Published

2 years ago

November 30, 2023

Alice Rush

Longer ago than I care to admit, I was leaving school via a city bus in Chicago.

Heavy, dense snow fell in blankets as the wind-whipped bus careened on icy sheets of road. A little less than a mile to my stop, the bus driver pulled over, opened the door, and in a loud yet tired voice said, “That’s it, y’all. I can’t go on. You have to get out.” While I had visited Chicago as a child many times, this was the first year I was taking the bus regularly to and from school–I was thirteen years old. I sat for a moment in disbelief as my eyes connected with the strong man at the wheel. He looked away with a shrug.

I disembarked and began my walk home going east towards the turbulent Lake Michigan and spotted massive waves threatening to overflow from the concrete barrier built around the road. The wind whistled and moaned in my ears and my eyes were blinded by the wave of white. As I walked, each step felt like plunging into and out of concrete and I found myself becoming sweaty, tired and colder as the wind chilled my sweat. I hoped I wasn’t walking on the road.

Up ahead, I saw someone–a small person–emerge from a pile of snow. I drew closer and realized that she was a little kid, no more than six or seven. Her hair completely matted in snow, wearing only a tattered sweater and ballet slipper-type shoes. My eyes immediately brimmed, and I rushed forward. I started to wipe away the snow from her hair and face and asked if she lived nearby. She nodded–tears streaked her face and her eyes reflected the fear I felt pulsing through my own body. I opened my coat and cocooned her in it as tightly as I could, and began to limp forward against the wind as I tried to keep her feet above the ground.

We reached a condo building about four blocks later that had a small grocery and convenience store and went inside. I took her shoes and socks off and began to warm her feet with my hands. I asked the person working if there were socks that could be given to her–it was an emergency, afterall, but was shut down with a look and bark: “Price of socks is two dollars”. I bought the socks and slid them on her feet as I was trying to find out the girl’s name, phone number, and where she lived. She wouldn’t talk. She was crying and petrified.

Eventually, I was able to call her mother who was one block away and came to take her home. As I walked the rest of the way home, now freezing from the warmth of the building in the wilding wind, I began to process what had happened. I remember feeling shame that I had the basics of a good coat, hat, mittens, a scarf and boots. Guilt ran through me like a cold snake: what kind of world is this where children don’t have what they need? Where people turn each other away? Is this the way life is supposed to be?

I view this experience as being foundational as I walked my path into adulthood towards believing that climate and environmental justice is the only way to address creating a loving and equitable world.

The winter storm that occurred that year in Chicago was one of the biggest Chicago had ever experienced and led to the ouster of the mayor and the election of the first female Mayor of Chicago. It inspired critical infrastructure changes in public services financed by tax dollars; and served as a marker for holding elected leaders responsible for actually serving the public. I recognize today how that two hour event sharpened my worldview on just about everything, and serves as my lived analogy to what is happening in our world today.

Threaded in the destruction, hunger, displacement and death caused by our reliance on fossil fuel is the iniquity of people around the world. We who live with next to nothing, who live on the tentative nature of a paycheck are juxtaposed to those very few who enjoy much, much more than enough. In the ironic twist of fate that often accompanies existential crises, those who have the least are often those who have been colonized, forced into building the infrastructure that those who have the most take for granted on a global level.

Growing my conscientiousness has also deepened my grieving for those who are being forced from their homes to face the hostility of a wildly “cold” world. They, too, do not have the metaphoric coats, boots, mittens and hats to face the climate crisis. Will we as a collective humanity offer succor? If not now, when? If not us, who?

I did not expect that everything I needed to know about the world I would find out at thirteen. As we witness and experience injustices only brought into finer focus through climate change, we have a moment in time to create and make real a just world. I can see this world in my dreams: where we collectively channel our power, leaning into believing in our connectedness with the world and all of its eco- and people- systems. I see this as a brilliant and vibrant tree continually gaining strength as it ages into time.

Today, I am leaning into us: I choose to create connections. It is the only way I know to make my dreams realities. As I prepare to attend COP28, I embrace the possibilities in raising my voice in community and collective consciousness with my brothers and sisters from around the world.

Denise joined the Climate Generation team in May 2020 and leads fundraising and marketing efforts. As Senior Director of Development and Marketing, Denise supports Climate Generation’s team in growing resources to amplify our mission and vision. Denise has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of St. Catherine, and has worked in fundraising and development for 17 years. She has served as the founding chair of the Saint Paul Almanac, as director for the Lex/Ham Community Council, and on the Central Corridor Community Advisory Committee. Denise’s passion is fueling transformative work through collaborative processes, and has worked in early childhood development, employment and health and human services. While new to working directly on environmental issues, Denise has seen the first hand effect of environmental disparity in communities where she has lived and believes that radical, lasting change in who we are as a people will come from uniting around practical and expedient action to restore and nourish the environment.

Denise is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP28. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.

The post Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in a Snowstorm appeared first on Climate Generation.

Everything I Need to Know, I Learned in a Snowstorm

Climate Change

COP Bulletin Day 8: Pope keeps faith in 1.5C

Published

7 hours ago

November 18, 2025

Alice Rush

The United Nations may have accepted that overshooting 1.5C of warming – at least temporarily – is inevitable – but God’s representative on Earth didn’t get the memo.

The new pope, Leo XIV, sent a video message to cardinals from the Global South gathered at the Amazonian Museum in Belém last night, saying “there is still time to keep the rise in global temperature below 1.5°C” although, he warned, “the window is closing.”

“As stewards of God’s creation, we are called to act swiftly, with faith and prophecy, to protect the gift he entrusted to us,” he said, reading from a sheet of paper in front of a portrait of the Vatican.

And he defended the 10-year-old Paris Agreement, saying it has ”driven real progress and remains our strongest tool for protecting people and the planet.” “It is not the Agreement that is failing – we are failing in our response,” he said In particular, the American Pope pointed to“the political will of some.”

“We walk alongside scientists, leaders and pastors of every nation and creed. We are guardians of creation, not rivals for its spoils. Let us send a clear global signal together: nations standing in unwavering solidarity behind the Paris Agreement and behind climate cooperation,” he emphasised.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell welcomed the message, adding that the Pope’s words “challenge us to keep choosing hope and action, honouring our shared humanity and standing with communities all around the world already crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat”.

Former US climate negotiators Trigg Talley and Todd Stern at COP30 on November 17

The post COP Bulletin Day 8: Pope keeps faith in 1.5C appeared first on Climate Home News.

COP Bulletin Day 8: Pope keeps faith in 1.5C

Climate Change

A fast, fair, full, and funded fossil fuel phaseout

Published

7 hours ago

November 18, 2025

Alice Rush

I pause to write this letter in the middle of week one of the 30th UNFCCC Conference of the Parties — the big international climate conference, the space for multilateral decision making to save ourselves from ourselves and rein in the climate crisis. Day two photos showed that a torrential downpour left the blue zone entrance flooded. Mother Nature is present and making her anger known.

This morning I also saw the announcement of Time Magazine’s 100 Climate leaders for 2025. At the top of the list I found the Global Head of Climate Advisory for JP Morgan Chase, Sarah Kapnick. I shook my head, thinking perhaps I was still asleep, and refocused. There it was indeed.

JPMorgan Chase is the world’s largest financier of fossil fuels, having provided over $382 billion since the Paris Agreement, with $53.5 billion in 2024 alone. The bank faces criticism from scientists and activists for its continued large-scale investments, particularly in fossil fuel expansion. How does a person who works for such an institution end up being lauded as a hero working to resolve the climate crisis?

Last week the Guardian released a report from Kick Big Polluters Out showing that over the past four years fossil fuel lobbyists have gained access to negotiation spaces at COP. The roughly 5,350 lobbyists mingling with world leaders and climate negotiators in recent years worked for at least 859 fossil fuel organizations including trade groups, foundations and 180 oil, gas and coal companies involved in every part of the supply chain from exploration and production to distribution and equipment. There are more fossil fuel lobbyists and executives in negotiations than delegates representing the most climate vulnerable countries on the planet.

We’ve known since the late 1800s that greenhouse gas emissions warm the planet. In 1902 a Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius calculated that burning fossil fuels will, over time, lead to a hotter Earth. But the fossil fuel industry followed Big Tobacco’s playbook and despite knowing the truth, waged a multi-decade, multibillion dollar disinformation, propaganda and lobbying campaign to delay climate action by confusing the public and policymakers about the climate crisis and its solutions. See this report from Climate Action Against Disinformation and the Exxon funded think tanks to spread climate change denial in Latin America.

They’ve infiltrated our K-12 classrooms. The Oklahoma Energy Resources Board, a state agency funded by oil and gas producers, has spent upwards of $40m over the past two decades on providing education with a pro-industry bent, including hundreds of pages of curriculums, a speaker series and an after-school program — all at no cost to educators of children from kindergarten to high school. In Ohio students learn about the beauty of fracking. Even Scholastic, a brand trusted by parents and educators, has attached its seal of approval to pro fossil fuel materials. Discovery Education has also embedded pro oil propaganda into its science and stem free resources.

There is no just transition, no possible way to keep our global temperatures to the limit agreed to in Paris ten years ago without a fast and fair phase out of fossil fuels. We know this is possible, during the first half of 2025, renewables generated more electricity than coal. As UN General Secretary António Guterres said in his opening remarks in Belem, “We’ve never been better equipped to fight back… we just lack political courage.”

Next year, I hope that TIME’s Climate 100 is a list of indigenous climate activists from around the world, whose leadership has led us to find the political courage Guterres spoke of, the courage to do the right thing and phase out fossil fuels forever.

Susan Phillips
Executive Director

Photo by Andrea DiCenzo

The post A fast, fair, full, and funded fossil fuel phaseout appeared first on Climate Generation.

A fast, fair, full, and funded fossil fuel phaseout

Climate Change

COP30: Carbon Brief’s second ‘ask us anything’ webinar

Published

1 day ago

November 17, 2025

Alice Rush

As COP30 reaches its midway point in the Brazilian city of Belém, Carbon Brief has hosted its second “ask us anything” webinar to exclusively answer questions submitted by holders of the Insider Pass.

The webinar kicked off with an overview of where the negotiations are on Day 8, plus what it was like to be among the 70,000-strong “people’s march” on Saturday.

At present, there are 44 agreed texts at COP30, with many negotiating streams remaining highly contested, as shown by Carbon Brief’s live text tracker.

Topics discussed during the webinar included the potential of a “cover text” at COP30, plus updates on negotiations such as the global goal on adaptation and the just-transition work programme.

Journalists also answered questions on the potential for a “fossil-fuel phaseout roadmap”, the impact of finance – including the Baku to Belém roadmap, which was released the week before COP30 – and Article 6.

The webinar was moderated by Carbon Brief’s director and editor, Leo Hickman, and featured six of our journalists – half of them on the ground in Belém – covering all elements of the summit: