Youth activists are spearheading a powerful political movement around addressing the climate crisis.

For many people, this is a moment of both fear and hope — global carbon emissions continue to increase, at the same time as demands for global climate action grow louder. Will 2019 be remembered as the year humanity turned a corner in the fight against climate change?

In this episode of Political Climate, we bring you a special interview with a group of leading youth activists ahead of the Global Climate Strike and United Nations Climate Change Summit.

We speak with Kelsey Juliana and Vic Barrett, two of the 21 plaintiffs in the Juliana v. United States lawsuit over the right to a safe climate and livable future, as well as and Jamie Margolin, co-founder of the organization Zero Hour and a plaintiff in a lawsuit alleging Washington State has failed to adequately regulate greenhouse gases.

But first we hear from Jonah Gottlieb, director of Schools for Climate Action and the executive director of the National Children’s Campaign, who is currently in Washington D.C. with famed teen activist Greta Thunberg and other youth leaders. What does it feel like for these young people to finally have so much attention on the climate threat?

Recommended reading:

• Grist: How 21 meddling kids could force a major turnaround on climate
• New Yorker: The Right to a Stable Climate Is the Constitutional Question of the Twenty-First Century
• CNN: NYC says its 1.1 million students can skip class for the climate strike (as long as their parents say OK)
• Rolling Stone: The Climate Crisis and the Case for Hope

Political Climate is produced in partnership with the USC Schwarzenegger Institute, and thanks to invaluable support from producer Victoria Simon.

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