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Meet the 16-year-old who went viral after asking Dianne Feinstein to support a Green New Deal

by DRZDemetri Posted on February 26, 2019

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Isha Clarke, a junior at MetWest High School in Oakland, California, was one of about a dozen young people who confronted Senator Dianne Feinstein in an attempt to convince her to endorse the Green New Deal resolution proposed earlier this month by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, and Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts.

The group went into the meeting with high hopes. They emerged disappointed but armed with footage that enraged many in the online environmental community who believe the U.S. needs to remake its economy to tackle climate change.

An edited video of the encounter in the foyer of the California Democrat’s San Francisco office went viral on Twitter over the weekend. A longer version ends with the Senator promising Clarke an internship, a reflection that Feinstein, who has been in office for three decades, knows “how to play the game,” according to The Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan.

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Clarke is a member of the climate group Youth vs. Apocalypse, a young people-led organization under the umbrella of the Bay Area’s chapter of the climate advocacy group 350.org. (Editor’s note: Grist board member Bill McKibben is 350.org’s founder.) She was invited to speak at a rally outside of Feinstein’s California office organized by the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate activist organization, and attended by social justice outfit Bay Area Earth Guardians. She then joined the Earth Guardians and Sunrise activists when they met with Feinstein in her office.

Grist caught up with Clarke on Monday to discuss the online reaction to the Feinstein meeting, the Green New Deal resolution, why she’s fighting for climate justice at the tender age of 16, and of course, the internship the Senator promised her. (This conversation has been edited for clarity.)

Q. What was your impression of Senator Feinstein’s reaction to your request?

A. Our feeling about the whole interaction was really bad. At the end of the day, it’s not about her, it’s not about her tone or her reaction, it’s about her vote. We’re focusing on the fact that we went there to ask her to vote yes on the Green New Deal because that is the most important thing. We’re not really concerned with all the other stuff. It’s sort of becoming a distraction, you know?

Q. Did you expect her to say, “Yes I support the version of the Green New Deal” when you confronted her?

A. Yes. We really just wanted her to say that she was in solidarity with us — and that when it comes to her time to vote she would vote yes. I didn’t know that she necessarily opposed it, but I knew that she hadn’t made up her mind yet. I was there to get her to be on the side of “yes.”

Q. Senator Feinstein handed out copies of what she referred to as her “own Green New Deal” during that meeting. What did you think of it?

A. It’s simply not bold enough, and it doesn’t align with science. It doesn’t talk about fracking or offshore drilling, green jobs, or transportation. I also don’t think it takes a bold enough stance on economic or racial justice. It’s really just a watered-down version of the Green New Deal.

Feinstein made the argument that she didn’t think that AOC’s Green New Deal would pass, but quite frankly, neither will her resolution. If we’re going to be offering something to Congress it needs to be something bold. Honestly, right now, it’s more about getting our politicians to take a serious public stance on the Green New Deal and start building the momentum so that when [Democrats] do take back the Senate, and we have more of a political force, we can go right into the Green New Deal. We know that it might not pass but it’s about solidarity.

Q. Did you ask Feinstein for the internship or did she offer it?

A. After the whole interaction, we were leaving and I wanted to bring it back to the purpose [of the meeting], and thank her for her time, because I recognize that she’s a busy lady. She said, ‘Thank you and I really want you to have an internship here so you can understand what it’s like and understand all of the nuance and things like that.’ And then she started to walk away, and I wanted to hold her to that. I mean she just offered me an internship, so I was the one who asked her how I would do that. And the cameras had started walking away so they only heard me asking for the internship. But she had actually brought it up, and I was just following through.

Q. Has her office reached out since Friday?

A. They haven’t reached out. I have their business card. I’m still debating on whether or not I’m going to take [the internship]. It’s a complex situation. The reason why I would take the internship is because I think it’s an incredible opportunity. To be blunt, you have to learn how to play the game to change it. So I think it is a super cool way to be able to do that, and to learn the ins and outs. And I think that it’s also important to have my voice be in the room.

But I wouldn’t take it for a couple of reasons. No. 1: I don’t know what the internship actually entails. Sometimes high school students just do paperwork, and that’s not what I’m interested in. But mostly it’s because I don’t want my having an internship with her to turn into a justification for the whole situation. It’s already kind of being used like that. People are saying, ‘There was a happy ending, and Senator Feinstein offered a girl an internship and whoopdeedoo.’ And I don’t want me having a position there to be a way to cover up everything that just happened.

Q.You have spoken out about gun reform in the past. Now you’re talking about climate. As a politically-active student with limited time, how do you decide which issues to fight for?

A. I am a young woman of color, so I feel drawn to a lot of issues. Part of the reason why I’m working on the Green New Deal right now is because I think it is the most intersectional plan that I’ve seen ever, and it really excites me that I can work for everything I believe in in this one deal. It encompasses economic justice, climate justice, racial justice, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, all of that can be part of the Green New Deal.

You can’t separate climate justice from any other justices because they’re all-in-one. So when I’m fighting for climate justice, I’m fighting for everything else, too.

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Meet the 16-year-old who went viral after asking Dianne Feinstein to support a Green New Deal

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It’s time for California to let some of its thirsty farmland go

by EdwardStreet Posted on February 21, 2019

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It’s time for California to let some of its thirsty farmland go

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Trump is considering a fervent climate denier to lead a White House panel assessing climate change risk

by HanneloScollen Posted on February 21, 2019

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Trump is considering a fervent climate denier to lead a White House panel assessing climate change risk

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I love taking long-distance trains. Here’s why I’m thrilled Amtrak might cut them back.

by BaileyBerman36 Posted on February 21, 2019

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I love taking long-distance trains. Here’s why I’m thrilled Amtrak might cut them back.

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Paris Agreement has gone up in smoke, new paper says

by DessieCowen315 Posted on February 20, 2019

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Paris Agreement has gone up in smoke, new paper says

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RIP Wallace Broecker, the scientist who changed the way we think about the climate

by RolandoBindon Posted on February 20, 2019

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Wallace Broecker, the geochemist who popularized the phrase “global warming,” passed away on Monday at 87. His research changed our understanding of oceans and how we think and talk about climate change.

“The climate system is an angry beast, and we are poking it with sticks,” he said some 20 years ago.

His landmark 1975 paper “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” was one of the first to use the term “global warming.” In it, he predicted the rise in average global temperature over the next 35 years with stunning accuracy.

Broecker, who wrote roughly 17 books and 500 research papers over the course of his career at Columbia University, conducted groundbreaking research on the “ocean conveyor belt,” a pattern of currents that circulates water around the globe and regulates heat. He suggested that it’s the “Achilles heel of the climate system,” as even a small rise in temperatures could snap it.

Ever seen the movie The Day After Tomorrow, where global warming plays havoc with that conveyor belt, a tidal wave engulfs Manhattan, and much of the Northern Hemisphere turns to ice? It’s based on Broecker’s ideas — though, granted, it’s a wild exaggeration.

After some credited Broecker for coining “global warming” in 1975, he offered $200 to any student who could find an earlier citation. One postgrad took him up and tracked it down in a 1957 editorial in Indiana’s Hammond Times. Alas, the term is slightly older than that: The Oxford English Dictionary traces its usage back to a 1952 article from the San Antonio Express.

In any case, “global warming” was certainly catchier than “inadvertent climate modification,” a clunky phrase used by Broecker’s contemporaries in the 1970s. So global warming it was. The usage became widespread in the late ’80s, when NASA climate scientist James Hansen famously warned Congress of the risks of rising greenhouse gases.

Broecker “warned that he would turn over in his grave if someone put ‘global warming’ on his tombstone,” according to an article from Columbia’s Earth Institute. Instead, he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered in the ocean he spent his life studying.

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RIP Wallace Broecker, the scientist who changed the way we think about the climate

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Scientist who resisted censorship of climate report lost her job

by meciurilivetenis Posted on February 17, 2019

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This story was originally published by Reveal and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

For several years, climate change scientist Maria Caffrey led a trailblazing study outlining the risks of rising seas at national parks. After Friday, she’ll be out of a job.

Caffrey, who worked under a contract with the National Park Service, resisted efforts by federal officials to remove all references to human causes of climate change in her scientific report. After Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting reported the attempts at censorship, Democratic members of Congress called for an investigation, and last May, the park service released the report with all the references reinstated.

Caffrey’s contract expires on Friday. Park service officials told her last year that they would hire her for a new project. But they notified her today that no funding is available for the work.

Caffrey said she asked her supervisor at the park service, “Is this because of the climate change stuff?” She said he told her, “I don’t want to answer that.” Park service officials did not respond to questions from Reveal about why Caffrey wasn’t rehired. But spokesperson Jeremy Barnum said it was not because she spoke out against the editing of the climate report.

Caffrey’s career boom and bust exemplifies the difficult situation many scientists face as President Donald Trump’s administration tries to suppress research on topics that he doesn’t consider a priority. Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law has reported 194 examples of the federal government censoring, hindering or sidelining climate change science since Trump was elected.

All federal scientists are vulnerable, but scientists like Caffrey who work under federal contracts face particular risk because they can be fired easily and their funding can be pulled, said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which represents federal and state scientists in complaints against agencies.

In a January episode of Reveal, Caffrey spoke about the pressure she experienced during the editing of the parks report. She said supervisors at the park service yelled at her and threatened to kill the report or remove her name if she would not agree to the changes. Some told her they could lose their jobs or be transferred if she didn’t capitulate.

“It’s different kinds of bullying and pressure from different people,” Caffrey said. “If one person says one thing and then another person says another thing, after awhile it really starts to build up and it becomes an absolute mountain.”

The report projects the effects of sea level rise at 118 coastal parks in 2030, 2050 and 2100. It includes four scenarios of global greenhouse gases — which come mostly from the burning of fossil fuels — based on whether and how much people reduce greenhouse gases.

The research started under President Barack Obama’s administration, but then was held up for more than a year after Trump took office.

Reveal obtained 18 drafts of the report. In one draft, a park service official crossed out five uses of the word “anthropogenic,” the term for people’s impact on nature, along with three references to “human activities” causing climate change. Trump questions that humans are causing climate change, but climate scientists around the globe have concluded that greenhouse gases from human activities are causing the planet to warm.

As part of her research, Caffrey developed an idea for an interactive website to enable the public and park staff to visualize the threat rising seas pose to individual parks. She led the website project, but was removed from it in May, before it was completed and published in December.

“Essentially, I feel I’ve been shut out from my project. It certainly feels like there could be some retribution playing a role in this,” Caffrey said at the time.

Last spring, Caffrey accepted a temporary contract at the park service that was unrelated to climate change. She was paid $25,000 a year, about a third of the salary that she had earned for several years. Her supervisors at the park service’s water resources division tried to secure funding for a better position, paying $76,000 a year, to assess wetlands at national parks, according to Caffrey and park service emails. But they emailed her on Thursday that the funding isn’t available.

After the report was published, the Interior Department’s Inspector General and the park service’s scientific integrity officer closed their investigations into whether the agency violated its scientific integrity policies.

Congressional Democrats requested a broader investigation. Nancy DiPaolo, spokesperson for Interior’s Office of Inspector General, told Reveal that it has launched no new investigation.

Ruch said federal agencies’ scientific integrity policies have little teeth, and, while scientists’ careers often suffer when they stand up for research that doesn’t fit agencies’ priorities, the career staff that sideline it often thrive.

Caffrey, 37, doesn’t regret her decision to stand up for her science.

“I wouldn’t do anything different, but Jesus, this is stressful,” she said. She’s pulling her toddler out of day care and has set a goal of applying for a new job every day.

Caffrey’s career may have taken a hit, but her science is publicly available to show how much climate change threatens parks with permanent flooding and storm damage, and how reducing greenhouse gas emissions could reduce the damage.

“Maria is a smart, dedicated, and accomplished scientist. If these were normal times, she would continue to make valuable contributions within the park service and for the future of our globe,” said William Manley, a University of Colorado research scientist who worked with Caffrey on her sea level research for the park service. “We should all be grateful for her efforts.”

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Scientist who resisted censorship of climate report lost her job

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Youth-led climate protests sweep across Europe

by lawannaballinger Posted on February 15, 2019

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Thousands of young people in the U.K. are up in arms — not about Brexit, or the latest royal family gossip, but about climate change.

Students walked out of schools today in cities across the U.K., and other parts of Europe — the latest demonstration in what has become a global youth climate strike. This movement started six months ago when Swedish teen Greta Thunberg began leaving school every Friday to protest on the steps of her country’s parliament. Thunberg’s environmental activism is still going strong, and she has delivered powerful speeches to both the U.N. and the World Economic Forum on the urgency of climate change.

This is week 26 of her climate strike. But she’s no longer in it alone.

These kids aren’t just hooting and hollering, either. The U.K. Student Climate Network, a group that helped coordinate some of the biggest protests in London, Brighton, Oxford, and Exeter, has four very specific demands.

They want leaders in government to:

Declare a climate emergency and take “active steps to achieve climate justice”
Adjust curriculum to make the ecological crisis a priority in public education
Do more to communicate the severity of the problem to the general public
Lower the voting age to 16, so that young people can have a voice in determining their future

The young protestors were keen to apply their Gen Z wit to the climate cause, with slogans like: “I’ve seen smarter cabinets at Ikea,” “Make Earth cool again,” “Like the oceans we rise,” “Nobody minds if you miss school on a dead planet,” and the straightforward “Don’t f*ck us over.” Sometimes simplicity wins.

Don’t worry if you’re feeling left out in the U.S. The climate strike is spreading stateside as well, with a major national action planned for Friday, March 15. And some young American activists, like Alexandria Villasenor, have already been at it for weeks.

Next month’s climate march is expected to galvanize not only students from around the globe, but also major environmental groups like 350.org, Extinction Rebellion, and the Sunrise Movement.

If one teen can spark a movement this size, we’d better be keeping an eye on all these youngsters. Who’s telling what they might do next — save the world, maybe?

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Youth-led climate protests sweep across Europe

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A member of the GOP says the Green New Deal is the next Fyre Fest. Wait, what?

by Lucreti2081 Posted on February 14, 2019

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North Carolina Representative Mark Walker is trying to one-up Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s social media game. On Wednesday, the Republican released a trailer on Twitter that takes a … unique approach to Green New Deal fear-mongering:

The 90-second video plays off the recent Fyre Festival boondoggle and documentary. “A socialist utopia” scrolls across the screen as blond women smile and millennials party, “kill off all the cows, ban all the airplanes.” The actual Green New Deal resolution doesn’t call for banning cows or planes, but Walker and his team of what I can only imagine are a bunch of 20-year-old bros don’t seem to care.

Watch the trailer to catch this reporter’s favorite part, a five-second clip of partiers holding pitchforks and celebrating under a title card that reads “so much energy.”

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A member of the GOP says the Green New Deal is the next Fyre Fest. Wait, what?

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A bipartisan group of senators just agreed we need to break our addiction to carbon

by LaceyMarcotte Posted on February 8, 2019

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Leaving our fossil fuel-entrenched economy behind is looking more and more like a bipartisan goal. Case in point: A bipartisan Senate committee just apparently agreed that we need to decarbonize our energy system.

On Thursday, the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a hearing on how to innovate the energy sector, and it took a climate-friendly turn. While the group didn’t reach a consensus on how to achieve “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions,” as promised in the brand new Green New Deal resolution, the conversation was nevertheless encouraging.

Near the end of the hearing, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat of Nevada, asked the committee if anyone disagreed with looking into an energy portfolio with the “outcome of decarbonization.” The room was silent. A few seconds later, Cortez Masto concluded, “I think that’s why we’re here. That is where we could set our long-term mission and goal.”

Leading up to that, the committee found plenty to agree (and in a few instances, disagree) on.

“It is time to push hard to bring down the cost of clean energy technologies like renewables, advanced nuclear, next-generation energy storage, and carbon capture,” said Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, the chair of the committee, in her opening remarks.

Even Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia — a Democrat who just earlier this week applauded President Trump’s line about the U.S. being the world’s No. 1 oil producer during the State of the Union address — appeared to get behind the eventual goal of decarbonization. “Breakthrough technologies will help us reliably meet our energy needs in the future while decarbonizing our energy system,” he said.

Tellingly though, he called for a focus on new technologies to suck carbon out of the air. The coal-state senator from  made it clear that he wasn’t ready to kick dirty energy to the curb just yet: “We must acknowledge that fossil fuels will continue to play an integral role in our electric generation.”

He also expressed concern over the economic effects of a transition to renewables on West Virginia: “We don’t want to drink dirty water. We don’t want to breathe dirty air. We want our kids to have a future. We really do. But they also realize they have to have a job to sustain themselves.”

In response, Cortez pointed to her state of Nevada. “Ten years ago, Nevada was known for gambling, entertainment, and mining,” she said. “Now we are an innovation state.”

Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, also highlighted the promise of renewables. “There are 8,000 parts in a big wind turbine, and we’re prepared to make every single one of those [pieces] in Michigan,” she said. “You can do some in West Virginia, too,” she told Manchin.

But as Ernest Moniz, former Energy Secretary under Obama, said in his testimony to the committee, “Accelerating this transition will not be easy.”

Moniz urged the committee to make sure they’re not putting all their low-carbon eggs in one technology basket. “There is no single low-carbon, one-size-fits-all solution,” Moniz said. “What we need to do is have the full quiver of arrows for which low-carbon solutions can be fit to purpose in different regions of our country and in different countries.”

Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, emphasized the necessity of reaching zero emissions by mid-century while acknowledging the work that lies ahead. “With some reasonable success and failure,” Grumet said, “ I think we can actually provide a better future for our children, which has been the human tradition for 10,000 generations.”

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A bipartisan group of senators just agreed we need to break our addiction to carbon

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