The Youth Climate Movement

I became a climate activist in college in the ’00s, when the phenomenon known as the “youth climate movement” was just starting to take shape. In the years that followed, I watched it grow from a scattering of groups led by young people into a true mass uprising. The youth climate movement reached arguably its biggest peak of activity so far in 2019 and early 2020, at the height of the Fridays for Future strike movement. It’s no coincidence that just a couple years later Congress responded by passing the first major piece of climate legislation in U.S. history.

My book, Movement Makers: How Young Activists Upended the Politics of Climate Change traces the rise of youth-led climate activism in the United States, showing how more than two decades of activism laid the groundwork for seismic shifts in our country’s political landscape. I continue to write about youth climate campaigns for various publications, most especially Waging Nonviolence, with a focus on reporting about new and emerging trends in activism. See below for some of my coverage of this vital, world-changing movement.

Movement Makers: How Young Activists Upended the Politics of Climate Change

Movement Makers is the first book to comprehensively examine the impressive political legacy of more than 20 years of youth climate activism in the United States. It shows how the explosion of activity that reached a fever pitch with Fridays for Future had its origins in earlier strands of organizing going back to the early 2000s, and looks at where the movement may be headed next. The updated edition, released in 2024, brings the story up to the present by examining recent developments in youth-led climate campaigns. Learn more.