What Gen Z climate activists prioritize for 2025

Climate activists march across the Brooklyn Bridge to protest against fossil fuels on September 20, 2024 in New York City. Credit – Selcuk Acar—Getty Images

GIn late October, at a rooftop venue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a group of Gen Z influencers and activists hosted ZCON, a two-day gathering aimed at “values ​​of the Gen Z channel in action” and reinvent the conference experience. The idea is to bring together like-minded individuals, connecting nonprofit and private sector enterprises with Gen Z activists, influencers and thought leaders. After its debut in Los Angeles in 2023, ZCON aims to highlight the ways in which Gen Z is particularly affected by the issues affecting the younger generation and how they are working towards solutions.

“I see ZCON as a creative classroom where different people come together to express their art forms, whether through lifestyle, education or activism,” says Isaias Hernandez, a climate change activist who spoke at ZCON in 2023, for TIME. “And for me, it’s not just bringing all these young people together, it’s bringing brands, philanthropists, different people in the private sector, to understand the ways in which stories can be shaped.”

ZCON attendees are familiar with how Gen Z and younger activists are using social media and influencer culture to tell their stories and demand change.

Through panels and focus groups, ZCON creates space for young activists to grieve and come together. For the 2024 session, the ongoing climate crisis was understandably at the center of the impact discussions, which also placed particular emphasis on social impact work such as climate. education and communication, and fundraising tactics for nonprofit organizations. Gen Z climate activists are aware that they do not speak for the entire climate activist space and admit that they may not agree with everything. However, they still see ZCON as a space to imagine what’s next for their community and what could be achieved in the future.

Here’s what Gen Z climate activists are prioritizing in the coming year:

Environmental justice policy

Environmental justice looks at how the climate crisis can and has disproportionately affected certain vulnerable groups. For ZCON speaker Alexia Leclercq, environmental justice is personal to her as she has watched the climate crisis affect her Indigenous community and other communities of color.

Although they see Justice 40— the federal government’s initiative to transfer 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain climate and energy initiatives to marginalized communities — as a “good step,” Leclercq sees more to be done.

“Now that it’s been kind of rolled out for a few years, we’ve seen gaps in it and how communities of color still aren’t getting the support funding that they need,” she says. “Okay, that was the first step. How do we go forward from there?”

Hernandez also emphasizes the need to focus on communities of color, particularly through federal policy and accountability. He sees Gen Z as the generation that won’t accept the “status quo” and will continue to push for policies that reduce things like subsidies for animal agriculture and supports policies that examine private sector environmental footprints and equitable access to clean water and sustainable transportation.

“I still think there’s a lot of climate policy that can be put through the lens of environmental justice that aims to make sure that Americans, for example, have access to clean water,” Hernandez says. “And the second thing is transportation. We are growing our population every year as a society and we need to be able to work with the public sector and government agencies to expand our public infrastructure.”

Education and access to jobs

Another undercurrent of conversation taking place among Gen Z activists centers on the need for education and access to green jobs for young people entering the workforce who want to tackle the climate crisis.

Leclercq points to her home state of Texas, where consistent battles have been fought at local and state levels on how climate change messages are delivered in school classrooms.

“Project 2025 it didn’t come out of nowhere,” she says. “I think it’s really important for the environmental movement to be in the classroom with a narrative that goes beyond science and melds messages with a social and political understanding of our current state.”

Sage Lenier, Executive Director of Generation Z Focused on Sustainable & Just Future, attended ZCON with one goal in mind: How to equip fellow Gen Zers with accurate and solutions-oriented climate education. For Lenier, who was named one of the TIME’s Next Generation Leaders in 2023, Part of this education includes sharing how individuals can make an impact with their everyday choices and ensuring that the climate crisis is “everyone’s problem”.

“It’s our consumption habits; it is our society. The world’s global supply chain is built to serve us,” she says, sharing her thoughts on Western societies. “I think we need to get more people to understand that this (climate crisis) needs an economic solution.”

Jorge Alvarez, a mental health advocate who has recently done more work to address climate anxiety, also focused on how hard it is for Generation Z to enter the workforce right now. He heard from his colleagues that they need more opportunities for green jobs.

“We need to fund development programs, especially for young people when it comes to green jobs, and also more people of color involvement – ​​period,” says Alvarez.

Read more: 7 Ways to Cope with Climate Despair

Balancing optimism and urgency

For activists like Alvarez, mental health is a focal point. Climate change anxiety is a serious issue for young people. About two-thirds of Americans (65%) say they are concerned about global warming, according to a January 2024 report from the Yale Program on Climate Communication.

Hernandez also focuses on climate anxiety and says that in 2025, he hopes to have more conversations about how young people “as a community” can “come together to have conversations that drive action forward,” all while looking towards a brighter future.

However, Lenier says this optimism must be balanced with the urgency and realities of how climate change will actually affect Gen Z in the future. “We have to start working to prepare for the worst,” she says. “I think right now there’s got to be work, like slimming down, addressing the essentials like food, energy, you know, infrastructure, things like that, right? This is the strict, strict, strict minimum.”

Contact us TO [email protected].