When did you first realize climate change was affecting the world or your community?
I first realized climate change was affecting the world in 2016, when I was in 8th grade and caught sight of a New York Times headline proclaiming something sinister along the lines of: we have only 11 years until the affects of climate change become irreversible. That time-frame “11 years” and that word “irreversible” really stuck with me and spurred me to action. When I think back on that catalyst, it surprises me a bit, because it wasn’t as if myself or a loved one had actually experienced severe climate impacts to my knowledge. It was a rare example where a headline in a newspaper really was enough to stir fear and anger in the heart of a 14-year-old nature lover, and that fear and anger — rather than being paralyzing — was exactly what motivated me to act.
Is there a place (a park, neighborhood, coastline) that makes you feel connected to the Earth?
I have been beyond lucky to feel connected to the Earth wherever I have been able to physically contribute to it and be sustained by it. I’ve farmed in Vermont, North Carolina, Illinois, Wisconsin, Colorado, New Jersey, and most recently in Panama.
I currently work for a reforestation and climate education nonprofit based in Panama’s Azuero peninsula. Running along the country’s Pacific Coast, the peninsula is one of the most heavily deforested tropical dry forests worldwide due to decades of intensive agricultural overdevelopment and cattle ranching practices introduced by Spanish colonizers in the 16th century. Tropical dry rainforests are critically endangered across Latin America, and the Azuero Peninsula, once shaded in forest cover, is now mostly farmland.
Over the years, traditional ranching methods have all but wiped out the forest, particularly devastating the Los Santos province, which gets some of the hottest temperatures in the country and is considered highly susceptible to droughts and vulnerable to climate impacts. In recent years, the region has also suffered severe water contamination due to conventional ranching practices and the use of agrochemicals, leading to human illness and water insecurity. In May, 2025, the province was declared to be in a state of emergency. Though this status has since been lifted, the area continues to face water supply challenges.
I am now living in the peninsula, collaborating with an organization which works tirelessly to protect the peninsula from these threats and to reshape the community’s beliefs about the value of forests through participatory and economically incentivized involvement. Driving around the Los Santos province in rumbling old Land Cruisers, it feels like a place where the tide is turning for the better. Farmers are beginning to implement agroforestry and silviculture systems rather than monoculture cacao and coffee plantations. Cattle-herders are committing to restoring vast percentages of their land. Grandchildren are asking their grandparents to reforest their properties, and the grandfathers are saying yes. Rural women are starting community sapling nurseries and eco-artisan collectives. Being here, observing and contributing to these initiatives alongside the communities who have called this place home much longer than I have, is what’s making me feel connected to Earth right at this moment.
What would you tell your younger self—or someone just starting to learn about the climate crisis?
I wish I could tell my younger self to become more politically engaged. When I started doing climate work, I thought the greatest barrier to climate action was a lack of information. Like a young Hamilton, I wanted to “write my way out” of the climate crisis, through storytelling, journalism, and speeches. Though these are crucial tactics, it took me too long to realize how essential political outcomes and policies are to directly influencing our futures. Life is political. Any change you want to make takes power, and one essential way we exert power is through politics. Politics are at the highest tier of Arendt’s “Vita Activa” for a reason, and I wish I’d connected the dots between climate and politics sooner.
What are your self-care practices? Share how you are taking care of your well-being.
I work in nature, with my hands, and with other people as much as possible. So much of climate work is intangible, and though vital, progress can be impossible to measure. The reality of movement work and fighting for a different vision of the world is that there are far more losses than there are wins. In a time of democratic backsliding and rising authoritarianism, these losses can feel even more profound. Gardening, planting trees, installing agroforestry systems, working in classrooms with children, showing up to distribute Know-Your-Rights information at courthouses, volunteering, canvassing, phone-banking; these are all tangible, measurable activities. The satisfaction I get from engaging in tangible work is what fuels me through the intangibles.
Share your unprompted story.
When I was 16 years old and just starting to get involved in climate work through the Jewish Youth Climate Movement, I wrote the following climate story. Six years later, though it feels outdated, maybe a bit naïve, and definitely makes me cringe, I still resonate with the core message that movement and coalition work is how we walk that very human line between pride and humility:
Between Catastrophe and Hope: On Finding a Balance
There once was a man with two pockets, each containing a note on which was written a quotation from Jewish tradition. When the man felt disconsolate, he reached into one pocket and read the words: “Bishvili nivra ha-olam” (The world was created for me). When he felt prideful, he reached into his other pocket and read: “V’anochi afar v’efer” (I am but dust and ashes). Thus, he lived a balanced life.
I grew up hearing this Chasidic teaching often. The crux of the tale: How can we aim to change the world, or even to merely exist in it as human beings, while maintaining humility? How can we strike a balance between the great gift of this world while also recognizing our individual responsibilities as parts of a whole?
Thus far, fighting the climate crisis has mostly filled me with moments of discouragement in which I am compelled to look to the words “the world was created for me” for comfort. When I learn that deforestation is responsible for at least 15 percent of global green house gasses per year, hear about fires ravaging California, and recall the myriad natural disasters that have rendered millions of people climate migrants over the past few years, I feel like I am but dust and ashes and can’t possibly make a difference. Nothing I do is enough, especially in the year 2023, when we are aware that we are on the precipice of reaching a tipping point. That point of no return is terrifying, and fills me with the utmost sense of dread. The world might have been created for me, but what kind of world will be here when I’m gone? Will it be recognizable?
This fear is a real and deeply poignant one. When I originally began reflecting on my Jewish connection to the climate crisis at age fifteen, I often felt deeply righteous. I probably should have turned to the phrase “I am but dust and ashes” for support, because as a vegetarian who composted, I was sure I was doing enough. But then I discovered that humans eat 65 billion chickens per year, that fossil fuel corporations and big agriculture are the true culprits of the climate crisis, and I was back to being dust and ashes. My individual decisions were not nearly enough, especially when climate scientists were reporting that we had 12, then 11, 10, 8, 8 years until the effects of climate change became irreversible. I joined the Jewish Youth Climate Movement and began focusing on collective action, but the profoundly lonely feeling of having no impact remained with me, even though I was technically doing Tikkun Olam, teaching about Shmita, running Tu B’shvat Seders.
Even when helping to found my school environmental club, hosting guest speakers and working to make our school more sustainable, I understood the microcosm of my school was only one small battle in the larger war of climate change – and whether we won or lost our battle would not significantly change the outcome of the war. Discouragingly, I did not see that we had made any appreciable difference. One thing that helped was remembering what I had stashed in my other pocket.
Growing up in New York City, where we’re definitely beginning to feel the effects of climate change but not as significantly as in other places, I learned that being an environmentalist meant stopping people from littering and always recycling, and very little besides that. When we had hurricanes, few people linked them to climate change. But now there will be a sea wall around Staten Island by 2025. Now people are waking up. Still, there’s that nagging voice that nothing is enough. That we are but dust of the earth and a sea wall is putting a bandaid on a problem that requires far more than that. I love snow and cold weather, I love looking at the sky, I love the changing seasons and the feeling of possibility that comes at the beginning of each one. I don’t want to lose winter or parks or beautiful weather or my future, but until recently, I was convinced that a dim future was inevitable.
One summer, however, along with many other JYCM members, I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s book We Are The Weather, and it changed my thinking immensely. In the chapter “Dispute with the Soul,” Foer narrates a conversation between himself and his own soul.
His soul asks, “Have you noticed how often conversations about climate change end with the question of hopefulness?”
Foer challenges, “Have you noticed how often conversations about climate change end?”
This is why collaboration in the climate movement is so crucial. Multiple people are required in order to hold a conversation, and it is our job to ensure that conversations about climate change don’t end. Perhaps I am but dust of the earth. But upon converging our molecules of dust by coming together and mobilizing our communities, we are significant. We are for whom the world was made. I know this when I listen to the stories of my friends who are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, or when my school environmental club works with the administration to reduce waste. The world was created for us, and our collective power is reason for hope.
