Somewhere between your 9 a.m. lecture and your 11 a.m. seminar, the world is asking something of you. Not everything; not a solar panel, not a manifesto, not a personality overhaul, but just ten minutes. A small choice and the quiet understanding that you’re not too young, too broke, or too busy to matter. Here are ten ways to prove it.

Move: Walk The Block Instead of Summoning A Car

It’s 10:47 a.m., your next class is six blocks away, and your thumb is hovering over that rideshare app. The pull is real — faster, easier, predictable. But what that moment obscures is how carbon-intensive short car trips actually are. Cold-start engines haven’t warmed up yet, which means higher emissions from the jump, and stop-and-go campus traffic makes it worse from there.

The numbers aren’t subtle: according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, transportation is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, accounting for 28% of the total — and the majority comes from exactly the kind of light-duty passenger vehicles used for short, routine trips. Every skipped ride is a small but real subtraction from that number. 

Walking those six blocks takes maybe eight minutes. It costs nothing, emits nothing, and reduces stress. Done consistently, across thousands of students on thousands of campuses, it stops feeling like a walk and starts looking like a movement.

Leave five minutes earlier. Take the long way. Notice what you pass.

2-10-minute walk, zero emissions.

Eat: Swap One Meat Dish for Something Plant-Forward

You’re standing at the dining hall line at noon, tray in hand, two options in front of you. Here is the climate math, straight from the source: Our World In Data, drawing on the largest meta-analysis of global food systems ever published, found that producing 100 grams of protein from peas emits just 0.4 of a CO2 equivalent — compared to roughly 35 kg for the same amount of beef. That’s nearly 90 times the footprint.

And it’s not just the plate. The FAO estimates that livestock supply chains account for about 14.5% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, with cattle responsible for roughly two-thirds of that total. The food system is one of the biggest levers we have — and unlike power grids or transit infrastructure, it’s one you personally interact with multiple times a day.

Nobody is asking you to go vegan by Friday. The ‘all or nothing’ framing is one of the most effective ways to make people do nothing at all. So just one swap, once a day, when it’s convenient, is participation — not sacrifice. 

Get the curry. Enjoy it. Come back tomorrow and do it again. 

Same time spent, fraction of the footprint. 

Save: Bring And Use A Reusable Bottle

A single-use plastic bottle is designed for minutes of use, and can take up to 450 years to break down in the environment. Your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren will still share a planet with the bottle you tossed in 2024. That is not a comfortable thought to sit with at 8 a.m., but it is a useful one – because the fix is probably hanging by your dorm room door right now, a little dusty, but still there.

Most campuses have water refill stations within a few hundred feet of any building. The infrastructure is already there. The gap isn’t access — it’s a habit. And habits, as frustrating as it is to admit, aren’t built through willpower. They’re built through repetition until the action stops feeling like a decision at all. Bottle by the door. Fill before you leave. Repeat until it’s invisible.

There’s also a compounding effect here that’s easy to underestimate. People who carry reusable bottles tend to become more attuned to their daily waste streams — the cups, the bags, the packaging.

It’s a small thing that has a way of making you want to do more small things. Start here.

10 seconds, every day. 

Speak: Email A Representative Or Sign A Petition — Right Now, Between Classes.

Here is something that gets underplayed in nearly every “individual action” climate conversation: personal behavior, as meaningful as it is, does not hold a candle to policy. The ten most impactful climate decisions being made right now are happening in committee rooms and regulatory agencies — not dining halls. And the people in those rooms respond to one thing more reliably than almost anything else: constituent pressure from actual voters. That’s where EARTHDAY.ORG’s Earth Action Day campaign comes in — it’s a direct pipeline from your ten spare minutes to the inboxes of the people who write the laws, with pre-written letters to Congress on renewable energy, climate protection, and reducing plastic production, ready to send in under two minutes.

You have ten minutes. Pull up earthday.org, find the petition or letter that fits the issue you care about, and add your name. This is not naive — it is exactly how legislative attention gets moved. The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that 61% of Americans underestimate how many of their peers share their climate concern — and congressional staffers are even more out of step, dramatically underestimating constituent support for climate action. Contacting them directly is how you correct that record.

Climate legislation is actively being debated right now, in ways that will shape the next several decades.

You are a constituent. You are allowed to have opinions about your own future. Use the gap between Econ and Lit to say so in writing, to someone who is paid to listen.

3-5 minutes, measurable political signal

Save: Unplug What You’re Not Using

Your phone charger is plugged in right now. Your phone probably isn’t attached to it. It’s still drawing power — quietly, continuously, invisible. So is your laptop brick, your power strip, your old desk lamp with the slightly frayed cord. This is called phantom load, or standby power, and it is not trivial: the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that it accounts for 5 to 10% of residential electricity use nationwide.

Before you leave your room in the morning, pull the plugs. It takes five seconds. The electricity that doesn’t get generated doesn’t require the fossil fuels that would have been burned to produce it. The chain of causation is short and direct. And a DOE-managed research project at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has been tracking this for over 20 years — the problem hasn’t shrunk, because while individual devices got more efficient, the number of plugged-in devices per household has grown faster.

There’s something almost meditative about this one — leaving a space truly off, truly at rest, before you walk into your day.

Pull the plugs. Close the door. Go learn something. 

5 seconds, surprising cumulative impact.

Eat: Eat What’s Already In Your Fridge Before It Becomes Trash

There is a container of leftover rice in your fridge. There are two slightly soft tomatoes in the crisper drawer. There is a half can of chickpeas you optimistically opened on Tuesday. There is also an app on your phone with a dozen restaurants ready to deliver something new. Here is why the rice matters: according to UNEP, food that is wasted is responsible for 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions — and that figure includes not just the food itself decomposing in a landfill, but all the water, land, and energy used to grow, process, and transport it.

That’s nearly five times the total emissions from the entire aviation sector, by the way. The UNFCCC calls it one of the most cost-effective and readily achievable climate solutions available. And unlike power grid decarbonization or transportation infrastructure, it’s something you can act on right now, with the contents of your current refrigerator.

This one has the rare quality of being simultaneously an environmental win and a financial one.

Open the fridge. Make a slightly chaotic meal. Be proud of it. The planet won’t send you a thank-you note, but it will notice.

Saves money, cuts methane.

Speak: Talk About Climate Change Like It’s A Normal Part Of Conversation — Because It Is

Most people think they’re alone in their climate concerns. They’re not — but the silence makes it feel that way. The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that 61% of Americans underestimate how many of their fellow citizens are worried about global warming, while only 8% correctly estimate the actual level of shared concern. This “perception gap” has real behavioral consequences: people who think no one else cares are less likely to act, advocate, or talk about it themselves.

You don’t need a PowerPoint or a policy brief, just mention it when it comes up naturally — and it comes up naturally more than you’d think, because climate touches weather, food, travel, money, health, and the news. Mentioning that you walked to skip a car trip, or that you’ve been thinking about food waste, is enough. It signals that caring is normal. That signal, repeated, is contagious in the best way possible.

This is among the highest-leverage actions on this list because it doesn’t just change what you do — it changes what the people around you feel they’re allowed to do.

Say the thing. Start the conversation. Be the person in the room who made it okay to care out loud.

Anytime — the ripples go outward.

Move: Take The Stairs. Air-Dry Your Laundry. Do The Small Thing.

Two habits so minor they barely feel worth mentioning — and that’s exactly why they matter. Elevators use electricity; stairs don’t. Clothes dryers are among the highest energy-consuming appliances in any home, running heating coils for 45-60 minutes per load. A drying rack costs about twelve dollars and runs on the ambient air in your room. The International Energy Agency identifies everyday behavioral changes as a key component of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 — not as a footnote, but as a structural part of the scenario.

Here’s the thing about autopilot: it’s not fixed. It’s built from repeated choices that eventually stop feeling like choices at all. Right now, stepping into the elevator feels automatic. In a few months of taking the stairs, the elevator starts to feel like an effort. The habits that save the most energy over a lifetime are the invisible ones — not grand gestures done once, but small things done daily without noticing.

Climate action often gets framed as deprivation — doing less, having less, enjoying less. But taking three flights of stairs isn’t a punishment. It’s three floors of not waiting for a metal box. The drying rack isn’t a sacrifice. It’s laundry that smells better and costs less.

Do the small thing.

Zero extra minutes, compounding returns.

Speak: Show Up To A Campus Climate Group – Even Just Once

Student organizing has a track record that deserves considerably more credit than it gets. What started as a handful of campaigns at Swarthmore, UNC Chapel Hill, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2011 grew with support from 350.org and student networks into a global divestment movement that has now moved trillions of dollars away from fossil fuel investments. Over 140 U.S. universities have made divestment commitments. This did not happen because students posted about it. It happened because they showed up in rooms repeatedly.

You don’t have to become an organizer. You don’t have to go every week. But showing up once — to a tabling event, a meeting, a cleanup — puts you in a room with people already doing the work, which makes the work feel less lonely and more possible. It also signals to whoever is counting attendance that students care. That signal matters to administrators, to faculty, to trustees who are watching participation numbers.

There’s also a less tactical reason: community. The climate crisis is heavy to carry alone. Being in a room with people who share your urgency — and are doing something about it — is one of the most effective antidotes to climate despair.

Go once. The door will stay open.

One hour — an open door.

Save: Bring Your Own Bag. Bring Your Own Mug. Build The Infrastructure Of A Lower-Impact Life.

A reusable coffee mug used every weekday for a single semester saves well over a hundred disposable cups — cups that, as the EPA notes, are generally not recyclable in most municipal systems because of their plastic lining. A cotton tote used consistently becomes an environmental net positive within months. The math on reusables is not complicated: the upfront footprint of making them gets paid back quickly, and after that, they just keep paying forward.

But the underrated part is what these objects actually do for you behaviorally. They make the low-impact choice the default. When your tote is already on your shoulder, you don’t have to decide whether to take a plastic bag — the decision is already made. When your mug is in your backpack, you don’t have to think about it — you just hand it over. The secret to sustainable habits isn’t willpower. It’s set up. Design your environment so the right choice requires no effort.

Put the bag by the door. Keep the mug in your backpack. These are not grand gestures. They are the quiet, cumulative architecture of a life that takes the planet seriously — without making that seriousness the loudest thing about you. 

The planet doesn’t need your guilt. It needs your habits. Build good ones. Start with the bag.

Habit over willpower, every time. 

The climate crisis is real. It is urgent. And it will not be solved by any one person making any one perfect choice.

But it will be shaped by repeated decisions — small, practical, and built into the texture of everyday life. The kind that doesn’t require more time, just a different default. The kind that, multiplied across millions of students on millions of campuses, starts to look less like individual habits and more like a generation deciding who it wants to be.

You already have the time. You already have the gap between classes. Go use it.

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The post The 10-Minute Climate Fix: What You Can Do Between Classes appeared first on Earth Day.

On Earth Day 2026, in Elgeyo Marakwet County, Kenya, environmentalist Hillary Kibiwott Kibiwott set out to accomplish something extraordinary: playing 24,000 trees in 24 hours and breaking the Guinness World Record for the most trees planted by an individual in a single day.

By the end of the challenge, Kibiwott had planted 23,326 trees, officially surpassing the previous record of 23,060 set in 2021 by Canadian tree planter Antoine MOses in La Crete, Alberta.

The achievement made Kibiwott the new Guinness World Record holder and marked a major Earth Day moment for Kenya and the global environmental movement.

But for Kibiwott, the event was always about more than a number.

“I want to make a record that I will be the first African to do this here in Kenya,” he said before the planting began. “What I want to be remembered for is that on this day, on 22nd of April, World Earth Day, I want to be remembered [because] I went down and planted over 24,000 trees in 24 hours.”

Kibiwott, co-founder of the Green Earth Ambassadors Foundation, had officially received approval from Guinness World Records earlier in the year after submitting his application on January 1, 2026. The tree-planting marathon began on April 22 at 11 a.m. and extended exactly 24 hours later.

Preparations for the event reflected the scale and seriousness of the challenge. Kenya Forest Service professionals worked in advance to ensure the land met the standard required for the record attempt. Planting areas were carefully measured and marked with pegs to maintain the proper spacing between seedlings.

“What you see here is a peg,” Kibiwott explained during the event. “This is being done by professionals from Kenya Forest Service, basically to make sure that the standard required for the size or distance from each tree to another one is there.”

The setup allowed the planting process to move quickly and efficiently once the challenge officially began.

Supporters gathered around Kibiwott throughout the event, recognizing the significance of the attempt not only for Kenya, but for environmental action more broadly.

“We are excited to be here today,” one supporter said, “being a historic day where we are supporting the contender for the Guiness World Record.”

Another supporter emphasized the lasting impact of the effort, telling Kibiwott, “Whatever you are going to do today is going to be for posterity. The whole world will remember.”

The challenge quickly became more than an individual record attempt. Families, villagers, volunteers, environmental groups, and even members of the military joined the effort and helped turn the day into a large-scale community movement.

According to EARTHDAY.ORG staff member Derrick Mugisha, who attended and documented the event, the atmosphere reflected the spirit of collective action that defines Earth Day around the world.

“We were there and filmed the entire thing,” Mugisha wrote afterward. “And paid for some of the trees.”

The event also aligned closely with this year’s broader Earth Day message about the power of collective action and environmental responsibility.

“Earth Day is not just a day,” one participant said during the event. “It’s a movement.”

That idea was echoed in a message shared by EARTHDAY.ORG campaigner Brianna, who reflected on the significance of the achievement in the context of global Earth Day organizing.

“Hope is not just something we feel,” she wrote. “It is something we build.”

“In Kenya, one person set out to plant 24,000 trees in 24 hours. Families, villagers, and even members of the military joined to support this remarkable effort. By day’s end, 23,326 trees had been planted, and a new world record was set.”

For Kibiwott, the challenge was also intended to inspire young people and demonstrate that environmental leadership can begin at the community level.

“Here in Kenya, I want to show people that it is possible in a small way, coming from a youth like me,” he said.

Throughout the event, he repeatedly emphasized the importance of personal responsibility in caring for the environment. 

“It started by you,” Kibiwott said. “It is a personal responsibility.”

Environmental experts have described the achievement as particularly significant given Kenya’s ongoing efforts to increase forest cover and address the impacts of deforestation and climate change. Tree planting initiatives have become an important part of both local and national environmental strategies across the country.

Kibiwott’s success also highlights the growing role of grassroots environmental activism in global climate efforts. While large-scale policy changes and international agreements remain critical, Earth Day events around the world continue to demonstrate how local action can mobilize communities and inspire wider participation.

This year, millions of people participated in more than 12,000 Earth Day events worldwide, organizing cleanup, educational programs, conversation projects, and environmental campaigns in communities across the globe. 

“These moments may look different,” Briana wrote, “but they carry the same truth. Action matters. When people set forward, change becomes possible.”

Kibiwott’s record-setting effort captured that idea in a visible and measurable way. Every tree planted represented not only an environmental contribution, but also a symbol of participation, commitment, and collective effort.

Although the original target of 24,000 trees was not fully reached, the final total of 23,326 was enough to break the previous Guinness World Record and establish a new benchmark for individual tree planting. 

As the final hours of the challenge came to a close, the achievement stood as both a personal milestone for Kibiwott and a broader reminder of what Earth Day represents: action made visible through collective effort.

Not only awareness, but participation.

Not only concern, but commitment.

And 23,326 trees later, a powerful example of what is possible when people choose to act together.

But Earth day does not end when the planting stops.

It continues in the choices communities make, the policies leaders support, and the actions individuals take every day to protect the planet we all share.

The post One Person, 23,326 Trees, and a World Record Rooted In Hope appeared first on Earth Day.

To mark Earth Day 2026, we spoke with Marcele Oliveira, a youth climate leader from Brazil whose work centers on climate education, community organizing, and amplifying Global South voices in international spaces.

Marcele Oliveira is a youth climate leader and cultural producer from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She served inside the COP Presidency and works at the intersection of community organizing, climate justice, and Global South advocacy.

Interview facilitated by EARTHDAY.ORG South America with special thanks to Rodolfo Ropo Beltran, Regional Director, EARTHDAY.ORG South America.

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself. What first shaped your path into climate leadership?

My climate activism started in Realengo — a neighborhood in the western zone of RIo de Janeiro, a peripheral community. There, we fought for a green park, and that really changed my life. It’s now changing the lives of my family, my brothers, my nephews. I really believe public spaces and a relationship with nature can send a strong message about the life we want to live.

When we talk about nature, community, and trees, we are not talking about something separate from us. I realized that when I understood the importance of that green park in my community. And now we are seeing many different young people working inside communities, defending their territories — because of the consequences of climate change, yes, but also because they have solutions and proposals to make things change. We say in Brazil it’s mutirão — collective effort. But every time I say that, it starts in Realengo. In my home.

Q: What did the fight for that park teach you about environmental justice?

When I understood the environmental racism in my community through that fight, it was also a moment to amplify the work we were already doing with cultural practices and arts communication. We moved the conversation around the park, and now it’s become public policy — my city doesn’t just have one green park but many, connected with a broader agenda.

Looking at that, and then looking at floods and heat waves, I understood: being a climate activist is not optional. It’s not just because we want to defend nature. It’s also because we want to defend people — especially the people we love, especially people living in marginalized communities.

Climate action is a proposition of life for everybody, because we know the impacts are different if you are in a big building versus an indigenous community. The injustice is inside the conversation, and climate justice is the invitation for action.

Q: This year’s Earth Day theme is “Out Power, Our Planet.” What does that mean to you in the context of youth leadership?

For me, it’s about mutual youth energy — the energy that says: you don’t need to do the same thing I did, you don’t need to be in the same spaces. But you do need to take care of your community and the trees around you.

In my city, marginalized communities, the peripheries, don’t have trees anymore because of globalization and urbanization. But the wealthier zones have trees, public spaces, museums, cinemas. Who is making those decisions about the cities we live in? It’s our power, our planet, our cities, our lives.

Last year, we launched a youth platform to connect youth movements and action agendas. In one month, 307 submissions came in from 46 countries. That’s a major milestone — proof of the connection between grassroots action and UN climate decision-making, and a reminder of how much effort we must keep investing in that connection.

Q: What needs to change to better equip young people to take part in climate decision-making?

Three things: access, funding, and connected strategy.

Funding is essential — it’s impossible to do good work without the necessary support. And I say this from experience. I participated in a youth climate negotiations program in my city that was free. I’m not an international relations scholar; I’m a cultural producer. Without free capacity building, what we’re doing would be impossible.

We also need young people to not just be in the room, but to be heard — because just following the steps is not enough in a context of emergency. We need to be creative. We need to do things differently. We need open spaces for more people in decision-making roles.

During COP, we ran a campaign with youth organizations calling for five percent of climate finance to go to youth. The youth are driving climate solutions but are not being compensated for that. That, too, is climate injustice.

Q: What progress are you seeing in climate education across South America?

Last year we had the luck to work with all the biomes in Brazil — the Amazon, the Cerrado, the Caatinga, the Pantanal, the Pampa, and the Atlantic Forest, which is mine. The conversation about climate changed in the common understanding of people, because not everyone follows COP discussions, but everyone knew the COP was held in Belém do Pará. That was a powerful moment for climate justice discourse, and it’s brought more people into the conversation.

At COP last year, for the first time, people of African descent were nominated in decision-making roles. The first time. That is a recognition of the existence of people like me.

Climate education also means understanding our relationship with nature, with decision-making spaces, and with the understanding that global decisions have local impacts. We need an education that builds capacity to advocate and lead — and that recognizes knowledge coming not just from data or academic contexts, but from people, from ancestors, and from ways of living with the Earth that were sustainable long before now. The IPCC itself has formally acknowledged the importance of traditional knowledge for adaptation and resilience. We need to center that.

Q: How does climate change show up in the daily lives of communities in Brazil and across the Global South?

Many times, heat waves in my country seemed like a normal thing — I’m from Rio de Janeiro, it’s always hot. But now it’s hot in a different way. Going to school starts to be a challenge. Classes get canceled because of the heat. We now have protocols in Rio for medium and high heat waves. I was recently in New York in April and it was 30 degrees Celsius. That is not right.

When temperature changes that drastically, it affects food, transportation, everything. And in the Global South, this doesn’t just represent a challenge in your day — it represents people dying. It represents people having to leave their homes and sometimes not coming back. UNICEF data tells us that one in three children and young people in the world live in areas where at least four climate and environmental shocks overlap. Not one — four or more.

In Brazil, 67 percent of people living in environmental risk areas are Black. I’m talking about my father, my mother, my friends. This is not just unfair. This is an interruption of our lives.

Q: Why is it essential that leadership from the Global South shapes broader climate solutions?

Because solutions need to come from those living the problem. The Global South is home to the world’s most vital ecosystems, the majority of global biodiversity, and communities whose traditional knowledge holds real answers — not just in beautiful speeches, but in daily routines, with children and communities.

If climate solutions are designed only in the Global North and only in global institutions, they won’t be enough. The real solutions won’t be included. Important data — disaggregated by gender, race, history — won’t be considered. You cannot solve a problem without listening to the people living it.

That’s why our work, at its core, is about listening. And starting from that listening to build hope on the table.

Q: You’ve spoken about mutirão as a model for climate action. What does that look like in practice?

Mutirão is a Tupi-Guaraní word from Brazil’s indigenous tradition. You can translate it as “collective effort,” but it’s mutirão because it’s about doing together. And you only make mutirão when something is wrong.

I’ve made mutirão many times — waking up with neighbors to clean a church, or communities coming together after a flood to build something new. A lot of people around the world are making mutirão right now, because something happened: a flood, a disaster.

When communities move together, everybody moves together. When women move, when children move, when people of African descent and indigenous communities move — we’re all in this conversation. We have too many decisions being made by a small group, while the solutions may be in a place that group isn’t listening to.

When we share responsibility — not compete, but share — and connect solutions at scale, we can move communities from Belém do Pará and Addis Ababa, from Greenland and the Amazon of Colombia, all at the same time. That collective force is mutirão in real life.

Q: What gives you hope right now in the climate movement?

My friends. My friends are always the reason I have hope. We work so much — many times without pay, as volunteers — because we believe in the importance of our voices inside decision-making spaces. And sometimes we’re exhausted. Many times I am exhausted. But we talk to each other and we support each other.

I was nominated by the President of my country, President Lula, to a climate leadership role. But first, I was nominated by my friends. That means everything.

And our role, when we do have visibility, is to use it to recommend and invite — not just me, but people from the Amazon, youth from Belém do Pará, people from the peripheries, people of African descent and indigenous communities. Every time I do that and see it happen — a friend in a space, sharing their experience and feeling that they are in the right place — that gives me hope. We are on the right path.

Q: What is one action people can take this Earth Day to step into their power?

Start where you are.

I was once so overwhelmed with studying and work that I didn’t notice the trees in my own periphery disappearing. When I noticed, that was the moment I connected the big global discussion on climate change to the local fight for a green park in Realengo.

Look at your own territory — your neighborhood, your friends, your school, your community. Understand what is necessary to organize there for a better life. Try to find your people, because sometimes we feel alone, but we’re not. Connect with the children you love. Follow the road to COP 31. Join your local Conference of Youth.

And don’t compare yourself to others. There is no single right way to do this — if there were, we wouldn’t be in a crisis. Your voice, your future, your history, your community: this is climate action. This is what matters.

The movement needs all of us. So start where you are. When you start, the pathways will appear.

The post Start Where You Are: Youth Climate Leader Marcele Oliveira appeared first on Earth Day.

The green economy is generating millions of new jobs — but the workers trained to fill them aren’t keeping pace. According to LinkedIn data, job postings requiring at least one green skill are growing twice as fast as the number of workers who have those skills. That gap has real consequences, not just for the planet, but for workers, businesses, and economies navigating one of the biggest transitions in the history of work.

Efrem Bycer leads workforce and climate policy partnerships at LinkedIn, where he helps policymakers, employers, and workers understand and navigate the major shifts reshaping the world of work. EARTHDAY.ORG Director of Education Bryce Coon — who first connected with Bycer at COP climate conferences — sat down with him to talk about what the green skills gap means for everyday workers, which industries are changing fastest, and why the transition is proving more durable than the politics around it.

Efrem Bycer leads workforce and climate policy partnerships at LinkedIn, where he researches and advises on the intersection of labor markets, climate change, and economic transition. LinkedIn’s annual Green Skills Report tracks how sustainability-related skills are evolving across industries worldwide.

Earth Day 2026 and its theme, Our Power, Our Planet, highlights how people everywhere — from classrooms and local neighborhoods to national institutions — can help drive environmental progress through education, advocacy, and community engagement.

Q: Tell us about your role at LinkedIn and how your work connects to the transition to a greener economy.

My job at LinkedIn is to lead our workforce and climate policy partnerships, and that covers a lot of ground. The way I break it down: I work to help policymakers, employers, and workers understand and navigate the biggest transitions in the world of work — things like AI and climate change. You really can’t talk about one without the other right now. And if you’re working, both of those are showing up in your work in all sorts of interesting ways, especially in the skills you need to do your job.

Q: LinkedIn’s data shows job postings requiring at least one green skill are growing about twice as fast as the number of workers with those skills. What does that “green skills gap” mean for workers and economies around the world?

The world has made a couple of significant commitments — tripling renewable energy production, doubling energy efficiency — and increasingly there’s also a commitment around making sure we have companies and economies that are resilient enough to deal with the impacts of climate change. All of those things require a workforce to get them done.

What we’re seeing is that employers, governments, and companies are investing, and the demand for workers with the skills to do that work is growing rapidly — twice as fast as the supply of workers with those skills. So that puts us, first and foremost, at a question of: can we actually do the things we’ve committed to doing when it comes to climate change?

But there’s also a real economic dimension here. When we look at the LinkedIn hiring rate — basically a measure of how fast people change jobs — workers with green skills or green titles have a hiring rate that is 46.6% higher than the workforce overall. That’s huge. That’s a real, significant difference. So from my perspective, what that says is not only are we at risk of not achieving what we say we need to do for the planet, but we’re leaving serious economic opportunity on the table if we’re not helping workers get those skills.

Q: You’ve said green skills are no longer limited to environmental jobs. What are some of the most surprising industries where they’re already showing up?

One of the things we saw in our research this past year was that for the first time, the majority of green hires had green skills but not necessarily green titles. What that tells us clearly is that green skills are increasingly mainstream — and they’re going mainstream because they help workers do things that companies care about every day.

What do companies care about? Being flexible, being adaptable, especially in a rapidly changing world. Workers with green skills know how to deal with change. Companies also care deeply about resilience, especially in supply chains. And energy costs are going up.

Here are a few examples of jobs where we’ve seen rapid growth in green skills — jobs that maybe don’t immediately strike you as climate-focused. First: supply chain manager. When you think about where most companies have their emissions — their scope three — they’re in the supply chain. So it’s really no surprise that sustainable procurement skills are among the fastest-growing green skills on earth. It comes down to two things: how do you decarbonize the supply chain, and how do you make sure it’s resilient? Think about a company that sources spice crops from thousands of small farmers in parts of the world increasingly at risk of drought and flooding. If you don’t have a resilient supply chain, you have a real business problem. That supply chain manager now has to think about how to build the capacity of those small farmers to use regenerative agriculture and more resilient farming practices. That’s a fundamentally different job than it was just a few years ago, when the focus was getting X amount of crop at Y price by Z date.

Second: software engineering. We’ve seen rapid growth of energy management skills among software engineers, and for a clear reason. There’s a lot of resource intensity in AI. Companies are aware of that, and they know that small increases in code efficiency can have real major impacts — not just for the planet, but for their bottom line, given how much they’re investing in AI infrastructure.

Third: insurance. I live in Southern California, so I think about wildfires a lot. But think about any part of the country, any part of the world, where flood or fire risk is real. Insurance companies think about risk all the time. They’ve had to figure out how to build teams that can effectively assess climate risk. If you have to insure any physical asset, climate risk is simply one of the risks you have to think about now.

Q: For people who don’t view themselves as environmentalists, why should they care about green skills?

First and foremost: workers with these skills have an advantage in the labor market, and the labor market is getting tighter. Hiring is down from a few years ago. If you’re thinking about getting a job or getting your next one, being able to demonstrate that you can think about efficiency, find opportunities in challenging situations, and navigate ambiguity — those are all things we’d call green skills. And it turns out they’re green skills because they have a positive impact on the planet, but they’re also just things that are important to companies overall.

Energy management skills are another example. Finding efficiency, especially on energy, is going to be increasingly important as we go through more electrification and the total cost of energy for a company continues to rise.

Q: Are schools, universities, and training programs adapting fast enough to teach the green skills the job market needs?

The first thing I’d highlight is something you touched on — young people really do have a passion for this work. What we see in our data is that young people want to work on solving the biggest problems they see around them. They want the skills and knowledge to make a serious impact on those challenges, and climate change is definitely one of them.

The question then is whether training providers and education institutions are adapting their curriculum — both for what students are looking for and, perhaps even more importantly, for what employers are actually demanding. And I think the jury is still out on that. Education institutions often lag behind what industry is looking for.

A couple of things they should be doing: first, making sure there are fields of study where people can learn the skills for the new types of jobs being created. LinkedIn data shows that about 20% of the jobs that exist today didn’t exist in 2000 — so there’s a real need for new fields of study. But even more broadly, we’re estimating that by 2030, 85% of jobs are going to see at least a 25% change in the skills they require. That’s a lot of curriculum to update.

Take civil engineering — a career field that’s existed for over a century. A few summers ago in New York, the Third Avenue Bridge between the Bronx and Manhattan couldn’t close all the way because it was so hot that the bridge had expanded beyond what the original designers had accounted for. Those designers were working more than a hundred years ago. A civil engineering program still has to teach you how to build and design a bridge — but now it has to introduce new types of risk, new challenges, possibly new materials, because we have to consider that a piece of infrastructure built today needs to last 100 years under very different climate conditions than what was historically assumed.

Q: Many workers worry about being left behind. What does the data show about whether their skills are transferable to the green economy?

A few ways to answer this. One: you can be in marketing, accounting, or sales — we need those skills in the green economy. Those companies still need to find customers and manage their finances.

Two: workers who currently work in energy — even traditional, fossil fuel-based energy — are energy workers, and that’s a core part of who they are. We need a lot of people to work on energy. There are already strong examples of this. A geothermal company in the United States hired a significant number of people out of the oil and gas industry to help build and operate their facility. The skills transfer more than people assume.

But here’s the broader point: this space is growing rapidly. When you have relatively new types of jobs growing as fast as green jobs are, you can’t rely only on people who’ve done them before. We featured a solar asset management company in our 2024 Green Skills report that kept poaching employees from competitors because the demand was so intense — and that’s not a sustainable way to build a talent pool for an industry. When they broke the job down into its tasks and skills, they found other pockets of untapped talent that could excel at doing that work.

This is part of a broader movement around skills-based hiring — hiring people not for their degree or their most recent job title, but for what they can actually do. In this transition, we’re going to need a lot of that. A lot of people have the passion and interest to work on climate. The question is how we match that passion with the skills they already have to fill the jobs that need to be done.

Q: Your research shows women are underrepresented in green jobs. Why does that gap exist, and what are we losing if we don’t address it?

First and foremost: we are facing one of the biggest challenges on the globe, and if half the global workforce isn’t equally able to participate in solving it, we’re putting the solutions at risk.

Second: there’s a lot of economic opportunity for people with green skills, and if fewer women have those skills, fewer women are going to be able to take advantage of that opportunity. We also know that more of the jobs likely to be displaced by AI are held by women — and a lot of green economy jobs are going to be more AI-resilient. So if women are less likely to be in the green economy, that’s a compounding economic risk.

There’s also a structural challenge. A lot of the jobs in energy, building, and construction are predominantly male-dominated roles that very few women hold to begin with. That’s not going to fix itself. One concrete example of what can help: pairing childcare assistance with apprenticeship programs so that more women are actually able to participate in those pipelines. We need more people working on energy and climate, full stop — and that means actively supporting women into these roles.

Q: When government policy pulls back on climate investment, what happens to green hiring? Does it slow down, or does the private sector pick up the slack?

Companies are looking for certainty. That’s ultimately what drives decision-making, especially for long-term investments in energy infrastructure. Political uncertainty — which we’ve had a lot of recently, with elections around the world — is something businesses generally don’t invest around.

That said, a lot of companies operate globally. What happens in one country may not match what happens in another, and companies may continue to invest in renewables or address climate change because it’s a priority in other markets they care about, even if one or two countries have walked back their climate commitments.

What I can say is that we’ve been tracking the LinkedIn hiring rate, and through at least the first half of 2025, the hiring advantage for workers with green skills remained strong. It decreased slightly, but we don’t yet know if that’s a sustained trend or a response to uncertainty.

What people kept asking me at Climate Week was: is green hiring still a thing, even as the political discourse is pulling back? And my answer is clearly yes. Because companies — regardless of whether they’re publicly sticking to climate commitments — have to get this stuff done anyway. They have to become more resilient because they can see what climate shocks and climate risk can do to a business. They see real opportunities in the energy transition they want to realize. And they want to control costs, and energy efficiency is a core green skill. Maybe they call it something different. Maybe they use different words. But climate is material, and that drives business decisions and informs what kind of workforce these companies need — even if it’s not the headline they’re shouting about.

Q: Looking ahead, what gives you confidence that the transition to a green workforce will continue?

Young people really care about this, and I’m genuinely excited about the number of people who have reached out saying, “I want to work on this — how do I make an impact?” I don’t want to suggest this is only something young people care about — we see all kinds of people motivated by it. But the question of how we help people see themselves in the variety of roles that could use the skills they already have to drive climate impact — that’s where there’s a lot of opportunity.

I’m also encouraged by the fact that a lot of employers are still treating this as a key priority — not just because of public climate commitments, but because they know it matters to their business. And when companies decide something is important to their business, they build decision models around it, again and again.

I’ll come back to that stat from earlier: the majority of green hires today have green skills but not green titles. That tells us this is becoming increasingly embedded across companies — and that’s a good thing. This can’t be something siloed in one part of a business. It has to be a set of capabilities distributed across the entire organization.

Q: For Earth Day 2026, what is LinkedIn doing to mark the moment, and how can initiatives like this help accelerate green skills development worldwide?

Every month, LinkedIn has what we call an “en day” — a day with dedicated programming around a different topic. April is Environment Day at LinkedIn, and it always lines up with Earth Day.

For us, it’s a time when we talk about our own company’s climate commitments around energy, water, and waste, and make sure our employees understand what those commitments are. People want to work at companies that care about this stuff, and that matters. We also do programming at our office locations — environmental cleanups in the community, things like that.

But beyond the single day: we’re always thinking about how we help the broader workforce develop these skills. We unlock LinkedIn Learning content around green skills so people can access it during and around Earth Day. And the reason that matters is that most people are going to learn green skills by seeing how those skills apply to the jobs they already hold — that’s where most people actually put green skills to use. LinkedIn Learning can be really useful for that.

So for us, Earth Day is a moment to step back from the day-to-day, spend some time engaging with the environment around us, and also learn about the skills we can all use to take more climate action — starting right where we are.

The post The Green Skills Gap: 22 Minutes with Efrem Bycer appeared first on Earth Day.

Earth Day has long been a moment of bipartisan agreement in America — a reminder that clean air, clean water, and the protection of the natural world are not partisan concerns. But in today’s political climate, that shared purpose can feel distant.

Few people have thought harder about how to rebuild it than Bob Inglis. A Republican who represented South Carolina’s Fourth Congressional District for twelve years, Inglis became one of the most visible conservative voices calling for serious climate action — a stance that ultimately cost him his seat in Congress. In 2015, he received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. He now leads RepublicEn.org, a nonprofit dedicated to engaging conservatives in the climate conversation through the language of free enterprise and accountability.

EARTHDAY.ORG Global Director of Advocacy and Partnerships James Banks sat down with Inglis to talk about bipartisanship, the economics of clean energy, and why he believes the country is closer to a turning point than most people think.

Bob Inglis is the founder and executive director of RepublicEn.org, a nonprofit that builds the conservative clean energy base. He represented South Carolina’s Fourth Congressional District from 1993 to 1999 and from 2005 to 2011, and received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2015.

Earth Day 2026 and its theme, Our Power, Our Planet, highlights how people everywhere — from classrooms and local neighborhoods to national institutions — can drive environmental progress through education, advocacy, and community engagement.

Q: The first Earth Day sparked an extraordinary moment of bipartisan agreement. Are Americans capable of rediscovering that kind of shared purpose?

I think we’re on the cusp of rediscovering it. Maybe I’m the eternal optimist — and that’s maybe true — but I think we’re getting to the point where we’ve just had enough of the basic trash talk. There’s going to come a time when we realize: all these folks are doing is telling us we’re going to “own the libs” or “defeat the conservatives” — bury the other side. And that just isn’t getting us anywhere.

This current moment really is pretty low rhetoric, pretty low expectations — about even the ability to formulate a sentence, let’s say. But I really think the next moment will be different. The whole style of politics could change, and it’s up to us as consumers of that style to demand it.

Bellbottoms, I think, are back in — aren’t they? When consumers demand more bellbottoms, Levi’s and everybody else makes more bellbottoms. When consumers of politics say, “we’re tired of the trash talk, and we really want somebody who can talk to us about solutions” — that’s what we’ll get. We’ve got to get ready for that and drive toward that end.

Q: Does the climate conversation need to start with everyday concerns — clean air, clean water — if it’s going to resonate with people?

People really do want to live in fresh air and clean water and would like to have a healthier environment. When it comes to climate, that’s a little harder, because the main culprit is CO2 — and you can’t smell it, you can’t taste it. You sort of wish there were a foul odor as a proxy. But you can taste and smell the things that come along with it; they burn your eyes and your throat.

In places like China, there’s a greater demand for action because people can feel it. It’s like when the Cuyahoga River caught fire — repeatedly caught fire — and we realized, “wait a minute, rivers aren’t supposed to catch on fire.” You might wish, in the case of climate, that there were more things we could feel about this odorless, tasteless gas. That’s a real challenge. But generally speaking, people want clean air and clean water, and that’s a place to start.

Q: Why is it so important that good-faith conservative voices are part of the climate conversation?

We learn from people who are like us, and especially from people who like us. We really need the affirmation of the tribe — to feel that it’s okay to engage on a topic. What we’ve got to do at RepublicEn.org is show conservatives that this is very much their topic. You’re really good at this thing of solving climate change. This is a problem of economics. It has an environmental consequence. Fix the economics. Bring accountability for the side effects of burning fossil fuels and dumping into the trash dump of the sky for free.

We know that if you let people dump for free, there’ll be a lot of dumping — at the city dump or in the atmosphere. Charge for the space you take, and you get less dumping. That’s rock-solid conservative economics, and it’s actually acceptable to a lot of people left of center too. We could bring America together and lead the world to solutions. It’s just a matter of making sure people hear it in their own language.

And when they hear it from someone within their own tribe, it makes them feel like, “okay, I’m not Benedict Arnold here. I’m not going to be cut off from my community.” As human beings, we really can’t live on our own — we need a whole community of support. People don’t want to be cut off. We want to show them: you’ve got a home here. This is what we talk about as conservatives.

Q: Do conservative leaders have a unique ability to reach people who might otherwise tune the issue out?

If you’re going to start a Latino outreach church, you probably want to speak Spanish from the pulpit. If you’re going to reach conservatives on climate, you probably want to use the language of conservatism.

My friend Dan Kahan at Yale — joint appointment in law and psychology — has research showing that left-of-center people tend to be communitarian and egalitarian. They focus on the whole community doing well and key in on fairness. Right-of-center people tend to be hierarchical and individualistic — they believe in working through a chain of command, in individual effort and reward. The language is completely different in those two communities. And most of the climate conversation has been conducted in communitarian, egalitarian language.

What we have to do at RepublicEn — what we call the “eco-right,” a balance to the environmental left — is make that same case in hierarchical, individualistic terms. A great deal of money is spent on the environmental left every year; a very small amount is spent right of center. We’re trying to change that. Left of center, you might get away with saying “let’s repent of the capitalistic system.” On the right, you don’t want to say that. You want to say: “accountable free enterprise.” That may sound like an oxymoron to some people, but what I mean is a free enterprise system with all the costs in, all the subsidies removed, and a level playing field.

The language that works right of center is: “what we’re after here is more energy, more mobility, more freedom — we just want it cleaner, better, faster, and cheaper.” And there’s a real way to do that — to create wealth in America, create jobs, create opportunities, by selling products around the world that meet people’s needs.

The problem with the “shine your halo” approach is what it actually does: it makes the other person a sinner and you the saint. That’s a bad setup if you’re trying to convince people. But if you say “we can all win at this, and by the way, we can make money at it” — that’s a different conversation. As Steve Forbes said when he ran for president: in a capitalistic system, you make money by serving customers, and if you serve them well, you make lots of money. We can serve the world very well by creating better batteries, better solar cells, hopefully small modular reactors that are more affordable than the gargantuan ones — and sell those around the world, cleaning up the air the whole time.

Q: When you look at today’s energy economy — solar, batteries, new grid technologies — do you feel the market is already moving forward, regardless of the politics?

Yes, definitely. There was a time when human beings used whale oil to light their homes. Then coal oil. Then petroleum. The next is pretty clearly electricity — for data centers, for cars, for drones, for just about everything. And we’ll either enter that competition — with Ford Motor Company trying to meet the mark of BYD, the Chinese company that can make a car go 300 miles on a five-minute charge for around $20,000 — or we’ll double down on burning rocks and fouling the air. The world is going to move on, whether we’re part of it or not.

I was walking down a particularly choked street in New York City during Climate Week — closed in, full of fumes from trucks and buses and cars — and it occurred to me that my seven grandchildren are going to someday say, “Can you believe Mimi and Papa used to breathe that stuff?” The same way I might say to my grandmother, who grew up in South Georgia: “What was it like at the south end of a northbound horse?” We are headed to that day.

And here’s the thing: economic realities eventually overtake shaky ideologies. You can talk about saving the horse-drawn cart and protecting the buggy whip manufacturers. You can point out that Henry Ford’s cars were catching fire, that the tires were blowing out, that horses were rearing up and people were getting hurt. All true. But people figured out it was a pretty great deal to ride at 25 or 30 miles an hour rather than deal with that horse. That’s what’s going to happen with the electrification of everything.

You can have a religion of climate change — that’s not me. You can have acceptance of the data — that’s me; I apply my faith to that data. Or you can reject both. It doesn’t matter. You’re going to end up in the same place, because BYD is threatening to take over the entire world car market, and Ford is betting the farm on an EV platform it can sell for $30,000. That’s the economic reality, and it’s driving us there regardless of anyone’s view on climate science.

When I get discouraged in this business, I go watch JFK at Rice University in September 1962 — the Moonshot Speech. He admits in that speech that some of the materials needed for the spacecraft hadn’t been invented yet. “No matter. We’re going to the moon before the decade is out.” That’s really where we are. We need to admit we’re behind — behind BYD, behind China. And then, as Kennedy said: “We intend to catch up.” If we can get that kind of focused policy commitment, it would accelerate everything dramatically.

Q: What role should policy play? Is a carbon tax really the answer?

I think we do need policy, and the policy that would help most — this isn’t just conservative intuition, this is based on serious modeling by En-ROADS, from MIT Sloan School of Business — is a carbon tax. A simple price on dumping into the trash dump of the sky.

When I explain this to fellow conservatives, I use an example from my hometown of Bluffton, South Carolina. In the 1960s, the dump was a little dirt road loop off Highway 46 where you drove in and threw your trash on the ground. We eventually figured out that stuff was leaching into the saltwater estuary where we planned on eating the crabs and the shrimp and the fish and the oysters. And nationwide, we started lining dumps so they wouldn’t leach into the waterways. Most everybody agrees with that now.

But go back to the 1960s. If I’d been Inglis Trash Hauling back then, I could have gone to the County Council and railed against it: “Communism! They want to make me pay a tipping fee? I’m a taxpayer!” Fast forward to today — I’m certain there is nobody on the Beaufort County Council who would hear that argument. They’d say: “Inglis, you’re taking up space in the dump. Pay for the space you take. Back that cost up to your customers, because it’s their trash filling up the dump.”

Same thing applies to the trash dump of the sky. Right now we have free dumping. Charge for it, and there’ll be less of it, because people will substitute away from the sources. That’s what Milton Friedman would tell us to do — Reagan’s own economics advisor.

And because we’re conservatives, that carbon tax needs to be paired with a reduction in other taxes — specifically the payroll tax, which by itself hurts poor people. A carbon tax by itself would also hurt poor people. But if you shift the tax from payroll to carbon, the Congressional Budget Office says the bottom 70% of Americans end up better off.

Then you apply it to imports. Goods coming from a country without the same carbon tax get charged at our border. That makes it in their interest to do the same — why would China want to fork over money to the United States that they could have collected themselves? So the world follows the American lead. No international agreement. No bowing and scraping at the UN. No protracted negotiations. Just a bold move by the United States.

And lest this sound like purely right-wing stuff — if someone out there is thinking, “why does this sound familiar? I’m left of center” — it might be because it’s essentially what Al Gore has been for for the last 30 years. I asked him several years ago if I could keep saying that. He said, “Hold up, Bob — if you’re talking about a low carbon tax…” I said, “No sir, I’m talking about a substantial carbon tax, steadily rising, paired with a reduction in payroll taxes, applied at our borders.” He said: “Yeah, fine. What you’re for at RepublicEn.org is the same thing I’ve been for for about 30 years.”

That’s what we hope for: after conservatives have heard it in their own language, they can see they’re actually pretty good at this — and we can come together and bring America together and lead the world to solutions.

Q: Several prominent figures in the MAGA movement have recently started talking about solar as a way to strengthen American energy independence. What do you make of that shift?

I think what it shows is they’ve looked at the numbers. The rap against solar and wind has always been that they’re “intermittent” and “unreliable.” But when you’re paired with battery backup, they’re very reliable. The price of batteries has come down dramatically. The price of solar cells has come down. People have started to get the memo, and they see the numbers pencil out.

That’s what I mean by economic realities driving us to a point of convergence. The rhetoric on various outlets says solar is intermittent and you can’t count on it — meanwhile, the people actually doing it are saying, “Hush the rhetoric. We know how to do this. We get the batteries, we back them up, and it works.” It’s just facts coming into play.

Q: The Trump administration has rolled back climate policies and slowed approvals for renewable projects, yet solar and battery storage keep growing. What does that tension tell us about where America’s energy system is actually headed?

Economic realities overcome shaky ideologies — that’s the point of convergence I keep coming back to. You can rail against climate religion, call it a “false religion.” You can try to introduce doubt about the data. But meanwhile, the economic realities are headed toward this energy revolution, this real transition in the way we power our lives. That’s what’s going to win. Policy could speed it up — get us to that point of convergence sooner — but the direction is set.

It’s like smoking. Every physician will tell you: stop smoking. Doesn’t matter how long you’ve been at it — you could be 80 years old and have smoked all your life. Stop. There may be some damage already baked in, but you can avoid the worst of it if you stop now. We’ve been smoking a lot. We can either keep going, or we can accelerate the point at which we say: there’s a new way to power our lives.

And from a guy who was five times in Iraq and four times in Afghanistan — I’m reminded right now, in the midst of this Iranian conflict, that it would sure be nice to say to the Middle East: “See if you can drink that stuff. We just don’t need you like we used to. Here’s a copy of our Constitution in your language — you might want to study it. But you will not see us panicking over the Straits of Hormuz.” Even though we’re the world’s biggest oil producer, it’s a worldwide market. If you constrain 20% of the supply through the Straits of Hormuz, you’re going to affect prices and risk a worldwide recession. Would I like to defund petro-dictators like Vladimir Putin? You bet. I’d like to say to him: “Your economy looks like it’s pretty much crumbling. You can’t prop it up anymore with oil, because we just don’t need it like we used to.” That’s when we get to real freedom — not just cleaner air, but national security.

Q: When people talk about energy, they rarely talk about policy. They talk about their power bill and whether the lights stay on. Does the climate conversation need to start with those everyday concerns?

It definitely helps to make it applicable to daily life. Affordability is a key concept right now. Data centers are sucking up a lot of power, and the question of whether the grid is going to supply that — or whether very wealthy companies are going to do it themselves — is a potent issue that brings all of this into the present.

But I also think that once people actually experience the technology, it changes things. I watched this unfold at a Chevrolet dealership once. A 70-something hunter walks in — orange vest, obviously just been out hunting — and goes over to look at the Chevy Bolt. You can tell he’s scoffing. He walks up to the 24-year-old salesman, who tells him: “This car can beat a Corvette off the light.” “No way,” says the hunter. “Yes way — I’ve got a Corvette, and this car beats me.”

Once people check these things out, they start deciding, “Hey, I think I’d like one of those.” Particularly once we can meet BYD’s range and charge time at a competitive price — at that point, people won’t even remember what gasoline costs. All of that makes it real. The affordability, the thrill of a car that gives you pickup when you need it. Pretty cool gadgets. And that’s how minds change.

Q: Your willingness to speak honestly about climate change cost you your seat in Congress but earned you the Profile in Courage Award. What does courage on this issue look like for leaders today?

What I’d say to my former colleagues — I guess I’m their former colleague now — is this: if you’re not willing to lose your seat in Congress, there’s really very little reason to be there. The whole point is to lead.

If all you’re doing is following people where they’re already going, amplifying their fears, mirroring their fears back to them except louder — what are you doing? If you hold on to that seat for dear life like it’s the best thing you could ever possibly have, you’ll end a long career and wonder: “What happened? I stood for nothing. I took no risk. All I did was tell people what they were already telling me. I didn’t lead.” I can’t imagine anything worse than that.

So yes, I lost an election. But I didn’t lose my soul. There’s a big difference. We ask service members to die on literal hills in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Couldn’t we ask for a politician or two to die a figurative death on Capitol Hill? It’s not the worst thing that can happen to you. You led. You got shot in the back — that’s typically where it comes from, when you step up and start leading. But you were leading. You did what you were supposed to do. Go ahead and risk your seat. Lead. Just don’t end up with that terrible thing: a long career, and nothing to show for it.

Q: Standing here in 2026, do you feel the United States is beginning to choose the path of meeting this challenge?

I think we are going to choose the path of meeting this competition and leading this energy revolution. There are forces arrayed against that — vested interests that would like us to double down on burning rocks. But I think we’re going to figure out that it just isn’t working for us anymore.

The buggy whip manufacturers organized against Henry Ford and the Model T, and they had good points — his cars were catching fire, the tires were blowing out, the horses were rearing up. People were getting hurt. But the car got better. Now here we are: “Oh, EVs don’t go far enough.” Well, the battery’s better now. The range is better. The charge time is faster. The price is coming down. Go check it out. That’s what’s going to happen to the people with the burning rocks: there’s a new competitor on the scene with a much better product, and consumers are going to choose it.

Hopefully we can accelerate that point of convergence, because while I believe it’s inevitable, getting there sooner means cleaner air sooner and healthier lives sooner.

Q: If you could speak directly to conservative voters who care about economic strength, national security, and the future their children will inherit — what would you want them to understand?

If I could expand that question slightly — I’ve got something to say to both my right-of-center friends and to left-of-center people who might be listening.

To the right-of-center folks: this is an incredible opportunity, and we don’t want to miss out on it. If you had invested in Ford Motor Company when Henry Ford rolled out that first Model T, you would have done very well. If we can invest early in this new energy system and win this competition for the future, we’re going to do really well. That’s the case I’d make.

To the left-of-center folks, I’d say this: don’t treat this as too good a crisis to waste. The instinct to load the wagon — to attach every cause to climate legislation — is understandable, but that wagon is sinking in the muck. If you could just take some weight off, and pull it across the finish line with a simple price on carbon, paired with a reduction in other taxes, applied to imports at our borders — we might actually get there. But if you load it with everything else, it’s not happening.

Just implore left-of-center folks to reach out and find a way to make this work right of center. If we do, we can bring America together and lead the world. That’s the ultimate objective. That’s what’s possible.

The post The Conservative Case For Climate Action: 22 Minutes With Bob Inglis appeared first on Earth Day.

Most people have heard that forests absorb carbon dioxide. Fewer have heard about the other carbon-storing giants on our planet — the ones hidden in plain sight along every coast, but below the waterline and beneath the mud.

They’re called blue carbon ecosystems, and they may be our most underappreciated climate allies.

What Is Blue Carbon?

The term blue carbon refers to the carbon captured and stored by the world’s ocean and coastal ecosystems. While the entire ocean absorbs CO2, scientists use “blue carbon” most specifically to describe three coastal habitats: mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, and salt marshes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) describes these systems as among the most carbon-dense ecosystems on earth — and the science behind that claim is striking. 

Here’s the key insight that surprises most people: most of the carbon in these ecosystems isn’t in the leaves or the branches. It’s underground.

Because mangroves and marshes grow in waterlogged, oxygen-poor soil, dead plant material decomposes extremely slowly. Instead of breaking down and releasing carbon back into the air, it accumulates — layer by layer, century by century — in thick, dark sediments that can be several meters deep. This carbon that has been locked away not for years, but for thousands of years.

Pound for pound, blue carbon ecosystems can absorb carbon up to ten times faster than tropical forests. And because that carbon stays buried in waterlogged soils rather than cycling back quickly through decomposition, these coastal systems also store twice as much carbon per equivalent area.

Meet The Three Ecosystems

Mangrove forests are saltwater trees with tangled above-ground root systems that grow where land and sea meet. They thrive in tropical and subtropical coastlines — throughout Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America. Their dense root networks trap sediment, build soil, and create some of the richest nursery habitats on Earth for fish, birds, and marine mammals. Research estimates that mangroves protect 15 million people from flooding each year and prevent more than $65 billion in property damage annually — just through their physical presence as a coastal buffer. 

Salt marshes are coastal wetlands dominated by salt-tolerant grasses and sedges, flooded and drained daily by tides. About half of the United States’ salt marshes line the Gulf Coast, including protecting key areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Like mangroves, their soils are waterlogged and anaerobic, meaning carbon that enters the soil and largely stays there. Salt marshes are also critical feeding and nesting habitats for shorebirds, and they filter runoff from the land before it researches the sea.

Seagrass meadows are the least visible of the three — entirely underwater fields of flowering plants that grow in shallow coastal waters around the world. They may not look dramatic, but the numbers are extraordinary. Though they cover only 0.1% of the ocean floor, seagrasses store up to 18% of the world’s oceanic carbon and can capture it from the atmosphere up to 35 times faster than tropical rainforests.

Together, these three ecosystems store about 50% of the Earth’s biological carbon despite occupying less than 5% of global land area and less than 2% of the ocean. Their impact is wildly disproportionate to their size.LINK

When Protection Becomes A Source of Emissions

Here’s where things get urgent. When blue carbon ecosystems are damaged — when mangroves are cleared for shrimp farms, when marshes are drained for development, when seagrass beds are smothered by polluted runoff — the carbon locked in those soils doesn’t stay buried.

That carbon is released. All of it. Quickly.

When coastal ecosystems are degraded or destroyed, scientists estimate that between 0.15 and 1.02 billion metric tons of CO2 are released annually from their soils alone. Although the combined area of mangroves, marshes, and seagrasses is only 2-6% of the area covered by tropical forests, their loss contributes up to an additional 19% on top of current estimates of deforestation emissions. We lose far more than habitat. We lose centuries of stored climate stability. 

The losses are already significant. Estimates suggest that up to 67% of historical mangrove coverage has been lost, along with at least 35% of salt marshes and 29% of seagrass meadows globally. Annual loss rates continue at roughly 0.5-3% per year depending on the ecosystem type. If current trends continue, nearly all unprotected mangroves — and 30 to 40% of remaining tidal marshes and seagrasses — could be gone within a century.

Blue Carbon Is Powerful — But It Can’t Stop Climate Change Alone

Restoring wetlands is critical. Protecting them before they need restoration is even better.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes clear that protecting and restoring ecosystems can help reduce emissions — but they cannot replace rapid, deep cuts to fossil fuel use. In its Sixth Assessment Synthesis Report, the IPCC states that limiting warming requires “deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions” across all sectors this decade. 

If oceans keep warming and seas keep rising, even the strongest marsh cannot hold the line forever. Warmer, and more acidic oceans stress seagrass beds. Higher seas can drown marshes faster than sediment can accumulate. More intense storms can shred mangrove forests before they recover. The very conditions created by unchecked emissions threaten the ecosystems we need most to help us absorb those emissions. 

That’s why protecting blue carbon ecosystems and transitioning to renewable energy are not competing solutions — they’re connected.

When emissions fall, ocean warming slows. When warming slows, sea level rise slows. When sea levels rise more slowly, wetlands have a fighting change to survive — and so do the people behind them.

The Choice In Front Of Us

Imagine southern Louisiana in twenty years.

In one version, restored marshes stretch wide again. Sediment diversions rebuild land. Mangrove forests expand northward as conditions allow. Offshore wind farms and solar fields reduce the fossil fuel emissions driving warming seas. A storm will come — but they hit a coast that is prepared.

In another version, we delay. Wetlands continue to vanish. Storm surge travels unbroken across open water. More families rebuild. More land slips away.

The difference between those futures isn’t abstract. It comes down to decisions being made right now — in city councils, state legislatures, Congress, and corporate board rooms.

Expanding clean energy doesn’t just cut emissions; it slows the ocean warming and sea-level rise that are steadily eroding places like southern Louisiana.At the same time, investing in wetland restoration and conservation strengthens the natural storm barriers communities already depend on. Rebuilding marshes, protecting mangroves, and restoring seagrass beds give coastal towns breathing room — time, protection, and resilience in a warming world.

The disappearing coastline is a warning, but it’s also proof that nature still has extraordinary power. Beneath the surface of these marshes lies carbon stored for centuries. Whether that land disappears and releases that carbon, or grows and protects the vibrant life there, depends on what we choose to protect. This is true not just for Louisiana, but for coasts worldwide.  

Efforts like EARTHDAY.ORG’s Our Power, Our Planet campaign are pushing governments to dramatically scale up renewable energy — calling for a tripling of renewable energy generation by 2030, a pace scientists say is necessary to keep climate goals within reach. Join us for Earth Day 2026 and learn how to contact your elected officials or advocate action with your local government.

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On a hot summer afternoon in Chicago’s South Side, electricity bills spike just as the air turns unbearable. For many families, the choice is stark: run the air conditioner and risk falling behind on bills, or sweat it out and hope the heat breaks. This is the reality for millions of Americans living in rental housing, multifamily buildings, or neighborhoods where installing rooftop solar is simply not an option.

For years, solar energy has been framed as a climate solution. Too often, it’s only an option for people who can afford a house, a roof, and thousands of dollars upfront. Community solar is quietly changing that equation.

Instead of panels on individual rooftops, community solar projects place solar arrays in shared locations — such as vacant lots, brownfields, former landfills, parking canopies, or agricultural land — allowing multiple customers to subscribe to and benefit from the energy produced. The benefits of the solar output flow to individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and other community members who receive credits on their utility bills without installing anything themselves.  

Increasingly, these programs are being designed with equity at the center.

What “Solar for All” Really Means

Community solar isn’t new, but recent “Solar for All” initiatives are pushing the model further by prioritizing low- and moderate-income households located in communities that face disproportionate energy costs and climate pollution.

For instance, the Illinois Solar for All program was created to expand access to clean energy for households earning 80% or less of the area’s median income. Participants can subscribe to community solar projects with guaranteed savings, often without credit checks or upfront fees. For families already spending a disproportionate share of income on utilities, even modest monthly savings can be meaningful.

New York has taken a similar approach. The state now leads the nation in installed community solar capacity, supported by policies that encourage projects to serve renters, affordable housing developments, and environmental justice communities. In recent years, hundreds of New Yorkers have subscribed to community solar, many of whom would never have been able to afford installing rooftop solar panels. On average, subscribers save 5-10% on their electricity bills, which can translate to $100-$200 per year depending on usage.

For some households, that may sound modest. But for a senior on a fixed income, that could mean covering a month of prescription medication . For a parent, it could mean groceries that stretch to the end of the month, a child’s school supplies, or simply the ability to keep the air conditioning running during a heat wave without fear of falling behind. Community solar doesn’t just lower bills — it creates breathing room. 

Washington D.C.’s Oxon Run Solar Project shows what’s possible when local governments think creatively. Built on a former landfill in Southeast D.C., the project supplies solar power to nearby households, delivering direct bill credits to residents who have historically faced high energy costs and underinvestment.

These programs don’t just reduce emissions. They reduce inequality.

Energy Burden Is a Climate Justice Issue

Energy burden — the percentage of household income spent on energy bills — is one of the clearest indicators of energy inequity. Low-income households in the United States often spend up to three times more of their income on electricity and energy costs than higher-income households. Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities face disproportionately high energy burdens due to historic redlining, chronic underinvestment, and closer proximity to polluting infrastructure.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, community solar plays a key role in expanding clean energy access by lowering barriers related to homeownership, credit requirements, and upfront costs – obstacles that have historically excluded many households from the renewable transition. 

Just as important, community solar projects can be built faster and at scale. A single solar array can serve hundreds or even thousands of households, accelerating emissions reductions while spreading financial savings more evenly.

Jobs, Local Investment, and Energy Independence

The benefits don’t just stop at the meter.

Community solar projects create local jobs in construction, maintenance, and administration. Nationwide, the solar industry already employs hundreds of thousands of workers, and community-scale projects are among the fastest-growing segments of the market. These are jobs that cannot be outsourced because they involve on-site construction, electrical work, operations, and long-term maintenance that must be performed locally. 

There’s also a resilience advantage. Distributed solar generation, including community solar, reduces reliance on large, centralized fossil fuel power plants. Those facilities are especially vulnerable to extreme weather — including heat waves, hurricanes, and winter storms — which can overwhelm aging electric grids and trigger widespread outages. 

In 2021, during Winter Storm Uri in Texas, millions of residents lost power for days as centralized power plants and natural gas infrastructure failed in freezing temperatures. More than 200 people died, and families were left without heat, light, or safe drinking water. The crisis exposed how fragile heavily centralized systems can be in the face of extreme weather. 

By generating electricity closer to where it is used locally, sited solar can help stabilize electric systems during periods of high demand. When paired with energy storage — such as batteries that store excess power for use during outages or peak house — community solar can continue delivering electricity even when the broader grid is disrupted. Modern grid management tools further enhance this resilience by balancing supply and demand in real time, reducing the scale and duration of outages during extreme weather events.

PULLQUOTE: “Energy justice means the goal of achieving equity in both the social and economic participation in the energy system, while also remediating social, economic, and health burdens on those historically harmed by the energy system.” – U.S. The Department of Energy, Office of Energy Justice

Policy Makes the Difference

Where community solar thrives, it is almost always because strong policy made it possible.

States like Illinois, New York, and Colorado have passed legislation requiring utility companies to support community solar development and ensure a portion of their capacity is reserved for low-income subscribers. In 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act authorized major federal investment through new grants and tax incentives aimed at underserved communities, but ongoing political challenges now threaten how fully those commitments are realized — if they are realized at all. 

But access is still unequal. Many states — including Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina — lack enabling legislation to create or manage community solar programs, leaving millions without the option to participate. In others, program caps and restrictive enrollment limits in states such as Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New York have periodically constrained how much community solar capacity can come online, slowing progress just as demand slows. .

This patchwork approach highlights a broader truth: the clean energy transition isn’t just about technology — it’s about political will. 

Why This Moment Matters

The United States is at a crossroads. Electricity demand is rising as extreme heat intensifies, vehicles electrify, and aging infrastructure strains under growing pressure. At the same time, millions of households remain locked out of clean energy simply because they rent, lack upfront capital, or live in states without enabling policies.

Community solar offers something rare in today’s political climate: a solution that lowers bills, reduces emissions, strengthens grid resilience, and expands economic opportunity all at once. It turns clean energy from a private upgrade into shared infrastructure.

Solar power doesn’t just belong on rooftops. It belongs in neighborhoods. 

Earth Day 2026 is centered on one powerful idea: Community action. Because real climate solutions don’t start in boardrooms — they start where people live.

Community solar is a perfect example of what happens when neighbors, local leaders, and grassroots organizers work together to reshape energy systems so they serve everyone, not just a privileged few. These projects succeed because communities demand them, design them, and benefit from them collectively.

Here’s how you can turn community action into real impact:

• Start local conversations about community solar with tenant associations, neighborhood groups, faith organizations, and community centers. Many people are eligible but don’t know these programs exist.
• Support local clean energy initiatives by showing up to city council meetings, public utility hearings, and community planning sessions where energy decisions are being made.
• Partner with community organizations already working on housing justice, public health, or economic equity. Community solar works best when climate action is woven into existing local efforts.
• Educate and mobilize by sharing accessible, fact-based information about community solar and energy equity through EARTHDAY.ORG’s climate and energy resources.

You can help expand access to clean energy by supporting community-led solar initiatives and pushing for policies that make them widespread and equitable. Add your name to the Renewable Energy Petition asking world leaders to triple renewable energy generation by 2030. If you’re in the U.S., send a message to your local lawmakers asking them to stop rollbacks and promote renewable energy so community solar can grow in every neighborhood.

Climate change is global, but solutions are built block by block. When communities organize, share power, and act together, clean energy becomes more than a technology. It becomes a tool for justice.

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Each time someone asks ChatGPT a question, the exchange feels nearly invisible: just text appearing on a screen. But behind that response lies a massive physical infrastructure drawing electricity, consuming water, and producing carbon emissions at an unprecedented scale. As generative artificial intelligence becomes embedded in everyday life, the environmental footprint of the system powering it is growing just as rapidly.

OpenAI has acknowledged that users now send roughly 2.5 billion prompts per day to ChatGPT. Each prompt requires computation inside energy-intensive data centers, where servers run continuously to process, store, and generate responses. While a single query may seem insignificant, the cumulative demand of billions of interactions translates into real and measurable environmental costs.

While a single AI query may feel insignificant, everyday use adds up quickly at scale. A typical office worker might use ChatGPT about 20 times a day to summarize a meeting, draft emails, brainstorm ideas, and outline a report. Each prompt uses an estimated 0.34 watt-hours of electricity — roughly the amount of energy needed to run a standard LED lightbulb for about two minutes. Over a day, that adds up to about 6.8 watt-hours per person. 

On its own, 6.8 watt-hours per day is minimal, but scaled to one million daily users, that becomes 6,800 kilowatt-hours — enough to power roughly 225 U.S. homes for a full day. At 100 million users, the number jumps to 680,000 kilowatt-hours daily, comparable to the electricity consumption of more than 22,000 households. Small individual actions, multiplied globally, begin to resemble the energy footprint of the entire community. 

Data Centers and the AI Boom

Generative AI relies heavily on hyperscale data centers, the largest category of computing facilities in the world. As of 2024, there were 1,136 hyperscale data centers globally, with the United States accounting for 54% of global capacity. These facilities are expanding in both size and power density, driven largely by AI workloads that require constant, high-performance computing. 

The environmental implications are already visible. At more than 4%of total U.S. electricity consumption, data centers now use roughly as much power as all residential lighting nationwide — and more electricity than many individual states consume in total. Projections cited in the same analysis suggest that figure could rise between 6.7% and 12% by 2028 as AI systems continue to scale.

This surge in electricity demand presents a challenge for both U.S. national climate targets and global climate goals under the Paris Agreement, which depend on rapidly reducing fossil fuel use even as electricity demand grows. While renewable energy capacity is expanding, much of the U.S. grid still relies on fossil fuels. As a result, increased electricity use by data centers often corresponds directly with higher greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon Emissions at Scale

The climate impact of AI infrastructure is no longer speculative. A roadmap study from Cornell University estimates that AI-driven data center expansion could generate between 24 and 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually by 2030. That range is comparable to adding millions of gasoline-powered vehicles to U.S. roads each year.

The emissions stem from multiple sources: the electricity required to run servers, the energy used for cooling, and the upstream carbon footprint of power generation. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, fossil-fuel power plants also consume substantial amounts of water, linking carbon emissions and water use in ways that amplify environmental stress.

AI’s Thirst for Water

While electricity consumption often dominates discussions about AI’s climate impact, water use is an equally pressing concern. Data centers rely on water-based cooling systems to prevent servers from overheating. Research summarized by MIT Technology Review shows that AI servers operating within standard “cool” temperature ranges — typically between 18°C and 27°C (64-81°F) — can require one to two liters of water per kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed, depending on system design and local climate conditions. At one to two liters per kilowatt-hour, generating the electricity for a single AI-heavy household’s daily energy use can require the equivalent of an entire person’s daily drinking water — just to keep servers cool.  

In 2023, U.S. data centers consumed an estimated 17 billion gallons of water. Given that the average American uses between 30,000 to 36,500 gallons of water annually, that volume could meet the full yearly water needs of roughly half a million people. In effect, data centers now “drink” as much water each year as a mid-sized American city. 

The consequences are especially severe in arid regions. A Bloomberg analysis found that many new AI-driven data centers are being built in already water-stressed areas, including the American Southwest. In Reno, Nevada, a growing data center hub, climate assessments show high long-term drought risk, raising concerns about the sustainability of continued industrial water use — and putting residents at greater risk of water restrictions, rising utility costs, and heightened vulnerability during prolonged drought conditions.

Local investigations have already documented these pressures. Reporting by The New York Times found that a Meta data center in Georgia uses roughly 500,000 gallons of water per day — enough to supply the daily water needs of several thousand residents. Similar conflicts are emerging nationwide as communities grapple with competing demands for limited freshwater.

Transparency Gaps and Policy Challenges

Despite the scale of energy and water consumption, reporting requirements remain limited. Most technology companies do not publicly disclose facility-level data on water withdrawals or cooling practices. Experts cited by The Guardian have warned that the lack of mandatory reporting for data center energy and water use makes it difficult for regulators and communities to assess environmental risks or plan for infrastructure strain.

Without transparency, local governments may approve new facilities without fully understanding long-term impacts on water systems, electricity prices, or emissions targets.

Paths Toward Sustainable AI

There are viable ways to reduce AI’s environmental footprint. Research from Cornell indicates that strategic siting of data centers, renewable energy integration, and advanced cooling technologies could significantly lower emissions and water use if adopted at scale. In some scenarios, improved cooling efficiency alone could reduce water consumption by nearly a third.

The United Nations has repeatedly emphasized electrification — shifting cars from gasoline to electric vehicles, replacing gas heating with electric systems, and digitizing infrastructure — must be paired with rapid expansion of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Without decarbonizing the grid at the same pace that electricity demand grows, increased digital and AI infrastructure risks locking in higher emissions rather than reducing them. 

Innovation With Accountability

AI systems like ChatGPT offer real social benefits, from education and accessibility to research and communication. But as adoption accelerates, so does the responsibility to ensure that innovation does not come at the expense of climate stability and water security. 

EARTHDAY.ORG has long focused on making environmental costs visible. The infrastructure behind AI is no exception. As billions of daily prompts translate into rising energy use, water withdrawals, and carbon emissions, the future of AI will depend not just on technological advancement, but on whether its growth aligns with the planet’s ecological limits.

Powering AI Without Polluting the Planet

You can help ensure that all energy infrastructure — including the power behind AI — is clean, renewable and responsibly built.

Sign the Renewable Energy Petition urging world leaders to triple renewable energy generation by 2030 — a benchmark climate scientists say is essential to meeting global emissions targets. Past public pressure has helped accelerate renewable commitments at both national and corporate levels, and continued engagement remains critical.
In the U.S.? You can also send a message to your local lawmakers urging them to invest in renewable energy and grid modernization so that digital innovation doesn’t deepen the climate harm.

This article is available for republishing on your website, newsletter, magazine, newspaper, or blog. The accompanying imagery is cleared for use with attribution. Please ensure that the author’s name and their affiliation with EARTHDAY.ORG are credited. Kindly inform us if you republish so we can acknowledge, tag, or repost your content. You may notify us via email at fielder@earthday.org. Want more articles? Follow us on substack.

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