Leading the Fight
Around the world, women are using their careers and their voices to take leadership and call for action on climate change. Read about five of them below.Â
Tessa Khan, Lawyer
In 2015, Tessa Khan was in Thailand, working for a human-rights nonprofit. News of a court case more than 5,000 miles away caught her attention. A court in the Netherlands had ruled in favor of some 900 Dutch citizens. The group had sued the Netherlands government, demanding that it reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions. Khan realized the courts could be a powerful tool for fighting climate change. She moved to London, England, and became a climate lawyer. She founded a new organization, Uplift. She says that the United Kingdom “can show the world that you can move to renewable energy and make everyone’s lives better.” Khan provides legal assistance to people there who want to take their government to court over climate policies. She hopes these cases draw attention to how ordinary people will be impacted by climate change. —Tara Law
Kate Marvel, Scientist
In blog posts, tweets, and podcasts, Kate Marvel uses storytelling to cut through misinformation about climate change. In 2013, as a postdoctoral researcher with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Marvel helped discover that human activity has almost definitely changed global rainfall patterns. Later, as an associate research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, at Columbia University, she and her colleagues studied climate models and tree rings. They discovered that climate change has been affecting drought since 1900. Her approach to dealing with climate change might be best summed up in her 2017 TED talk: “We don’t know for sure what the future holds. But we are sending our kids there . . . I want them to be prepared for what they’ll face.” —Jasmine Aguilera
Greta Thunberg, Activist
In 2018, Greta Thunberg, who was 15 at the time, started a school strike in Sweden. She wanted to draw attention to the climate crisis. Since then, her message has spread. Young people across the world have followed her path, striking and marching to make it clear to adults and decision-makers that this is a true emergency. “This is an existential crisis that is going to affect our whole civilization, the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced,” she says. “I’m not planning to stop this movement, and I don’t think anyone else is either.” —Suyin Haynes
Kotchakorn Voraakhom, Landscape Architect
As a young girl in Bangkok, Thailand, Kotchakorn Voraakhom liked to pry apart cracked pavement to let seedlings burst through. Now the landscape architect designs parks to help Southeast Asia’s megacities cope with climate change. Her 11-acre project at Chulalongkorn University was Bangkok’s first new public park in 30 years. It won awards for its innovative design. Voraakhom’s social enterprise, the Porous City Network, champions other green interventions. These include urban farming, green roofs, and canal restoration. —Laignee Barron
Katharine Wilkinson, Author and Educator
Author, public speaker, and teacher Katharine Wilkinson has been passionate about protecting the planet since she went on a retreat 20 years ago, as a high school student in North Carolina. “I went from loving the outdoors . . . to feeling incredibly convicted about how much work there was to be done,” she says. In 2017, the book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming became a best-seller. Wilkinson was its primary author. Wilkinson also cohosted an outdoor retreat, bringing women from across industries together. “The climate crisis is also a leadership crisis,” she says. “Many women and girls are stepping in to fill that void and lead us forward.” —Suyin Haynes
This story was originally published in TIME on September 12, 2019.Â
Think About It: Which of these five careers do you find the most intriguing? Which would you be most interested in pursuing?
