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Me, a climate activist? That feels hard to claim. And yet, if someone were to read the book of my life, I think they would find a climate story.
It started with many moments. Seeds planted over time. Hot summer days at Spring Brook Nature Center, the sensation of cool water and earth seeping into my clothing while I waded waist-deep into the mud of a swamp. In long hikes, stars, and swimming in the Boundary Waters. In home gardens, eating fresh fruits and vegetables picked straight from the vine. In the inquiry posed by my elementary school science teacher while we looked out on the asphalt surrounding our school. “How can we call our school North Park? Where is the green? Where are all the trees?” At church, where I learned that the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and respect for the interconnected web of all life are two of the seven Unitarian Universalist principles.
Seeds of joy, wonder, curiosity, respect, responsibility, and care. In the unencumbered child’s spirit that yearned for all the world to share in those gifts.
Any single instance is hard to pinpoint as the source of my climate story, but somewhere along the way, these ideas took root.
They took root in drawing designs for solar and wind-powered hovercrafts. In diving into the science behind hydrogen cars. In attempting to join my church’s green team as an elementary schooler (only to find dysfunctional adults arguing amongst themselves). It manifested in middle school art projects, in a high school newspaper article about my school’s resource use, and in the topics I chose for college essays and research projects.
Yet, even through this sustained thread, I found that many of the ways I attempted to engage with climate work felt wrong. Somehow ineffective, inadequate, out of touch, or even draining. Particularly as I became an adult, where I had imagined that greater agency would translate to greater ability to create meaningful impact.
I entered college as a mechanical engineering student thinking I would design clean energy solutions. Solar panels and wind turbines, or maybe bioreactors and geothermal systems, but found myself miserable and uninspired, realizing that much of what we needed was actually implementation rather than new technology. In my career, I took on jobs in businesses and nonprofits that promised environmental work that, in reality, felt exploitative to myself and others. I “volunteered” for teams in environmental organizations where I became nothing but a face on the other end of a Zoom call for an hour and a half every other week. Underutilized by a complete lack of strategy and action. Even when I found community groups moving in the right direction, the roles I was asked to play failed to take advantage of my unique skills and passions, resulting in a constant churn of unfulfilling work. This made motivation an uphill battle that built frustration, sadness, and shame to the point of burnout.
Early in my time working here at Climate Generation, I attended our Talk Climate Gathering and was asked, as part of an activity, to draw what I thought of when I heard the words “climate change.”
Out of my hand and onto the page went black scribbles.
Fuzz balls
floating on the white space of my blank paperSolitary
Alone
Sometimes even drawn in boxes
I thought I would draw the earth.
I thought I would draw people, or animals, or plants, or water, or fire, or oil, or coal, or smogBut I drew angry, scribbly, sad dots
Lacking in cohesion and connection
they did not communicate with each other.
Maybe, to me, climate change is like an old TV screen where the antenna can’t quite catch the signal
Our colorful gifts failing to shine through. Failing to connect with one another,
Our world becomes fuzzy and confused.That is really what I think is at the center of the climate crisis.
This crisis period.
My experience is like one of those grey, fuzzy dots. Unaware of the shape of my own gifts. Molded into roles for much too long that made me grey.
For phrases like “girls in STEM” and for feeling the weight of letting down women, I almost got a degree that I did not want. For “we would love to have a young person’s perspective in leadership,” I took on a role that felt taxing and brought me shame because I did not have the time or passion to do it well.
More than, or maybe I should say underlying, carbon, and pollution, and energy, and extraction
Is the notion that we whisper to one another
The thing that our institutions silently and invisibly uphold
That has bled into, and poisoned our culturethat we are separate
that we can and should live apart
that we are not one
Connection lacking, not just between each other and the planet but even with ourselves.
But, I am learning. I am reconnecting with the shape and color and texture of my passions and my gifts.
In early April of 2023, I got to see the author Akwake Emezi speak at Power Shift, a youth climate justice leadership conference held in New Orleans. They said the thing I knew but could not yet articulate — my experience put into words. That we all have our own roles in this movement. That they don’t all look the same. That just because they are different doesn’t mean they are not needed.
There is no prescribed way, no absolute “how” for climate work, for building a more just and abundant world. It doesn’t have to be big or flashy. Activism is finding that place where your skills and passion most effectively meet the needs of the world. What we really need is to connect with ourselves, to know our gifts, and to learn what we might offer. To balance saying yes and putting in the effort with the understanding that finding where your gifts shine is an act of trial and error. Requiring us to say “actually I think right now this is not the role for me,” so that we can find what is. And, knowing deeply, that we must do this work together, through relationship, in community.
We do not have to be lone isolated dots with no color. We are actually an inseparable part of a vibrant technicolor image.
I am so thankful for the many justice spaces that have opened my eyes to our disconnect. That showed me its relationship to extraction, capitalism, and white supremacy. That taught me to listen to the guides that are discomfort and joy and to have gratitude for the direction they give me.
My work now, I feel, is to build deep, loving community. To build spaces where we reconnect to ourselves, the planet, and each other. The small but persistent work of building relationships that by their very nature of connecting through listening and learning, are the antithesis of the systems that hold us back. Relationships that are strong and deep and can provide support in challenging times. That can be called on to make change.
On my desk, I have written in bold words, “Why I Do This Work: I believe we have the power to bring about a just and compassionate world beyond the climate crisis.” Fighting for climate, for people, for planet, that is the work I do in both my professional and personal life. I believe, though imperfectly and through much trial and error, that I am moving steadily forward.
I share my story, this tangled weaving mess, to say, don’t give in to the voice that says what you bring is not enough or not right, your impact is too small. That you started too late. That you must know more to begin. That you must do it alone.
This work needs all of us and in the end we are the first and last barrier to our own action. So don’t let you say you’re not.
Let us grow our gifts together.
If you are feeling disconnected or a little unsure in your work to create a better world, I have included some resources below that I have found to be particularly helpful or helped create for this purpose.
How to Find Joy in Climate Action | Ayana Elizabeth Johnson | TED
10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won – Daniel Hunter
Active Hope Foundations Training
Climate Generation’s Pledge to Co-Create a Just and Abundant World
Claire grew up in the Twin Cities and currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota on the ancestral and contemporary lands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe. She went to college at the University of Minnesota where she obtained a degree in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. Claire sees the climate crisis as one of the greatest issues facing humans today and as an issue deeply entwined with environmental racism and other forms of oppression. She feels very fortunate to be contributing to the creation of just climate solutions in her role as Programs Coordinator, where she utilizes her strategic planning and organizing skills to support Climate Generation’s education, youth, and policy programs staff in their impactful work. In her free time, Claire enjoys swing dancing, attempting gymnastics, reading, eating ice cream, hanging out in nature, and loving her pet bunnies.
The post Don’t Let You Say You’re Not appeared first on Climate Generation.
https://climategen.org/blog/dont-let-you-say-youre-not/
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An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
This guest post is by:
- Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor
- Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, chair of mathematical modelling of climate systems at the University of Exeter and part of the Global Carbon Project team.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
The 21st edition of the annual “global carbon budget” report, published today, says that this small decline is largely due to a 1.9% drop in emissions from oil and the energy shock triggered by the Iran conflict and the closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Emissions from coal continue to increase slightly.
The Global Carbon Project’s projections for fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions in 2026 are preliminary, with a range that spans a fall of -1.5% to a rise of +0.6%.
This means a small increase in emissions can not be ruled out.
Emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation, are projected to rise in 2026.
This is primarily driven by peat fires and forest degradation in south-east Asia and is linked to the development of a strong El Niño event this year.
As a result, total CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and land use are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026 – marginally above 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
Research published alongside the report by the same team in Nature Climate Change finds that the growth in solar, wind and electric vehicles (EVs) now offsets around two-thirds of the emissions that would otherwise come from rising energy demand.
However, the deployment of these technologies is not yet enough to push global emissions into a sustained decline, according to the study.
The 2026 global carbon budget report also estimates that:
- Fossil emissions are projected to fall in China (-0.9%), the US (-1.3%) and the EU (-1.5%) in 2026, but rise by 4.4% in India.
- Oil emissions are projected to fall in every major region, with the largest drop in China (-4.6%).
- Land-use emissions averaged 4.9GtCO2 per year over 2016-25, around 21% lower than the decade before.
- Total CO2 emissions (fossil and land-use) grew by an average 0.3% per year over the past decade (2016-25), compared with 1.7% per year over the decade before.
- The remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C is 150GtCO2, or less than four years of current emissions.
- The land sink in 2025 was the highest on record, rebounding after being weakened during the 2023-24 El Niño. The current El Niño is expected to weaken the land sink in 2027.
- The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is set to reach 427.7 parts per million (ppm) in 2026, 54% above pre-industrial levels.
(For more on previous editions of the Global Carbon Project’s annual report, see Carbon Brief’s coverage in 2025, 2024, 2023 and 2022.)
Total emissions edge up as land-use emissions rise
Total global CO2 emissions, which combines fossil fuels and land-use change, are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026, up from 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
The increase in 2026 comes entirely from a projected rise in land-use emissions, which are more challenging to estimate than fossil emissions.
(The global carbon budget groups emissions from fossil fuels and cement production as “fossil emissions”. Carbon Brief follows this convention throughout this piece.)
If land-use emissions had stayed at 2025 levels, total emissions would have fallen slightly in 2026 to around 42.6GtCO2.
Each edition of the global carbon budget updates the historical record as new data and methods become available. The chart below shows total emissions in this year’s budget compared with the five previous editions.