Meeting Their Panic with Hope: The Power of Spotlighting Environmental Changemakers
by Diana Kapp
I owe my environmental awakening to my teenage kids. My 16-year-old has a reflexive reaction to my dishwashing. I run the water to get a good suds-ing going, and she reaches over and shuts off the faucet. We are Californians, she has never known a non-drought year, and her instinct is spot on. My middle daughter, a natural cynic, is highly attuned to “greenwashing,” a concept I’d not heard about until she started pointing out all the performative commitments companies make about achieving net-zero emissions at some very far-in-the-future date. My eldest son has basically sworn off driving (to make a point of how expansive public transportation is, he rode every single bus route in San Francisco in a single day).
They are not alone. Around the world, young people are worrying over the precarious state of the planet.
It took me an extra beat to appreciate the urgency, I confess. But once I did, I was all in. And my first act was to write a book for my kids, and their friends, and their friends’ friends, all of whom should know that there are climate revolutionaries out there making a better future possible. The book is called Girls Who Green the World: 34 Rebel Women Out to Save the Planet. Hope is my overarching message. I believe watching doers in action will inspire action.
Early in my research, I uncovered an atmospheric scientist at MIT named Susan Solomon who drove the work that ultimately fixed the ozone hole that was threatening the planet in the 1980s. When she was a young scientist at NOAA, she volunteered—when no one else would—to go to Antarctica and do critical experiments to understand why the atmosphere was changing so quickly. We’re talking 18-hour-days shivering on a research station roof in -40 degree temps to measure concentrations of chlorine in the air. Through some snazzy experiments and smart thinking, she discovered that the problem was CFCs, chlorofluorocarbons, the stuff in aerosol spray cans and some refrigerators. If we just banned the junk, the ozone hole would close, she posited. When her findings hit the news wires, an emergency meeting was convened in Montreal, which produced the Montreal Protocol. For the first time in history, every single nation on earth signed on and agreed to discontinue use of CFCs. Today, the ozone hole is basically healed. The problem is so yesterday that many young people don’t even know the tale. Solomon’s story reminds us that we can come together to do the urgent work we must do to save the planet. Susan Solomon is how I found my way to a message of hope.
And do you know who’s best at shifting climate-attitudes in this country? Tween and teen girls. There’s proof: Researchers showed that 10-to-14–year-olds’ exposure to climate change coursework regularly trickled down to parents and changed their views on the subject. And: Daughters were more effective messengers than sons. Additionally, a recent Coalition study demonstrates that girls’ schools graduates are especially invested in this work, as they are more likely to become involved in environmental programs, compared to their co-educated peers.
Girls Who Green the World: 34 Rebel Women Out to Save the Planet is now available. It’s got profiles of women turning mushrooms into leather, plastic bottles into boardshorts, and carbon dioxide into something that tastes exactly like bacon. Mary Anne Hitt shut down 339 polluting coal plants with grassroots organizing—you should know her. There’s an accompanying toolkit for educators, too.
I’d love to talk to you about the book, if it grabs you. – Diana
Diana Kapp is a journalist and author. Her latest book is Girls Who Green the World: 34 Rebel Women Out to Save the Planet. In 2019, she wrote Girls Who Run the World: 31 CEOs Who Mean Business. She’s a firm believer in the adage: You can’t be what you can’t see.