate change in the arctic. Will brought this story back to Minnesota after his experience observing the arctic ice shelf melting, and moved a community of educators, politicians, and climate change communicators to take action. Unlike this rather clean, uncluttered story of Will, my story as an observer of and advocate for climate change hasn’t happened in one place nor am I even able to make sense of it most days. My story paints a picture of a woman who has come to climate awareness and action through many isolated and seemingly unconnected experiences.
Around the time that Will was sharing his story for the first time, I was in my first year of undergrad at college. I was completely unaware of Will and his story. In fact, I didn’t learn about climate change until my second or third year in college. I don’t want to discredit my university, so I will admit that I probably heard about it in some science classes. However, I didn’t really learn about the human-dimensions, like the fact that people caused it, that people’s health is impacted by it, and that we have a responsibility to fix it, until my junior year. Can you imagine a student today going that long—until they were 22—without learning about climate change?
Most youth now, even if they don’t learn about climate change in schools, learn about it online through social media and through their friends. As an educator, youth learning about climate change out in the wild so to speak is scary because of all the misinformation and fear mongering that I know is happening out there.
I grew up bouncing between two predominantly politically conservative communities. My school-year home was in Texas within an education system that taught intelligent design and never talked about climate change. My summer home was in a rural farming community in Iowa which regularly observed the effects of changing weather patterns, but didn’t discuss the depths of climate change within their community. Over twenty-five years later, this experience is strikingly similar to students in some rural and conservative states today suffering from political decisions to remove climate change from schools.
On the farm was where my love of the earth was forged. Daily chores caring for pigs and cows and harvesting corn was where I began to understand peoples’ reliance on animals and the land for food. Hunting, fishing and trapping with my uncles and older cousins taught me the importance of stewardship of wild animals and the ecosystems they rely on. Because of our reliance and interdependence with the outdoors, my family was deeply steeped in conversation about weather. We would check the rain gauge every morning, talk with neighbors about the precipitation predictions for the next week, and worry about the forecast for droughts for the season. Unbeknownst to me, this culture was forming the foundation through which I would become a climate change advocate and educator.
When I graduated in 2009 from college, Climate Generation was three years old, An Inconvenient Truth had recently come out, a coalition of federal partners had recently developed the Climate Literacy Principles, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Fourth Assessment Report warning that serious effects of warming had become evident has just been released. At this time, nearly 50% of U.S. adults believed in climate change and were concerned about its potential impacts. I would say I was one of those, but I definitely wasn’t in conversation with anyone about climate change at the time.
After my summers on the farm, I had finished school and moved to Washington to complete a degree in Environmental and Conservation Studies at the University of Washington. Through my degree, I was trained as a field ecologist and after graduating spent 10 years working on agricultural farms studying the efficiency of bees and other pollinators on crops. My days were spent watching honeybees and native bees busily buzz from flower to flower doing the hard work of making our food. Bees are uniquely attuned and sensitive to weather patterns: they will become less active in cloudy conditions, hide under leaves during a wind burst, and stay in their underground homes during rain for days on end. Watching an insect, who is responsible for producing U.S. crops valued at $50 billion annually, respond to weather patterns this intimately always made me wonder and worry about the larger patterns of climate and how even the smallest of shifts would impact our pollinating insects, and therefore our food supply.
In the roughly 15 years since, the climate change community has made some huge strides in changing the way they communicate about climate change. These strides have increased public acceptance of anthropogenic climate change, up to about 70% across the U.S. now, as well as ushered in some amazing solutions-centered work. U.S. Americans have become more concerned about climate change, and denialism has stayed consistently low. Next Generation Science Standards, which heavily center climate change, were published and adopted or accepted in 42 states! And, in very recent years, the connection between science, education and social justice have become regular features in the education system, and are becoming more wide-spread knowledge in the education system.
In 2020, just three months before the COVID 19 pandemic hit, I was hired as Climate Generation’s Climate Change Education Manager. I had recently gotten my Masters in Education from Rutgers University, and I wasn’t ready to jump into the school setting. At the time, I was completely unaware of the connection between my life as a farm kid, a student who came up through a politically conservative educational system, and a field ecologist to this new role. I applied because I had wanted to apply my knowledge and skills as an educator to something that seemed important.
It’s only through my job at Climate Generation, and the deep relationships I’ve forged with our partners and my colleagues, that I’ve come to understand how our identities throughout our lives can prepare us to understand and overcome the challenges of living through a crisis, such as the climate crises. I am now happy to say that I am a contributing member of the climate change movement, and I’m truly grateful that I work alongside so many people working towards solutions together.
Lindsey Kirkland supports on-going climate change education programs for K-12 educators and public audiences. As the Education Manager, she also develops a vision for and provides strategic coordination for programs focusing primarily on professional development for teachers and informal educators. Lindsey is adjunct faculty at Hamline University and supported the development of their Climate Literacy Certificate, a contributing author of NSTA’s Connect Science Learning journal, and an active member of Climate Literacy and the Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) and the North American Association of Environmental Education (NAAEE) Guidelines for Excellence writing team. Lindsey has served as an environmental educator with the AmeriCorps program the NJ Watershed Ambassadors, worked as a naturalist and education program coordinator for the NJ Audubon Society, and assisted in program development for museums, universities, and new nonprofit organizations in the United States and Australia. Lindsey holds a BS in Environment, Conservation and Fisheries Sciences from the University of Washington in Seattle, WA and a MEd in Science Education from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. In her spare time, Lindsey enjoys spending time with her husband and her son.
The post An Educator’s Messy Journey into Climate Work appeared first on Climate Generation.
Seven Pacific island nations say they will demand heftier levies on global shipping emissions if opponents of a green deal for the industry succeed in reopening negotiations on the stalled accord.
The United States and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to grant final approval to the International Maritime Organization’s Net-Zero Framework (NZF) in October and they are now leading a drive for changes to the deal.
In a joint submission seen by Climate Home News, the seven climate-vulnerable Pacific countries said the framework was already a “fragile compromise”, and vowed to push for a universal levy on all ship emissions, as well as higher fees . The deal currently stipulates that fees will be charged when a vessel’s emissions exceed a certain level.
“For many countries, the NZF represents the absolute limit of what they can accept,” said the unpublished submission by Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.
The countries said a universal levy and higher charges on shipping would raise more funds to enable a “just and equitable transition leaving no country behind”. They added, however, that “despite its many shortcomings”, the framework should be adopted later this year.
US allies want exemption for ‘transition fuels’
The previous attempt to adopt the framework failed after governments narrowly voted to postpone it by a year. Ahead of the vote, the US threatened governments and their officials with sanctions, tariffs and visa restrictions – and President Donald Trump called the framework a “Green New Scam Tax on Shipping”.
Since then, Liberia – an African nation with a major low-tax shipping registry headquartered in the US state of Virginia – has proposed a new measure under which, rather than staying fixed under the NZF, ships’ emissions intensity targets change depending on “demonstrated uptake” of both “low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels”.
The proposal places stringent conditions on what fuels are taken into consideration when setting these targets, stressing that the low- and zero-carbon fuels should be “scalable”, not cost more than 15% more than standard marine fuels and should be available at “sufficient ports worldwide”.
This proposal would not “penalise transitional fuels” like natural gas and biofuels, they said. In the last decade, the US has built a host of large liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, which the Trump administration is lobbying other countries to purchase from.
The draft motion, seen by Climate Home News, was co-sponsored by US ally Argentina and also by Panama, a shipping hub whose canal the US has threatened to annex. Both countries voted with the US to postpone the last vote on adopting the framework.
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IMO head: Shipping decarbonisation “has started” despite green deal delay
Arsenio Dominguez said the shipping industry’s net zero emissions goal is not in dispute although countries have stalled on adopting a framework to reach it -
US-led alliance wins a year’s delay in adoption of green shipping deal
The IMO’s Net-Zero Framework will be up for approval again in October 2026, after the US and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to vote on it as planned
The IMO’s Panamanian head Arsenio Dominguez told reporters in January that changes to the framework were now possible.
“It is clear from what happened last year that we need to look into the concerns that have been expressed [and] … make sure that they are somehow addressed within the framework,” he said.
Patchwork of levies
While the European Union pushed firmly for the framework’s adoption, two of its shipping-reliant member states – Greece and Cyprus – abstained in October’s vote.
After a meeting between the Greek shipping minister and Saudi Arabia’s energy minister in January, Greece said a “common position” united Greece, Saudi Arabia and the US on the framework.
If the NZF or a similar instrument is not adopted, the IMO has warned that there will be a patchwork of differing regional levies on pollution – like the EU’s emissions trading system for ships visiting its ports – which will be complicated and expensive to comply with.
This would mean that only countries with their own levies and with lots of ships visiting their ports would raise funds, making it harder for other nations to fund green investments in their ports, seafarers and shipping companies. In contrast, under the NZF, revenues would be disbursed by the IMO to all nations based on set criteria.
Anais Rios, shipping policy officer from green campaign group Seas At Risk, told Climate Home News the proposal by the Pacific nations for a levy on all shipping emissions – not just those above a certain threshold – was “the most credible way to meet the IMO’s climate goals”.
“With geopolitics reframing climate policy, asking the IMO to reopen the discussion on the universal levy is the only way to decarbonise shipping whilst bringing revenue to manage impacts fairly,” Rios said.
“It is […] far stronger than the Net-Zero Framework that is currently on offer.”
The post Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen
Doubts over whether governments will maintain ambitious targets on boosting the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) are a threat to the industry’s growth and play into the hands of fossil fuel companies, investors warned this week.
Several executives from airlines and oil firms have forecast recently that SAF requirements in the European Union, United Kingdom and elsewhere will be eased or scrapped altogether, potentially upending the aviation industry’s main policy to shrink air travel’s growing carbon footprint.
Such speculation poses a “fundamental threat” to the SAF industry, which mainly produces an alternative to traditional kerosene jet fuel using organic feedstocks such as used cooking oil (UCO), Thomas Engelmann, head of energy transition at German investment manager KGAL, told the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Investor conference in London.
He said fossil fuel firms would be the only winners from questions about compulsory SAF blending requirements.
The EU and the UK introduced the world’s first SAF mandates in January 2025, requiring fuel suppliers to blend at least 2% SAF with fossil fuel kerosene. The blending requirement will gradually increase to reach 32% in the EU and 22% in the UK by 2040.
Another case of diluted green rules?
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, CEO of French oil and gas company TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné said he would bet “that what happened to the car regulation will happen to the SAF regulation in Europe”.
The EU watered down green rules for car-makers in March 2025 after lobbying from car companies, Germany and Italy.
“You will see. Today all the airline companies are fighting [against the EU’s 2030 SAF target of 6%],” Pouyanne said, even though it’s “easy to reach to be honest”.
While most European airline lobbies publicly support the mandates, Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said last year that the SAF is “nonsense” and is “gradually dying a death, which is what it deserves to do”.
EU and UK stand by SAF targets
But the EU and the British government have disputed that. EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said in November that the EU’s targets are “stable”, warning that “investment decisions and construction must start by 2027, or we will miss the 2030 targets”.
UK aviation minister Keir Mather told this week’s investor event that meeting the country’s SAF blending requirement of 10% by 2030 was “ambitious but, with the right investment, the right innovation and the right outlook, it is absolutely within our reach”.
“We need to go further and we need to go faster,” Mather said.
SAF investors and developers said such certainty on SAF mandates from policymakers was key to drawing the necessary investment to ramp up production of the greener fuel, which needs to scale up in order to bring down high production costs. Currently, SAF is between two and seven times more expensive than traditional jet fuel.
Urbano Perez, global clean molecules lead at Spanish bank Santander, said banks will not invest if there is a perceived regulatory risk.
David Scott, chair of Australian SAF producer Jet Zero Australia, said developing SAF was already challenging due to the risks of “pretty new” technology requiring high capital expenditure.
“That’s a scary model with a volatile political environment, so mandate questioning creates this problem on steroids”, Scott said.
Others played down the risk. Glenn Morgan, partner at investment and advisory firm SkiesFifty, said “policy is always a risk”, adding that traditional oil-based jet fuel could also lose subsidies.
Asian countries join SAF mandate adopters
In Asia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Japan have recently adopted SAF mandates, and Matti Lievonen, CEO of Asia-based SAF producer EcoCeres, predicted that China, Indonesia and Hong Kong would follow suit.
David Fisken, investment director at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, said the Australian government, which does not have a mandate, was watching to see how the EU and UK’s requirements played out.
The US does not have a SAF mandate and under President Donald Trump the government has slashed tax credits available for SAF producers from $1.75 a gallon to $1.
Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?
SAF and energy security
SAF’s potential role in boosting energy security was a major theme of this week’s discussions as geopolitical tensions push the issue to the fore.
Marcella Franchi, chief commercial officer for SAF at France’s Haffner Energy, said the Canadian government, which has “very unsettling neighbours at the moment”, was looking to produce SAF to protect its energy security, especially as it has ample supplies of biomass to use as potential feedstock.
Similarly, German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall said last year it was working on plans that would enable European armed forces to produce their own synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel “locally and independently of global fossil fuel supply chain”.
Scott said Australia needs SAF to improve its fuel security, as it imports almost 99% of its liquid fuels.
He added that support for Australian SAF production is bipartisan, in part because it appeals to those more concerned about energy security than tackling climate change.
The post Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn appeared first on Climate Home News.
Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn
Climate Change
Southern Right Whales Are Having Fewer Calves; Scientists Say a Warming Ocean Is to Blame
After decades of recovery from commercial whaling, climate change is now threatening the whales’ future.
Southern right whales—once driven to near-extinction by industrial hunting in the 19th and 20th centuries—have long been regarded as a conservation success. After the International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in the 1980s, populations began a slow but steady rebound. New research, however, suggests climate change may be undermining that recovery.
Southern Right Whales Are Having Fewer Calves; Scientists Say a Warming Ocean Is to Blame
Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen
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