Weather disasters can be frustrating when they go viral. These activists were inspired

Imagine this: you receive a warning about a severe fire near your home. The air will not stop filling with acrid smoke and the sky has turned from blue to an eerie orange.

Or this: You hear that coal ash has been leaking from your house for a few hours, and you don’t know how to respond.

Or this: You keep seeing headlines about melting ice—that the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free by 2050—and you wonder fleetingly whether you’ll outlive polar bears.

You need more information, so where do you turn? Young people are increasingly looking to social media as their main source of news. one EdWeek survey It found that 56 percent of 14- to 18-year-olds learn about climate change from TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and other apps where young activists sound the alarm and urge action.

Elise JoshiFor example, he felt the effects of climate change as a high school student in 2018, when California experienced its deadliest wildfire season. Today, the 22-year-old is the CEO Gen-Z for a changean organization that uses TikTok to empower youth and influence national climate policy.

Pay attention to BastidaThe 22-year-old, a native Mexican activist, grew up hearing the words “climate change.” At 17, she organized a New York City climate march and took the first steps to becoming a prominent indigenous climate policy advocate. Today, he is the executive director of the Re-Earth Initiative, which focuses on combating the climate crisis, and has a strong presence on Instagram.

Bastida and Joshi do not consider themselves content creators. They are activists who post on social media to get the message out.

Alina Wood, 28, He followed a different path for activity. After graduating from college, he worked at a solid waste facility and later for a local government agency developing environmental programs and grants. When state budget cuts ended her work in East Tennessee, she became a full-time content creator, fighting misinformation as the “Trash Queen” on social media. He accepts sponsorships and posts sponsored ads from companies that align with his environmental and political views.

These three women, like many of their peers, emphasize the need for activism and urgency, reminding their followers that young people have much more to lose than older generations. They recognize and acknowledge the importance of social media and engaging with their peers wherever they are.

Elise Joshi

Joshi, a 2023 UC Berkeley graduate, began his posts during the pandemic. As he studied the state of the climate crisis and environmental policy, including the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back protections, he shared a statistic about TikTok — which Found a study 1 in 6 deaths are linked to air pollution or how every degree of warming leads to reduced crop yields. His eighth video criticizing then-President Trump’s policies on the Covid-19 protests and Black Lives Matter went viral, and he began to understand the art of using social media as a tool.

“I had no talent [it]But after four years, “I kind of figured out how to do it,” Joshi said.

Joshi, along with other activists and creators, joined TikTok for Biden, which was founded to oppose the Trump administration’s policies ahead of the 2020 election.

This organization gave its name to Gen-Z for a change in early 2021 to reflect its growing range of interests and support. Today, Gen-Z for Change has almost 2 million followers on TikTok, and Joshi has over 200,000 followers on her personal accounts.

In July 2023, Joshi captivated the Internet when a video of him interrupting a White House official went viral.

Earlier that year, the Biden administration had approved an $8 billion willow drilling project in Alaska that went against President Biden’s plan. commitment to end fossil fuel leases on federal lands and angry climate activists who lobbied against it. At a youth voter summit, Joshi let out a shaky breath as he interrupted White House spokeswoman Karin Jean-Pierre to say the administration was listening to young voters on climate change.

“I’m sorry I spoke up, but asking nicely didn’t work,” Joshi said. His voice trailed off, but he continued, “Millions of people wrote to the administration asking it not to approve a disastrous oil drilling project in Alaska, and we were ignored. … Will the government stop approving new oil and gas projects and align with youth, science and frontline communities from the North Slope of Alaska to Louisiana?

The back-and-forth — during which Jean-Pierre said Biden has done more to address climate change than any previous president — attracted a large audience on TikTok. Joshi said they lost track after 30 million views.

“I got emails from dads saying, ‘I actually don’t even agree with you on this oil conversation, but the way you communicated it made me really proud of the way you presented your information,'” he said of the aftermath. “And I mean, I got death threats … but I think the good comments outweighed that.”

After the video of the interruption aired, Joshi felt there was a “huge change of pace” in the Biden administration. The White House ended up canceling seven oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and committed to protecting 13 million acres in the western Arctic — something Joshi said wouldn’t have happened without the #StopWillow movement and youth mobilization online.

“TikTok’s campaigns are incredibly valuable because they kind of set the stage that what’s acceptable on the surface is not acceptable,” Julie C., a professor of American studies at UC Davis, said of the social media campaigns.

“It’s sad that it comes from pressure, it comes from begging,” Joshi said. “But you know, it doesn’t come from polite zoom conversations.”

Pay attention to Bastida

Xiye Bastida’s parents met at a United Nations conference on environment and development in 1992, and as she was growing up, the weather was a regular topic of conversation at dinner and family gatherings.

In 2015, when he was 13, Bastida’s hometown of San Pedro Tultepec, about 30 miles southwest of Mexico City, was flooded after years of drought. “Once you start seeing it in your life, you have no choice but to take action,” he said.

Bastida and her family moved to New York City, where her parents began working at the Center for Earth Ethics, an environmental conservation organization, and Bastida began learning about organizing. There were fewer risks than in Mexico. Where indigenous environmental activists can become targets.

By 2019 he was organizing Friday climate marches for New York City of the Future, but says he found his community online, where he helped build an international coalition with other environmental activists.

Bastida, who recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in environmental studies, spends most of her time working for the Re-Earth Initiative.

During the annual UN Climate Conference, Bastida took to Instagram Live to answer questions from some of her 85,000 followers about the latest happenings at the event. Bastida says he understands the role it can play in influencing what people see online, especially when it comes to calls to action.

“I think that if I can access this space, I should be able to share information not only with the people I’m in a group chat with, but with the people who are in the group chat. [only] Interested in the weather,” he said.

Overall, Bastida said, social media platforms have had a positive impact on her life because they have exposed her to a community of environmental activists in other parts of the world. Through her work, she connected with Greta Thunberg from Sweden and Helena Gualinga, an indigenous Ecuadorian environmentalist.

“That’s where I found my global community, and that’s how we can reach people,” he said.

Alina Wood

When Alina Wood was in middle school, about a Environmental disasterr – A coal ash spill into the Emory River, west of Knoxville, Tenn., that released toxic sludge containing arsenic and mercury. It was an awakening—the first time he felt he had to do it something

In high school, he led efforts to install water bottle filling stations on campus. At the University of Tennessee, Wood collected and sorted the litter scattered by 100,000 people at football games. He earned a degree in sustainability and geography and describes himself as a sustainability scientist.

After graduation, Wood worked at a private landfill company as an environmental compliance coordinator before taking a role at the First Tennessee Development District, an association of local governments, working on solid waste management projects.

When the pandemic began, Wood joined TikTok and posted “silly” videos. But at some point, his “For You” page — a curated feed for users — began to include environmental content.

“Some of them were really good. They were accurate,” he recalled. Others were somewhat worrisome. “They were either full of misinformation or full of the idea that if you’re not completely zero waste, you’re not a good environmentalist.”

Posting as the Waste Queen, Wood made a video about the zero waste movement, saying it sometimes backfires, promoting consumerism and increasing waste. The video went viral and he found a community that cared about what he had to say.

In the summer of 2021, when “climate doom” became a trend, he began work on a series on TikTok called Good Weather News, where he summarizes studies and positive stories weekly to combat the deluge of pessimism. presented In four months, he amassed 75,000 followers, an audience larger than the population of his hometown.

“A lot of people don’t see all the crazy progress I’m making by reading scientific studies,” he said. “I think my job is, ‘Hey, I saw this really cool thing that you might not have seen otherwise.’ It’s not too late.”

About 75 percent of her audience is younger than 40, Wood said, and as she reviews studies, reports and stories, she makes sure what she puts online is accurate and encouraging.

When the #StopWillow campaign didn’t stop a drilling project in Alaska, she worried it might lead to youth apathy, but followers told her her videos inspired readers to pursue careers in the environment.

“There have been times when I’ve been very worried about how things will be received because my audience is really young. They are currently very unstable. “If I say something wrong, I might scare someone. “But if I say something right, I can engage them in activism.”