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Late last month, Jonathan Fisher, one of the good people devoted to changing the world, got in touch to pitch me on a “participatory photography” project.
Fisher was born and raised in Bronx, New York, and after spending much of his life helping manage the New York City subway system, he switched tracks. In 2010 Fisher joined another retired transit colleague, George Carrano, to help start Seeing For Ourselves, a nonprofit that “equips and trains marginalized communities to take control of their own public narrative by documenting their lives photographically.”
Those projects have attracted considerable attention for elevating the lives of people in New York City housing projects or who are serving probation. Other projects have featured those who live as immigrants in Maine, where Seeing For Ourselves is now based.
Fisher’s message to me concerned his group’s latest project – “Picturing My Climate Future” – which displays photographs by high school students in Chicago and other cities that document their engagement with the effects of climate change. Fascinating. How does a small group of people born not so long ago absorb how they feel, all that they see, and what they learn about one of the existential perils of their century?
A Camera and a Mission
It turns out that the students are quite adept at documenting what they encounter – generally with cell phone cameras – and taking on climate change with a resonant mix of learned details and practical determination. Juan Lobin Schwartz, a former student at Evanston Township High School, pays homage in his pictures to Lake Michigan, notes the numerous species lost to industrial influences, and also photographs a community garden that highlights the promise of sustainable food production.
“We’re fortunate to be right by a large body of water – Lake Michigan,” he says in an accompanying documentary that PBS is preparing to broadcast. “So we have measures to avert the damage we’ve done. We have measures to be a sustainable society. We need to all unite in order to all be onboard with these solutions.”
Trevor Oakley, a former student at Maine’s Cape Elizabeth High School and now at Yale University, focused on the Atlantic Ocean and a vernal pool in the forest near his home. “I haven’t ever seen this level of storms, and it’s probably just going to get more and more frequent. That’s going to change a lot of things,” he says. “I was raised a pessimist because of the political climate and the economic climate. But I do also realize that we need to be optimistic in order to actually change anything, because if we’re pessimistic nothing actually is going to be fixed. We’ll just accept it as doom and gloom. We need to be optimistic so that we can actually fix what we’ve done.”
Jimena Argueta, a student at Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora, Ill. photographed features of a Great Lakes nature reserve. “A lot of people might know that the climate crisis exists and that we are dealing with climate change,” she says. “Knowing how things are going at the moment, unfortunately we aren’t getting as much done as we want to. However, I know that we can make a change now which will benefit our future.”
Global Views
Such informed, optimistic and enlightened perspectives are not unique. Children of the 21st century view climate change as a kind of industrial era virus – stubborn and dangerous enough to measure. A persistent fever they should be able to shake in collaboration with their peers, especially those in local government, business, and community organizations.
In 2025, a survey of 5,100 young people from four continents for UNICEF found climate change was relevant enough in their lives for them to devote their careers to meeting the challenge. “Our research reveals that slightly over half (53%) of youth globally are interested in a green job – defined in our research as jobs that help the environment,” wrote the authors. “Young people wanting green jobs indicates a motivation to be part of the solution and a desire for careers that match their values. It also creates a workforce pipeline for tackling climate action at scale.”
In January the World Economic Forum published “Insights From The Next Generation For A Changing World,” a survey of ideas and attitudes from 4,600 young people around the world living with “profound global transformation.”
The biggest of those transformations, say young people who participated in the study, is climate change and environmental degradation, which are seen as “the greatest threats to the world.” Their plan of action, just as with the students from Chicago and Maine, incorporates equal measures of creativity, common purpose, and optimism. “Young people recognize that progress depends on collective effort,” write the report’s authors, “with governments, businesses and communities each playing their part. Their leadership emphasizes practical, community-based responses to the climate crisis.”
In June, Lever for Change and two partner philanthropies will recognize some of that creativity and capability by naming the winners of the $25 million Emerging Climate Champions Award. Directed at organizations advancing climate solutions led by young people, the winners must demonstrate “experience, strong potential, and measurable results in advancing durable climate solutions in the communities they serve.”
A Clear Vision
Emily Dickinson wrote that “hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” Those of us in my Baby Boom generation who are fortunate enough to still be breathing know all about hope and fear from an existential global hazard. As kids we were taught to “duck and cover” beneath our writing desks t0 guard against nuclear annihilation. Fat chance that would work.
Yet we also know that such peril can be substantially reduced by citizen activism and governments acting in good faith to limit the risk. In 1963, the United States and the Soviet Union signed a treaty to end atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. In 1968, the U.S. and the other nuclear powers signed a second treaty to end the spread of nuclear weapons and technology.
To some extent young people also have been exposed to the potential for collective action on climate change. They can look to the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, adopted by 195 countries to slow the Earth’s warming, as a political achievement that stirred international attention and prompted more development of clean energy sources and electrified transportation.
But the Acc0rd hasn’t yet produced lower climate changing emissions globally. And in the U.S., the White House, which withdrew from the agreement, is leading a direct assault on its principal goal by curtailing federal support for wind and solar energy, rejecting electrified transportation, stopping the closure of old polluting coal-fired power plants, promoting more oil drilling, and allowing more climate changing air pollution from vehicles and industrial plants.
Still, the people the world loves the best are those who jump headfirst into the deep waters of hard work and real trouble, and swim away with strong strokes toward solutions. Those people, many of them born this century, are hard at work in and outside the United States to keep the world’s temperature under control.
China is developing immense emission-free wind, s0lar, hydroelectric, and nuclear sources of energy for its own market while also selling the equipment around the world. Some 30 percent of electrical power in India now comes from renewable clean energy sources. Texas, of all places, generates more of its electricity from wind and solar than any other state.
Young people are present at the cutting edge of change. Last year, for instance, Joseph Nguthiru, a climate engineer from Kenya, was one of the three winners of the United Nations’ Young Champions of The Earth award. Joseph’s company HyaPak figured out how to reduce single use plastic and offset carbon emissions by manufacturing biodegradable bags and wrappers out of hyacinth, a nuisance aquatic species that is ruining freshwater lakes across Africa.
The kids are right. Awareness. Innovation. Collaboration. Participation. Climate doom can be averted. God bless ‘em.
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