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.
Jackie Chesnutt, who lives outside San Angelo, is tired of pollution from wells she says should have been plugged years ago. Experts say Texas rules allow companies to defer plugging wells for far too long.
Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
Low-Producing Oil Wells in Texas Cause Headaches for Landowners
An interview with author Catherine Coleman Flowers.
The fourth installment in our special Earth Day series
When the sciences and the humanities; democracy and ecology, are all under common and increasing attack, the efforts of independent experts and researchers matter more than ever.
David Ritter
So often in life, our most authentic moments of joy are the result of years of shared effort, and the culmination of a kind of deep faith in what is possible.
A few weeks ago, I had the honour of being in Canberra, along with some fellow environmentalists and scientists, to witness the enactment of the High Seas Biodiversity Bill 2026 by our federal parliament.
This was the moment that the Global Ocean Treaty—one of the most significant environmental agreements of our time—was given force through a domestic Australian law.
If you are part of the great Greenpeace family, you will know exactly why this was such a huge deal. The high seas make up around 60 per cent of the Earth’s surface and for too long, they have been subjected to open plunder. Now, for the first time in human history, there is an international instrument that enables the creation of massive high seas sanctuaries within which the ocean can be protected. This is a monumental collective achievement by Greenpeace and all the other groups who have campaigned for high seas marine sanctuaries for many years.
But as momentous as the ratification was, the parliamentary proceedings were distinctly lacking in drama or fanfare–so much so, that Labor MP backbencher Renee Coffey felt the need to gesture to those of us in the gallery with a grin, to indicate that the process was over and done.
The modesty of the moment had me thinking about the decades of quiet dedication by many hands that are invariably required to achieve great social change. In particular, I found myself thinking about researchers. So much of the expert academic work that underpins achievements like the Global Ocean Treaty is slow, painstaking, solitary—and often out of sight.
I think of the persistence and tenacity of researchers as an expression of love, founded in an authentic sense of wonder and curiosity about the world—and frequently linked to a deep ethical desire to protect that source of wonderment.
In 2007, one of the very first things I was given to read after starting with Greenpeace as an oceans campaigner in London was a report entitled Roadmap to Recovery: A global network of marine reserves. Specific physical sensations can tend to stick in the mind from periods of personally significant transitions, and the tactile reminiscence of holding the thin cardboard of the modest grey cover of that report is deeply embedded in my memory. I suspect I still even have that original copy in a box somewhere.
Written by a team of scientists led by Professor Callum Roberts, a marine conservation biologist from the University of York, the Roadmap provided the first scientifically informed vision of a large-scale global network of high seas marine sanctuaries, protecting the world’s oceans at scale. Of course, twenty years ago, this idea felt more like utopian science fiction, because there was no Global Oceans Treaty. But what seemed fanciful at the start of this century is now possible-–and I have every confidence the creation of large scale high seas marine sanctuaries will now happen through the application of ongoing campaigning effort—but we would never have gotten this far without the dedication of researchers, driven by their love of the oceans. And now here we are, with the ability for humanity to legally protect the high seas for the first time.
Campaigning and research so often work hand in hand like this: the one identifying the need and the solutions; the other driving the change. Because in a world of powerful vested interests, good science alone doesn’t shift decision makers—that takes activism and campaigning—but equally, there must be a basis of evidence and reason on which to build our public advocacy.
So, I want to take a moment to think with love and appreciation for everyone who has contributed to making this possible. I’ve never met the team of scientists who authored the original Roadmap, so belatedly but sincerely, then, to Leanne Mason, Julie P. Hawkins, Elizabeth Masden, Gwilym Rowlands, Jenny Storey and Anna Swift—and to every other researcher and scientist who has been involved in demonstrating why the Global Oceans Treaty has been so badly needed over the years—thank you for your commitment and devotion.
And to everyone out there who continues to believe that evidence and truth matter, and that our magnificent, fragile world deserves our respectful curiosity and study as an expression of our awe and enchantment, thank you for your conscientiousness.
When the sciences and the humanities; democracy and ecology, are all under common and increasing attack, the efforts of independent experts and researchers matter more than ever. You have Greenpeace’s deepest gratitude. Every day, we build on the foundations of your work and dedication. Thank you.
Q & A
I have been asked several times in recent weeks what the ongoing war means for the renewable energy transition in Australia.
While some corners of the fossil fuel lobby and the politicians captured by these vested interests have been very quick to use this crisis to call for more oil exploration and gas pipelines, the reality is that the current energy crisis has revealed the commonsense case for renewable energy.
As many, including climate and energy minister Chris Bowen have noted, renewable energy is affordable, inexhaustible, and sovereign—its supply cannot be blocked by warmongers or conflict. People intuitively know this; it’s why sales of electric cars have climbed to an all-time high, it’s why interest in rooftop solar and batteries has skyrocketed in recent months.
The reality is that oil and gas are to blame for much of the cost-of-living pain we’re feeling right now; fossil fuels are the disease, not the cure. If Australia were further along in our renewable energy transition and EV uptake, we would be much better insulated from petrol and gas price shocks and supply chain disruptions.
Yes, we need short-term solutions to ease the very real cost-of-living pressures that Australian communities and workers are facing as a result of fuel shortages. While replacement supplies is no doubt a valid step for now—Greenpeace is also backing taxes on the war profits of gas corporations to fund relief measures for Australians—in the long term, we will only get off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel dependency and price volatility if we break free from fossil fuels and accelerate progress towards an energy system built on 100% renewable energy, backed by storage.
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