My climate story is inextricably interwoven with that of my 21 year old daughter, Bella.
As an educator, I have been focused on connecting kids and nature throughout my career, so I felt the weight and urgency of the climate crisis early on. But having kids of my own added another layer. I’ve heard people say that having kids is like pulling your heart out and watching it walk around. I strongly relate to that intense desire to protect them, and I’ve learned the hard way that it’s no easy task, especially now.
I did my best to raise my kids with a strong sense of their place in the natural world – engaging in habitat restoration, watching the full moon rise over Lake Michigan and some light pagan rituals to celebrate the seasons. I homeschooled my son because I didn’t want him to spend his days indoors, under the fluorescent lights. When it was time for my kids to go to the school, I ran the garden there, making sure every kid got to spend some time outside, hands in the soil.
Through my work at a local nature center, I learned and appreciated the guideline “no tragedies before third grade,” so I did my best to shield my own kids from the realities of environmental degradation, including the climate crisis. Yet, somehow Bella tuned in. (Did I fail to protect her?) I think she was 7 when she became adamant that we get rid of the car. We would try periods of only biking, but there would inevitably be meltdowns and failed errands. I tried to assure her that we were living with care. I told her that there were many smart adults working hard to fix the situation. That was all I had.
Fast forward to 2018, Bella’s Junior year of high school. That year, my dad died in June, my dog died in July, and in August, Bella left for a year abroad in Ecuador. It was rough. Days after she left, I flew to Los Angeles for Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership training, feeling a need to do everything in my power to address the source of her anxiety and to find a way to make a difference in this monolithic challenge. The training was simultaneously heartening, heartbreaking and infuriating.
When Bella returned, we went to Minneapolis where I was a mentor and Bella a trainee in Gore’s program. In retrospect, I realize that about sixty percent of his presentation consists of devastating images of people suffering from climate disasters, which I fear might not have the desired effect. However, I was happy that this training had more of a focus on climate justice. The training also provided many useful tools, not the least of which was the storytelling workshop conducted by Climate Generation, which has been formative for both me and Bella. She even used her story as a reference in a college course.
In September of 2019, soon after our Climate Reality Training, there was a Global Climate Strike. Bella and I, along with her peers and another mother/child pair, worked together to organize a highly successful strike in our town. “Peer pressure is my superpower,” Bella said as she enlisted dozens of students to help and hundreds to walk out of school. The group that worked on the strike ultimately became a Sunrise Movement Hub that is still going strong.
Students spoke to the school board about their climate stories, demanding stronger sustainability policy. The school formed a Sustainability Committee with students, teachers and community experts. I remember it as an energizing time. But Bella remembers it as a painful time. Despite the countless hours she and her peers were putting forward, she couldn’t see real progress being made. (I can now see the long term impacts of this chapter, but it’s been slow.)
Bella burned out on climate action for a while. I have to wonder if I contributed to this in my effort to support her in trying to “turn anxiety into action.” While many of her peers struggled during the pandemic, Bella’s climate consciousness added a painful layer. She has had trouble finding her place in the movement. Though she has engaged in many ways, she hasn’t found the way to have the impact she’s looking for.
As for me, I also burned out on local action for a while, driven by that sense of urgency. But I have found ways of doing this work that work for me.
I have the great fortune of working for It’s Our Future, a program supporting Chicago area high school students in their climate justice advocacy work. I reflect often on what lessons I have learned from my experience with Bella that can ease the way for the students I work with. I foster community among youth and support and mentor them in their efforts while encouraging them to take care of themselves, to celebrate wins, and to have fun.
Recently, Bella got some fringe media attention with the headline “Lone Climate Activist in an Apocalyptic Times Square.” My brother saw the video and asked if she was ok. In fact, I think she’s great. She felt her feelings, shouted her truth, and when the smoke cleared, she was out dancing -finding her joy. What a great model of how to live in this world.
The next chapter in this mother-daughter story involves mindfulness, somatics, and more of a spiritual journey. Bella works in the Religious and Spiritual life office at her school where she hosts climate grief circles. I had the opportunity to help facilitate a retreat based on Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects. Macy highlights that the pain and grief we feel is rooted in love – for other people and other species.
As we work to embrace dualities, finding ways to hold both; grief and joy, rage and determination, I am profoundly grateful for this shared chapter with Bella. While we are not together geographically, it’s an incredible gift to continue in conversation, finding ways to support each other in feeling our feelings, speaking our truths, experiencing joy, and doing our best to make an impact.
Rachel is the passionate and grateful Program Manager for It’s Our Future where she mentors young people in the fight for climate justice. She lives near the shores of Lake Michigan and the great city of Chicago in an empty nest with her husband Colin and their old dog, Bear.
The post Bella and Me: A Mother-Daughter Climate Story appeared first on Climate Generation.
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
Climate Change
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
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