Reverend William J. Barber II
Co-Chair of the Poor People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival.
"Millions of Americans are finding ways to consume less energy and produce less pollution. Millions more support the clean and renewable energy sources that creation offers us. A new moral vision and a still more perfect union are being born right now in our cities, towns, and rural communities, in our streets, churches, and community organizations, especially among young people who respect climate science and refuse empty ideologies. I am confident that this movement will build a new America where we stop the madness, honor all creation, and change our leaders and our lives to save our children and our world.”
Robert Bullard
Author and professor, Texas Southern University, known as "The Father of Environmental Justice"
"I am encouraged by the diverse community-based and regional coalitions mobilizing around climate mitigation and adaptation planning, sustainability, resilience, and disaster response and recovery—all viewed through an equity and justice lens. For them, climate change is more than ‘parts per million’ and greenhouse gases. Climate justice is also racial justice. The recent ‘monster’ hurricanes (Irma, Harvey, Maria, Florence, and Michael) attest to the urgency of the problem. Many students and young adults have mobilized around climate change. This growing youth energy is best represented by the work of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Climate Change Consortium—founded in 2011 with five black colleges. Today, the consortium has grown to more than three-dozen members and has held six annual climate change conferences.”
Jamie Margolin
High school junior, Founder and President of Zero Hour
"What makes me hopeful for the future is the youth I work with, really. We’re just a bunch of broke high school kids who just work hard. Every day we get onto conference calls ready to work, ready to organize—mass mobilizations, mass actions, social media campaigns, and real-life campaigns. In terms of solutions, we have everything we need. We have everything we need to start this transition, there’s no reason to wait, and the only reason we haven’t gotten there is because of these massive industries corrupting government and stopping it from happening. I feel like we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
Bill McKibben
Author and environmentalist, Co-founder of 350.org
"I think that money is the oxygen on which the fire of global warming burns, so I’m very glad to see that the fossil fuel divestment campaign keeps growing by leaps and bounds. Meanwhile, in its official pronouncements, Shell was declaring divestment a material risk, and the oil industry was organizing panels and seminars about how to somehow beat back the tide. It’s not just that divestment is taking money from the industry; it’s robbing them of their social license, too. This is one pathway, of a dozen or more important strategies—but it’s clearly taking a real toll.”
Mary Robinson
The Mary Robinson Foundation--Climate Justice, former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Former President of Ireland
"What gives me hope is that we follow the example of the ambition of small countries such as the Marshall Islands who have pledged to have reached net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.”
Bryan Parras
Co-founder of the Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, Gulf Coast Organizer of the Sierra Club's Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign
"The People’s Tribunal on Hurricane Harvey Recovery was held August 24-25 at Texas Southern University in order to [highlight] the first-hand accounts of Hurricane Harvey’s flooding, and the slow and ongoing recovery effort. It engaged attendees in imagining creative, people-first solutions. Together, attendees shined a light on solutions to overlapping crises to make Houston more resilient for the inevitable climate disasters to come.”
Eddie Bautista
Executive Director of the New York Environmental Justice Alliance
"As the Trump Administration continues to roll back regulations and stall climate action, the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance has advanced some of the most progressive climate policies in the nation. NY Renews is an unprecedented, cross-sector, statewide coalition of community-based organizations, unions, and other advocates fighting for climate policies grounded in equity and justice. It is pressing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and the legislature to adopt the Climate and Community Protection Act, a framework that puts the state of New York on a path to 100 percent renewable energy across all sectors by 2050.”
Tara Houska
Ojibwe Attorney, National Campaigns Director of Honor the Earth
"The centering of the voices of impacted peoples and rights holders is steadily taking larger hold within the environmental movement, which has spurred greater response and a sense of urgency to our collective efforts. Indigenous-led resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline reached a worldwide audience. The fearlessness of those willing to sacrifice their freedom or their very lives to defend the futures of our children is inspiring, it is beautiful, it gives me hope that we may yet come together, without agenda or self-interest, to truly stand together and fight the greatest threat facing humankind.”