With Trump’s plans on climate change over his second term presenting a harrowing future for climate change activists, law school students, and legal scholars; law school climate change centers such as Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center and New York University’s Guarini Center should be your first stop to find out what is happening.

Tuesday, November 5th, 2024 was the warmest election day on record in the city of New York which evidently became an ominous outcry of the next four years specifically to law students and legal scholars at the forefront of climate change education and litigation across the city.

“I have one more year of law school after this. I’ll be going into the workforce, I won’t just be a student any more,” said Jermey Zhang, a second year law school student at New York University. Zhang, a leader of NYU’s climate change club and member of the Guarini Center on Environmental Energy and Land Use Law at NYU, has found a passion in environmental law and climate change while working with the center.

Student’s like Zhang are at the forefront of the fight for climate change in the legal realm and combating the Trump administration’s policies over the next four years. Election night was harrowing for Zhang and many environmental law students across the country, the future of their careers changed rapidly.

Climate Change centers like The Guarini Center and Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law are key educational resources on climate change litigation against the Trump administration during his second term.

The Sabin Center is working to mold the next generation of climate change leaders in legal work. The center also works to educate the public mainly relative to NYC on climate change news, resources, information, and forums regarding legal matters.

The Sabin Center has programs in energy law, environmental and land use law, and international and foreign law all containing a focus in climate change logistics and actions.

Law students, lawyers, legal scholars, and climate change activists within the realm of environmental law understand the setbacks that come with the upcoming Trump administration.

Higher education, specifically law schools have become an essential part of legal climate change justice during the past Trump administration and will be so again over the next four years.

Over a month post election, with Trump’s victory and Republican control of the House and the Senate presenting a stark reminder of the four years, yet these centers are key figures in combating the Trump administration’s advances against climate change.

Here’s what is happening:

“Just as the 2016 election reversed large parts of the Obama environmental legacy. However, rapid advances in the technology and economics of clean energy have created a momentum that can be slowed but not stopped,” says Micheal B Gerrard, professor at Columbia Law and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

As mentioned above a Sabin Center White paper published in 2021 on Trump’s first term titled, “U.S Climate Litigation in the Age of Trump: Full Term,” explaining the mass litigation that happened during Trump’s first term.

“378 U.S. climate cases that responded or interacted with federal policy and law during the Trump administration. In the final two years, cases increased, as 219 were filed from 2019 until the end of the term” said Korey Silverman-Roati, a climate law fellow in 2020.

These center’s have full research capabilities providing the public with knowledge about what is going on during the Trump administration and statistics to back it up becoming an essential database for Trump’s second term.

In Trump’s project 2025 plan, it states that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a “colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” which “should be broken up and downsized.” With less funding key organizations fighting the effects of climate change will lose funding creating a much harder path forward for climate change activists.

On Trump’s website there is an article title “Agenda:47 America Must Have the #1 Lowest Cost Energy and Electricity on Earth.”

“We have energy that is made by the wind, the windmills rust, they rot, they kill the birds, it’s the most expensive energy there is,” says Trump in the article. With Project 2025’s plan to eliminate these clean energy standards, the next generation of environmental lawyers such as at these centers, which are vital.

Gerrard and The Sabin Center explain two essential legal realms, in regards to the Trump administration and attacks to environmental law over the next four years discussing international agreements and State and local action essential to combating Trump.

During Trump’s first term as president he withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and then Biden rejoined after he took office in 2020. It is obvious from past precedents that Trump will rejoin again.

It is evident that pulling out of these international agreements will cause the US to lose a great deal of power in terms of negotiations and being a strong force in the international battle against climate change.

The Sabin Center has done work regarding the notion that developing nations who suffer the most extreme effects of climate change on an international scale are wanting compensation for the results of climate change in which they have suffered. The center has countless resources for island nations experiencing these drastic effects of climate change specifically threatened by rising sea levels.

“China and the US are probably the biggest culprits of these demands but the idea that Trump would give money to these countries just would not ever happen,” says Zhang.

On a state level these center’s provide key information on lawsuits, state bills, and activists and community events.

Blue states like New York are going to be key over the next four years during the Trump administration, yet states cannot impose their own climate change litigation without key federal approval and funding in regards to motor vehicles.

In many regards states can set wrong environmental policies within their state without federal approval such as new sources of clean energy.

Cities can require lower emission production of all sorts of commodities in which there is no need for federal involvement of the Trump administration.

“Blue states and cities, together with environmental groups, will vigorously litigate against Trump’s actions on the environment. It is certain that the next four years will be rocky indeed, with plenty of work for lawyers on both sides,” says Gerrard.

Here’s why Law School Climate Change Centers are Essential Resources During Trump’s Second Term was originally published in The Beat: Climate City on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As the Governors Island ferry makes its seven-minute journey across the New York Harbor, a horde of helicopters creep higher and higher above the city’s shoreline. The island is dry and cold, the grass is grey and what’s left on the trees is a rusty shade of red. From here, you can really see that Manhattan is just an island too — all packed in and metallic from here, illuminated by the early winter sunset.

Most noticeably, it’s quiet. You can’t hear the sirens or the honking taxi drivers. On the weekend there are not many students from the Harbor School who usually keep the place busy and full of high school-ish laughter. Except of course — for the low grumbling of those helicopters, a reminder that people are looking down at the scattered islands of the New York Harbor.

For over a century, Governors Island was home to military and coast guard families. It’s now a staple weekend spot for New Yorkers, to escape the sweltering summer heat with a nice ocean breeze.

It’s also a climate hub, with a number of organizations that have made Governors Island home base. From artist residencies to a number of climate solution non-profits and pilot programs that are bolstering city shorelines like Billion Oyster Project and Seaweed City, or processing every speck of waste on the island like Earth Matter, a small scale non-profit composting facility that has aided in making the Island waste-zero.

Many of these organizations operate out of what is called the developmental zone, if you look at a map at the ferry terminal it’s marked by a giant grey patch on the South East End of the island. This area is completely landfill, built using the excavated rocks and first from the Lexington Avenue Subway construction in 1912, to create the 103 acres of acres of the South Island.

What to do with this land has always been the question. In 2010, the Trust in collaboration with Mayor Bloomberg set up a plan for the development of Governors Island. The main goal, finding a source of revenue to maintain the island’s operations. According to The New York Times, the Trust had found their answer, and proposed a plan to develop a climate research consortium on the island.

In April of this year, The Trust for Governors Island announced that after years of deliberating, Stony Brook University in collaboration with the newly created New York Climate Exchange would be granted the development rights for the project. This also includes dozens of partner organizations like Pratt, Georgia Tech, Duke, and NYU. According to the press release, this will be, “a-first-of-its-kind-, cross-sector non profit organization dedicated to climate research, solution development, workforce training, and public programs on Governors Island.”

The proposal includes $700 million development to be set to begin next year, and completed in 2028. The proposed campus building has been designed by Skidmore Owings & Merril (SOM), who were unable to speak on the development at this time.

According to SOM’s proposal, the campus boasts that it will be a zero-emission facility, with solar panels laid on the swooping, slide-like roof of the building. The campus would bring some 6,000 jobs to the island, and include student and faculty housing.

The catch — this campus will be built in that big grey developmental zone, where organizations like Earth Matter have been operating for years. It will also be the largest development the island has seen yet.

“You’re looking for climate solutions, and the first thing you want to do is displace a compost facility and build a building,” Charles Bayrer, the co-founder of Earth Matter said, “This is crazy, right? And that’s certainly one way to look at it.”

Roger Manning, who tells no one his age, is sometimes called the “hermit” and sometimes “mayor” of Governors Island. On any given day, rain or shine, frost or sunshine, you can probably find him doing laps around the island with a guitar strapped to his back. He goes to the island almost everyday.

Manning is one of the two leadership members of the Metro Area Governors Island Coalition (M.A.G.I.C), which is a small group pushing back against the rezoning of the Island, in hopes of ensuring there will not be changes to the height restrictions on the island.

“The climate center thing is not a bad thing,” he said, “In fact it’s kinda’ cool.”

Manning says the original idea was proposed by people at the Harbor School and Billion Oyster Project back in 2013. “That’s not the issue,” he said., “The 2021 rezoning is the issue.”

This rezoning was necessary to propose the building of the campus. It changed the districting of the South Island to allow for a mix of aca­d­e­m­ic, com­mer­cial, non-prof­it, cul­tur­al, con­ven­ing and hos­pi­tal­i­ty uses, and is required to sup­port the devel­op­ment as a cen­ter for cli­mate solu­tions.

“The presentations from the Trust for Governors Island kept focusing on these extra climate solutions, and we need this zoning,” Manning said. “To bring in enough real estate development in order for the Island to be financially self-sufficient. You know they need money obviously.”

One of Manning’s main worries is that with high turnover in the trust, it will fall into the wrong hands. Those who see it as a piece of real estate. “They want to draw big real estate there, major developers.”

“They want height, and they want what they call an anchor tenant,” said Manning, “What’s a good anchor tenant, a climate center.”

The major rezoning was cause for worry among the Island’s other organizations, as well.

“2020, will go down in history for me, personally, as far more than the year of the pandemic,” said Bayrer, “It was the year of starting the rezoning process.” It was also the year composting initiative across New York saw their budgets defunded, then refunded, he said.

“We’ve always understood that we’re in a development zone,” Bayrer said. “We’re an interim use of that land. When we got there, it was abandoned and fallow. So we’ve, we’ve known this was going to happen, and we’ve built our systems, for the most part, to be mobile.”

In the midst of negotiations with the Trust and New York Climate Exchange, Earth Matter will be operating until the end of the “peak season” — so through next October, said Bayrer. In a year, the facility will be moving to a more Southern portion of the island.

“Initially we will have just a little bit less space, but in a few years, when some other construction is completed, we expect to return to pretty much the same square footage that we have now,” Bayer said.

It’s a period of change. But Bayrer has confidence in the leadership involved with the Climate Exchange. And — it’s certainly not the first time the island has seen change.

“Since I have been working on Governors Island, since 2017, I believe,” Judy Mann, a tour guide on Governors Island who others claim “knows everything about the Island,” told me. “The community has never been static because the Island has constantly been in flux, changing.”

In fact, this is not the first construction to displace Earth Matter’s facility. The construction of The Hills, a man-made park and one of Governors Island’s main attractions, resulted in a similar move for the organization.

The construction of the Hills began, largely in reaction to Hurricane Sandy, Mann told me. “When Sandy hits, there’s’ 13 foot waves and wash over there,” Mann said, “But what they have done to the island is a number of mitigation things.”

They weren’t there ten years ago, and are constructed from what was left after demolishing some of the pre-existing and weather damaged buildings on the South End of the island.

“We were there for the first phase in which a lot of buildings were demolished and all of that masonry Rubble, all the brick, all the Concrete, was saved and processed to create fill to build the hills at the south end,” said Bayrer. Completed in 2014, these hills raise the Island 70 feet in sea level.

Besides the hills, these include creating soluble flat lands like Fall Field and an area called the Oval.

“Those are heavily engineered so that water drains really quickly,” Mann said. They’ve also taken out the preexisting sea wall, and replaced it with rip-rap sea wall — rocks that line the shore and absorb energy. None of this infrastructure was in place when Sandy hit.

Dr. Peder Anker, a climate activist, historian of science and professor in climate urban design at NYU, asks, why Governors Island? “I do wish the best for any climate initiative,” Anker said “But I’m not sure this one makes sense, and I say that with a sorrow in my heart, because we do need climate research initiatives.”

“Maybe the future development of governors island shouldn’t be a big vision for something” he said, “But should actually be lots of small little visions.” That’s the main deterrent from a development of this magnitude.

But there’s no stopping this plan. “It is already happening,” said Bayrer. “They are not a static organization.”

“There were plenty of challenges to it. And, you know, we needed to do whatever we could to maintain the space we have and embrace the change, basically” he said.

“What I’m excited about it, and looking forward to, is the application of new technologies in a single location, in a single structure, between the mass timber frame of the building itself, to the use of greywater and reuse of black water, to the Solar capture to the geothermal for heating and cooling.” Earth Matter has even been in conversation to help the facility’s compositing initiatives.

“The quiet days of the past, and less quiet days of the current Island, will be fundamentally different” Mann said, “There will likely be a mix of different communities, how they interact with each other and with the whole depends on the makeup of the parts. And it will not be static.”

A New Climate Campus Development is Changing Things Up on Governors Island was originally published in The Beat: Climate City on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Under Trump, it might as well be ‘Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Market Deregulation’

During President-elect Donald Trump’s last term, the phrase “climate change” stopped showing up across federal websites.

From taking down the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) page on climate change, to rewording environmental mission statements to disregard its importance entirely, the previous Trump administration insisted that there is no climate crisis, a belief that echoed across all four years of his term.

Notably, the former president withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, scrapped the Obama administration’s greenhouse gas emission regulations, and stuffed his administration full of fossil fuel-friendly appointees, many of whom denied the existence of climate change.

Many of these ideologies and acts will very likely carry on into Trump’s second term.

On Jan. 20, Donald Trump will be inaugurated back into office after a controversial campaign. He’ll be bringing with him a cabinet full of billionaires, an anti-vaccine health secretary, and a comprehensive plan detailing — among other things — how he and his administration will seek to dismantle environmental protections across the U.S..

The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI), an environmental watchdog agency tracking climate policies and federal environmental information resources, has described the plan widely associated with Trump’s upcoming term — better known by the name Project 2025 — as “fundamentally detrimental to human life.”

“The approach of Project 2025 to the global threat of climate change is not so much to deny as to ignore it, or else write it off as a left-wing political fantasy,” an environmental historian wrote in an annotation for Project 2025.

One of the major steps outlined in Project 2025 that raises an alarm? Undermining and privatizing climate data.

What is climate data?

Climate data can refer to historical records of temperature and weather, including precipitation measurements and radar data. It can also refer to greenhouse gas emissions and carbon dioxide measurements.

The GOP is very interested in the latter — mainly because it’s what drives regulation in private industries.

Take the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) by the EPA, for example. The GHGRP requires significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emission sources to report their GHG data; sources that include — but are not limited to — the following industries: electronics manufacturing, food processing, lead production, petroleum, natural gas and coal suppliers, and more.

By documenting GHG data, the EPA encourages states and cities to identify high emitters in their communities and develop climate policies accordingly. The GHGRP influenced the creation of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan in 2015, which would have reduced carbon pollution from power plants by 32 percent — had Trump not repealed it two years later.

How does Project 2025 affect all of that?

Project 2025 proposes to remove the GHGRP for any industries currently not under regulation. That means if, for example, a wastewater treatment plant in Minnesota isn’t currently being regulated by the city, the state, or any other agency, it shouldn’t be required to disclose GHG emission data to the EPA from then on — regardless of what its future plans may be.

“The [GHGRP] imposes significant burdens on small businesses and companies that are not being regulated. This is either a pointless burden or a sword-of-Damocles threat of future regulation, neither of which is appropriate.” Project 2025, Chapter 13

An EDGI annotation warns that “this proposal means they want the federal government to stop tracking greenhouse emissions at all.”

But what about the data outside of the GHGRP, or data the EPA already has?

“The EPA should embrace so-called citizen science and deputize the public to subject the agency’s science to greater scrutiny, especially in areas of data analysis, identification of scientific flaws, and research misconduct.” Project 2025, Chapter 13

At first glance, this sounds promising. By calling for “citizen science,” it sounds as if Project 2025 is promoting collaboration between the government and the general public, where both have access to the same data and are able to hold each other accountable.

But combined with other calls for the EPA to cease funding to nonprofits, it’s more likely that Project 2025 hopes to turn scrutiny for environmental data over to groups who can afford to analyze, identify, and research. In the words of EDGI: “That ‘public’ which the author is hoping to ‘deputize’ will consist primarily of those whose private wealth enables them to easily do so: moneyed interests whose pollution the EPA is charged with regulating.”

What’s going to change if all of this happens?

Noel Hidalgo, executive director of data-based civic organization BetaNYC, says Project 2025 — if implemented by the Trump administration — will be a familiar playbook.

“The privatization of existing government infrastructure is the way to go about ensuring a capitalist market,” Hidalgo said.

Echoing that sentiment, it’s no secret that the Trump administration is after one goal: federal deregulation.

Already, his cabinet picks are priming the stage for deregulation. Earlier this month, Trump nominated Paul Atkins to chair the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a former SEC commissioner who had previously taken a stance against too much market regulation.

Hopeful industrial trade groups are also petitioning Trump for a “regulatory reset” in a 21-page letter addressed to him and his cabinet — and environmental regulations are featured prominently in their complaints. For instance, among the requests is a throwaway line about “increasing the use of categorical exclusions to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process.”

Under NEPA, which works closely with the EPA, federal agencies are required to assess the potential environmental impact of their actions before they make a decision, such as approving a permit or building a public facility. The assessment is thorough — consisting of a scoping process, a first draft for public review, a final draft for public review, and a report that lists potential environmental impacts, alternative approaches, and more. This final Environmental Impact Statement is then made available for anyone to request and view.

However, if a federal action is deemed environmentally insignificant, it can be “categorically excluded” from a detailed environmental analysis.

By petitioning for an increase in categorical exclusions, companies are hopeful that they will face less scrutiny by the federal government, citing “compliance costs” and “antiquated permitting systems” as reasons why it would benefit them and the economy at large. Additionally, companies can avoid any record of their environmental impact being made available to the public.

How does this affect you?

Whether you actively engage with it or not, data drives every single decision you make. You may be choosing to get a computer science degree because Glassdoor says the average starting salary of a programmer is $85,249 a year. You might be going out to that new trendy bar in Manhattan because it came up on your TikTok feed, which is curated by your unique algorithm.

You may dawdle in the Vegan Milks aisle at Target and choose Oatly because it discloses the carbon footprint per product on their cartons, and you may only consider that ‘good’ because you know the carbon impact of a gallon of milk in comparison, thanks to publicly disclosed data.

So while the erasure of climate data in the federal government may sound far removed from your reality, it’s not.

“We are entering into a dark era of a federal government that doesn’t believe in leveraging, centralizing, funding or resourcing the environmental data,” Hidalgo cautioned. “We know this is going to happen. We’ve seen it happen in the past. This administration, this incoming administration, is very clear of how much it takes science seriously.”

Trump tried to cover up climate change last term. He’ll do it again. was originally published in The Beat: Climate City on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By LILY WICHERT / NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

One-third of all food in the United States never gets eaten. Instead, it rots in landfills, pours down drains, or burns in incinerators — wasting not just what could have potentially been 149 billion meals, but also the resources that went into production.

Imagine spending $100 at the grocery store, only to toss $33 worth of food into the trash before even unpacking your groceries. That’s the scale of the problem; an economic and environmental crisis responsible for 8–10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

This grim reality overwhelmed Chad Currins, a magician-turned-environmentalist, whose journey into sustainability began with one simple question: “How can I be responsible with my own life for creating as little of a climate impact as possible?” –

Currins is one of many fighting the climate crisis in innovative ways. Members of Gen Z and Millennials are stepping up with personal and collective efforts. From urban pollinator gardens to sustainable diets to backyard composting, so many are finding unique ways to protect the planet, fueled entirely by a passion to do so.

These collective stories reflect a broader commitment to tackling the climate crisis at both the local and global levels.

For Currins, composting is more than a practical way to minimize waste — it’s a deeply personal mission to eliminate his environmental footprint

“That became a mission of mine: to not throw away anything that could be either recycled or composted,” Currins explained.

In his backyard, Currins tends to compost bins filled with what he affectionately calls “Earth’s natural recyclers”: worms. Most of his food scraps are fed to his “friends,” who break down the material into nutrient-rich soil. He uses this soil to fertilize his home-grown produce, ranging from herbs, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

“All my scraps go out there into worm bins, and then they make great soil for my gardens,” Currins explained. “They taste so much different when you grow them on your own naturally.”

Currins’ interest in sustainability is rooted in his childhood summers spent at a camp on Lake George, where climate-conscious mentors instilled in him a life-long passion for the environment.

“Having respect for the outdoors makes you want to be an environmentalist,” Currins said.

But what makes Currins truly unique is how he combines his passion for worms with his profession as a magician. Through storytelling and tricks, he teaches children about composting and sustainability, connecting younger audiences with nature in an interactive way.

“I love worms,” Currins stated. “I love sharing that excitement, especially with kids.”

His efforts reflect a broader pattern: people are taking creative and rather unconventional approaches to address the challenges of a rampant climate crisis.

With Trump’s re-election halting progress on climate policy, and increasing natural disasters putting pressure on communities, these efforts are more critical than ever. Four additional years of the Trump administration will have damning impacts on the climate, with major climate setbacks, including massive budget cuts to climate-motivated agencies, expanding production of oil and gas, and limited deployment of clean energy.

This reality makes it unlikely that the United States will meet its climate goals in the years to come, especially with the anticipated decision to, again, pull out of the Paris Agreement on the climate crisis.

This unfortunate reality casts uncertainty as to what the future of the climate crisis will look like. But for young activists like Neo Ng, this makes individual and grassroots movements all the more necessary.

Ng, a New York City resident, is dedicated to conservation work — a journey that began at home, inspired by his dog, Bean, who opened his eyes to the complexities of animal sentience.

“Different breeds have unique neurologists and personalities, just like humans,” Neo said. “That fascinated me and tied into my family’s medical roots.”

Growing up in a family of medical professionals, Ng initially thought he would fall into a similar career.

“Growing up, I always thought I’d become a doctor too, but my love for animals shifted the path.

That same love now drives his commitment to conservation, on both local and global scales. As the founder and student representative of NYU SEEDs, a chapter of the Ecological Society of America, Ng is in the process of creating a pollinator garden in New York City.

The garden, which will include native plants, bee hotels, and birdhouses, reflects Ng’s passion for improving urban ecology. Protecting “pockets” of ecosystems in urban spaces is a crucial line of work, according to Ng.

Pollinator gardens like the one Ng is creating are essential for urban biodiversity. With over 75% of the world’s flowering plants relying on animal pollinators, and a drastic decrease in bee populations, small-scale conservation efforts are essential to combat this trend.

“We know it’s unrealistic to completely green a city overnight,” Neo admitted. “But if you support the smaller parts, then [ecosystems] get bigger and bigger.”

The results extend beyond just the impact on local species. To ecologists and eco-minded individuals such as Ng, the work is rewarding all around. The benefits of flourishing urban ecologies are seemingly endless — ranging from increased biodiversity, shaded areas, filtration, and truly so much more. An additional benefit, Ng says, is the increased appreciation residents have for the environment, simply through the opportunity to spend more time in what feels like a natural escape from a city surrounded by concrete.

Ng’s passion for conservation extends to his work in South Africa, where he contributed to rhino preservation efforts. As a part of an internship, he worked to dehorn rhinos to minimize the risk of poaching — a process which he describes to be controversial, but necessary.

His work addresses a dire situation: only 27,000 rhinos remain globally, with thousands lost annually to poaching. Dehorning, which reduces poaching risk by upwards of 90%, is a necessary intervention.

“When poachers remove the horn, they slice into the rhino’s entire nasal cavity — essentially carving their face off. It’s brutal,” Ng explained. “Dehorning minimizes the risk of poaching. The horns grow back, like fingernails, and the process doesn’t hurt the rhino.”

Ng emphasized that conservation efforts must simultaneously address the socio-economic factors driving poaching.

“A lot of conservation areas hire local people who might otherwise turn to poachers,” Ng said. “It’s about providing sustainable livelihoods while educating on the importance of conservation.”

The work varied during Ng’s many weeks in South Africa– ranging from laborious work including building walls and preparing foods, to more scientific work, such as monitoring anesthesia for rhinos during the dehorning process. All around, the work was very hands-on and reaffirmed his commitment to wildlife protection and engagement of local communities.

At the heart of his endeavors, Ng holds a strong belief in the importance of individual and collective action.

“It’s really a combination of my love for animals and my family’s drive to help others,” Ng said. “That’s why I’m passionate about conservation and veterinary medicine.”

While Ng’s conservation work focuses on ecosystems and wildlife preservation, others are addressing the climate crisis in more personal ways. For Althea Lawson, an environmental studies student at NYU, the fight against the looming climate crisis begins on her own plate.

Many experts agree that one of the simplest ways to reduce your carbon footprint is to change your diet, particularly by limiting meat consumption. The United Nations reports that the switch to a meat-free diet has the potential to reduce individual carbon emissions by 1.5 tons annually.

Lawson embraced this solution during her second year of high school, inspired by what she learned in an AP Environmental Science class.

“I thought about it for a bit, but I knew if I thought about it too much, I wouldn’t do it,” Lawson explained.

Her decision was driven by lessons on the climate-related impacts of the meat industry, including its significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that 37% of emitted methane is a result of destructive livestock and agricultural practices, as methane is naturally released, the potent greenhouse gas directly contributes to rising temperatures. Lawson’s shift to vegetarianism directly addresses this issue, as reducing her meat consumption entirely has a measurable impact.

“I became vegetarian just to be able to talk about it,” Lawson explained. “It’s a peace of mind thing, and also, I get to talk about it. I love that.”

Lawson’s passion for nature and environmental protection wasn’t born in the classroom alone. Growing up, her father — a trained ecologist — frequently took the family camping, fostering her appreciation for the natural world. That early connection made her transition to vegetarianism feel like a logical step rather than a sacrifice.

“Our moral beliefs align more with not eating meat, so that’s what we chose to do. It was more of a logical thing for us,” Lawson said.

For Lawson, the strength to maintain her lifestyle comes from a supportive network of friends and family who share her eco-minded values. It’s not about perfection, she explains, but about committing to making small but consistent changes.

“I don’t feel like I made the decision to become a vegetarian. I saw what was at stake, and that was the choice I felt like I had to make because that’s what aligns with my beliefs,” Lawson explained.

Her decision reflects a growing trend among younger generations: finding accessible, tangible ways to reduce their climate impact. From dietary shifts to urban conservation efforts to composting with worms. These actions may seem small in isolation — but truly contribute to a collective shift toward sustainability.

In the face of a worsening climate crisis, people are truly stepping up to address this challenge. The approaches are as varied as they are urgent. Some, like Currins, turn to compost to combat waste, while others, like Lawson, entirely change their habits. Ng, meanwhile, works to preserve ecosystems both locally and globally.

But these efforts are united in their shared ethos: a belief in the power of individual action, and a refusal to abandon their passion for the planet. These initiatives highlight a collective willingness to take on challenges that are at times, daunting to even think about. They go beyond individual acts of responsibility and reflect a cultural shift.

For Currins, composting may seem like a small action, but it represents a piece of the much larger climate puzzle.

“I can’t fix the world’s problems, but I can try not to make them worse.”

The Climate Crisis Isn’t Waiting — And Neither Are Activists: Creative Approaches to Change was originally published in The Beat: Climate City on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

From Greenwich Village to Harlem and beyond, NYC Parks’ GreenThumb program has propped up community gardens in light of budget cuts and climate shifts.

When Ellen Reznik’s passion for gardening kindled after a beach trip, she found what she was itching for at LaGuardia Corner Gardens in the heart of Greenwich Village. Within six months, she was offered a plot of her own to grow plants.

A quarter of a century later, she is the chairperson of the garden — and still has that same plot.

Positioned only blocks away from New York University’s Washington Square campus, LaGuardia Corner Gardens is just one of over 550 community gardens across all five New York City boroughs that are a part of NYC Parks’ GreenThumb program.

The garden offers a lush array of plants like fuschia-colored Japanese anemone as well as bushes full of baby blue hydrangeas. Fruit trees also thrive during the warmer months with vines and other greenery braiding around the garden’s wooden arbor.

Initiated in response to the financial crisis that plagued the city’s economy in the 1970s, GreenThumb is the nation’s largest urban gardening program, generating a hub of community pride and providing support to thousands of volunteer gardeners like Reznik.

“GreenThumb gives us a lot of things, they’re very generous,” said Reznik. “I could go on and on and on about what [the garden] gets from them.”

The program provides these gardens with a variety of resources, including tools like shovels, compost, and other plant-growing equipment.

“I remember looking at a surplus equipment catalog and salivating over a climbing frame to grow green beans,” said Madeline Bender, head gardener at Electric Ladybug Garden in Harlem. “Then it was one of the things that GreenThumb had as a donated item. We’re lucky to have access to things that are not necessarily linked to a budget.”

However, despite the ongoing support from GreenThumb, concerns regarding budget cuts to greenways, playgrounds, and other outdoor spaces continue to loom after Mayor Eric Adams proposed slashing $55 million from park funding.

This means that Adams’ plan has fallen short of his campaign promise to provide parks and green spaces with 1% of the city’s total budget. Even nearly three-quarters into Mayor Adams’ first term, funding for parks only sits at half of a percent of the total city budget.

Many of the city’s major parks, like Van Cortlandt Park, have felt the impact of these budget cuts, with the park’s alliance stating they are struggling to bounce back after a series of brush fires that burned eight acres of land this fall. Yet, many of GreenThumb’s gardens say they are not being affected by these changes — referring to both budget cuts and climate change, except for a pesky problem with spotted lanternflies, an invasive species.

“I bought a hand vacuum cleaner to vacuum up the [lanternflies],” said Paul Whelan, a long-time board member of the Electric Ladybug Garden and husband of Bender. “It was so promising, but it did not work.”

Indigenous to parts of China and Vietnam, the spotted lanternfly has wreaked havoc on the city since the pandemic. While not a significant threat to agricultural crops, according to NYC 311, the planthopper is still capable of infesting trees, eventually leading to stress on the plant and draining its nutrients. Their sudden presence can be attributed to climate change, causing lanternflies to emerge earlier in the year and stay active longer than anticipated.

“I think the gardens are adapting to certain animal and insect species that have become more populous in these areas over the years,” said Michael Horwitz, Public Programming Coordinator at the New York Restoration Project. “There’s almost always somebody doing something resourceful with the materials they have on hand.”

Even though these spaces are not feeling the heat of climate change, mostly because of small-scale gardening, according to Bender, community gardens are making green-minded adjustments to further prepare for warming temperatures and unexpected weather patterns — such as using more garden beds that are made out of metal rather than lumber, which is longer-lasting and more durable. Many GreenThumb gardens have also begun phasing out trees for species that thrive in warmer climates.

“There has definitely been some unprecedented stuff happening here and there,” said Horwitz. “But I think the gardens do a really excellent job of maintaining everything. It is very rare where I will walk into a garden and see something that is completely dead because of heat.”

Nevertheless, climate change is not the only unforeseen circumstance that has taken gardens by surprise, both today and in the past.

In a 12-year-long battle with city officials, the Elizabeth Street Garden, an independent garden in Little Italy, has been at risk of being demolished. The closure of the garden would turn the site into affordable housing for senior citizens — and GreenThumb community gardens have experienced similar situations, including the Electric Ladybug Garden.

During Mayor Bill de Blasio’s tenure, it was announced that one thousand vacant lots were going to be used for affordable housing, almost identical to the tension between the Elizabeth Street Garden and the city. In spite of Electric Ladybug’s development only two years prior, it was still considered abandoned under state rule. In response, the community board protested, ultimately earning a vote in-favor of saving the garden.

More recently, the future of the LaGuardia Corner Gardens was uncertain, a worry that lasted little over a decade.

The garden resides on land owned by the Department of Transportation, meaning it does not have the same protections from development as a green space under the NYC Department of Parks. Despite efforts to transfer the site by garden members, the community board, and the garden’s city council member, the switch was continuously blocked — and NYU may be a possible culprit.

The university owns two main areas of land near the garden: the adjacent one-story supermarket and the superblock of the Silver Towers and Washington Square Village — as well as the newly-constructed Paulson Center.

During the development of the Paulson Center, NYU had planned to implement an alternative grocery store inside the building to replace Morton Williams. The store was anticipated to be demolished and replaced by a public school to later be integrated into a university building — leaving the area with no nearby grocery store.

Despite many broken promises, like failing to establish an alternate grocery store, and a near-monopoly in Greenwich Village, as the garden describes, it was decided that a new university building would not be built in the supermarket site where the garden would have been used to stage equipment during development — forcing the space to start from scratch.

“We are in a really vulnerable position because anything can change,” said Reznik. “We need protection. We have stated that many times over the years, it just doesn’t work that way.”

In spite of these various setbacks, local gardens across the city have continued to foster community in their neighborhoods.

“My friends visit and laugh, and say I live on Sesame Street because I say “Hi” to everyone when I walk down the street,” said Bender. “There’s one thousand reasons to need community, but people need other people, and we live in a big city that can be very anonymous.”

Bender and Whelan’s garden gives back to their Harlem neighborhood through events like movie nights and jazz concerts, picnics, and peer mentoring. The space also has an “open-door” policy, as Whelan describes, welcoming anyone to harvest tomatoes and other crops growing in the garden.

“The reality is that our garden doesn’t necessarily have the capacity to feed people on the block in a meaningful way,” said Bender. “But we have the community sharing aspect, it’s equal for everybody.”

Of course, the Electric Ladybug Garden is not the only community garden making large impacts, with the LaGuardia Corner Gardens providing educational programming about composting and worm bins, encouraging younger generations to get involved with gardening.

“[Community gardens] are like when you drop a pebble into the pond, it just ripples out,” said Bender. “The gate is open and people are welcome.”

“The gate is open and people are welcome”: city gardens continue to thrive despite challenges was originally published in The Beat: Climate City on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Mass fabric donation and recycling may be New York’s unsung hero for tackling textile waste.

Consider a shirt you no longer wear. Perhaps it has a stain you can’t get out, or the material is torn, or its style has simply gone out of trend. There’s a chance that instead of throwing it in the garbage, you decide to give it away to your nearest secondhand shop. Yet this supposedly sustainable option, which has exploded in popularity across metropolitan fashion capitals especially, may be less of a cure-all for waste than one would initially suspect.

In New York alone, around 200,000 tons of clothing, shoes, and other textiles are discarded annually. That’s double the weight of a Navy aircraft carrier. Yet only a meager 10–30% of secondhand clothing donations make it to thrift stores. The rest are often disposed of, either to developing countries or landfills.

Thus, the most effective response may be something less flashy but much larger scale: textile recycling. During this process, textiles (cloths made from woven filaments or threads) are sorted and broken back down to their fibers. These fibers can then be respun into yarn for new clothes or turned into material for other industries, such as construction.

“Largely, people don’t know what happens to unwanted clothing,” says Lisa Sciannella, the Chief of Staff of the B Corporation Helpsy. “Even New York — I would consider [it] to be an affluent state. But I think even for a lot of municipalities that run their recycling facilities… they have no idea what happens to used clothing or used textiles.”

Helpsy is one of many organizations that operate in New York City to spread awareness about the recycling process. Recycling these unwanted items keeps them out of the out-of-state landfills the city exports its trash to, which are reaching their limits.

The B Corp helps educate communities on the outcomes of discarded textiles in what Sciannella explains can otherwise be an “opaque business.” It hosts clothing drives, facilitates tours of its textile processing warehouses, and sets up clothing donation bins around various neighborhoods. The bright blue bins, whose locations are marked on Helpsy’s website, have diagrams to indicate what materials will be accepted for recycling. The items range from linens to accessories to stuffed animals.

So what happens to a shirt that makes it to one of these collection bins?

In Helpsy’s case, drivers will do a route service around the city, which will include stops at thrift stores, and collect clothes to be taken to their warehouse in White Plains, New York. They are then taken to an out-of-state sorting facility in Eatontown, New Jersey.

Sciannella explains that if a garment is reusable and re-wearable, it will be resold in a thrift store. Should it be deemed not reusable, either because of its quality or its wear, then it will be sorted based on its material.

“If it’s something absorbent, most likely it’ll be cut up into a wiping rag and industrial rag,” Sciannella clarifies. “If it’s a mix or less absorbent, then it’ll be ground up mechanically into some kind of stuffing/installation, sometimes carpet padding, things like that.”

The trade association SMART (Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles) has a similar approach to Helpsy, but on an international scale. This association is composed of companies around the world that collect both pre-consumer (unused) and post-consumer (used) textiles for recycling and reselling.

SMART Communication Strategist Kathleen Cairns clarifies that from the collected used cloths, 45% is reused as apparel, often either sold in the United States or distributed to developing countries that have high demand for secondhand clothing. Around 50% will be recycled for non-clothing related purposes, and only 5% will be deemed unusable from contamination or mold.

“Textile recycling [helps] save the environment from harsh chemicals, waste products, and wastewater that’s used in the manufacturing of clothing,” Cairns says.

However, there is another element to this sustainable solution besides the logistics, and that’s the politics. These groups cannot operate completely independently of the cities and countries they are situated in, which means collaborating with federal administrations when possible.

“I think we need collaboration, for sure, from the local municipalities,” says Sciannella. “Sometimes things that make it challenging for us and other collectors to operate are zoning requirements and ordinances that are somewhat intentionally challenging. Where they try to make the requirements so, so hard, or set the bar so high, then you cannot place a bin in their town.”

Sciannella says that Helpsy has faced “quite a bit” of this type of inefficiency in New York. She isn’t the only one.

More local institutions such as the East Harlem Sustainable Fashion Community Center (which is closed but raising funds to relocate and reopen) have struggled to transition to larger-scale recycling due to difficulties acquiring federal funding.

“What we would do is we would buy a facility, and we would expand our services to actually include recycling services,” says Andrea Reyes, the Chair of the NYC Fair Trade Coalition and Executive Director of the SFCC. “Or, perhaps we could partner with some of the new technology to be able to do chemical recycling, but I imagine you have to be zoned; collect permits for that… even more bureaucracy.”

The SFCC focused on promoting clothing donations and rewearing throughout East Harlem. Its previous space, tucked away behind a Methodist Church, bustled with regulars pushing carts and even toting garbage bags filled with old, well-loved garments. But despite its local popularity, the Center could not fulfill many of the required qualifications to receive greater grants. These would often involve already being an established organization with widespread transport capabilities.

“[New York City] is looking for organizations that can help intake 20 million pounds a month of clothing,” Reyes explains. She is referring to requests for proposals (RFPs), like the recent New York City Textile Recovery Program, which broadcast an organization’s business project idea to bidding contractors. “So, the problem throughout the city is so big that we didn’t even submit a proposal because we’re like, ‘we don’t have the capacity to do that.’”

Yet there are some glimmers of hope on the horizon of textile recycling, even on a statewide level.

“There’s slow but steady progress being made on the legislative side,” Sciannella acknowledges.

Massachusetts, for instance, enacted regulations in 2022 that banned the disposal of mattresses and textiles in the trash. Mattresses in particular, with their bulk, posed a struggle to store in solid waste facilities. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection responded by providing grants to implement mattress recycling programs in 137 municipalities.

New York State is also currently reviewing a bill proposed in 2023 to establish extended producer responsibility (EPR).

This bill would encourage textile manufacturers (mainly national clothing brands/retailers, as well as international importers) to cover the costs of textile collection and recycling programs, with penalties should they fail to comply. Its goal is to reduce the pollution of New York land, water, and air by preventing textiles from reaching landfills and incineration facilities altogether.

All the while, groups such as Helpsy and SMART work to promote the benefits of textile recycling to both neighborhoods and governments.

“Once [municipalities] have worked with us and received the reports and the tonnage… you know what they say: seeing is believing,” Sciannella declares. “That is a pretty powerful way to change someone’s mind.”

How Textile Recycling Could Save Unwanted Clothing — And Carbon Emissions was originally published in The Beat: Climate City on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In a navy blue container on the edge of Governors Island, Shanjana Mahmud and Luke Eddins are doing their remedial Saturday tasks: installing an exhaust fan, putting up their new Seaweed City sign, and switching the water in their baby-kelp’s tank. The wind blows in cold gusts off the Harbor, a reminder that winter is coming. For some, it’s time to bundle up; but for Mahmud and Eddins, kelp season has just begun.

For such a small space, there’s a lot going on. Most importantly, it’s clean; Mahmud and Eddins check on the babies: they’re doing well, thriving even. It’s the first time they’ve been able to see them this season. Mahmud spends a while sanitizing the new tank, then letting it dry, and doing it again. In the corner is a cylindrical double filtration system that’s filtering water pumped in from the Harbor. The water goes through two rounds of filtration to remove sediments and contaminants, and is cooled to 50 degrees.

In that tank, there are white rods, which now host tiny “blades” of kelp — like green peach fuzz. “There were basically eggs and sperm that we inoculated this twine with,” Mahmud said “and now you can see their growing blades.” It’s only been three weeks, she tells me.

Mahmud and Eddins are the founders of Seaweed City, a new non-profit organization, officially incorporated as of this August. Since 2021, their team has been growing kelp in Newtown Creek, one of New York City’s Superfund sites. Mahmud and Eddin’s have worked closely with the Newtown Creek Alliance, which seeks to “restore” the water and habitat of the Creek. Much of Seaweed City’s funding comes from the Alliance. In the beginning of this year, Seaweed City was granted a $10,000 grant from The Trust for Governors Island in their Climate Solutions Contest, along with five other organizations who are also piloting climate projects on the island, joining an already large group of climate-focused organizations on the Island.

Mahmud and Eddins currently have around a year from this fall to test out their urban seaweed farm, but they have hopes to grow. “Part of Seaweed City is advocating for soft shorelines,” Mahmud said, “We’re hoping to have these seaweed installations all around the city.”

Nina Robbins, a board member of Seaweed City, and a good friend of Mahmud and Eddins agreed, “For the next two to three years, our goal would be to have a seaweed garden in every borough,” she said.

Soft shorelines seek to work with nature, not defeat it. Dr. Karen Holmberg, a professor of coastline studies at NYU, says nature based climate-solutions are essential, as they connect the human experience with the solution itself — as to “hard infrastructure” solutions like sea walls, which she says put nature and culture in opposition.Why seaweed? Kelp has rapidly increased in popularity in the past couple of years. Especially in communities where traditional aquaculture practices like fishing, lobstering are at risk. “Not only contributes to cleaner water and increased biodiversity but additionally offers a way for people who take their identity from working on the water to continue doing so,” Homlberg said.

For people like Robbin’s, it’s a chance to get into the water, something New Yorker’s rarely do — if not because it’s almost completely inaccessible, then because it’s… well, kind of gross. Seaweed City’s mission is to show New Yorker’s it isn’t — especially students, like those from The Harbor School, also located on Governors Island, who have gotten involved. “The marine science and aquaculture students are coming and helping us to maintain and hopefully monitor,” Muhmad said. Eddins added: “That’s even more helpful than funding.”

Wendy Moore, the Executive Director at Lazy Point Farms, a proud advocate and supporter for Mahmud and Eddins’ work, suggests, we don’t know all the benefits of seaweed yet.

“Seaweed has been around for billions of years, longer than plants,” Moore said, “The benefits of seaweed that we’re aware of and talk about likely represent a small sliver of the whole truth of the benefits it provides.”

What do we know? Seaweed absorbs pollutants in the water, and replaces carbon with oxygen. “Seaweed’s kind of like an underwater tree,” Robbins said. “It improves water quality, reduces greenhouse gasses, provides homes to marine life, and it can be a buffer against storm surges.”

Mahmud and Eddins both emphasize the fact that they have “day jobs” and little to no background in marine biology; however, Mahmud was a biology major in college for a while before she switched to fine arts in her junior year. “I did study biology,” Mahmud said laughing, “But in my junior year, I switched over to fine arts, so I don’t think this qualifies me as a scientist.”

However, their jobs revolved around Newtown Creek– whether crossing it over the bridge or looking out at it from their offices. “There’s actually a lot of life in the creek, birds, fish, seaweed, things you start to notice when you look,” Eddins said. At the same time, Mahmud had been learning about how to farm kelp on Long Island. “If it has benefits out there to the water,” Eddins said, “what would be the benefit to this super polluted water?”

“It did grow, and the following year, and the following,” Eddins said, “and here we are.” They now have four different locations on the Creek. Now that the two are so busy, they do not tend to it as much, Eddins said. “The seaweed just grows.”

Meet the new organization growing kelp on Governors Island, one blade at a time was originally published in The Beat: Climate City on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In 2010, the students of Millennium High School’s environmental club wanted to find a way to engage with nature within the bustling area of New York City’s Financial District. But their school’s building, which used to be a law office, lacked places for the students to create a green space within its walls.

Just a few blocks of the school was Battery Park. The city had just wrapped up a major construction project to extend the 1 train down to South Ferry in the area the year prior. With the place finally restored after construction, a big sunny open space was left, and the students wanted to make the most of the space.

One of the students in the environmental club, Sylvie Edman, said that with the help of their club’s advisor Joyce Kong, the students were able to reach out to the Battery Park Conservancy to discuss the possibility of creating an urban farm in the new space. After many meetings, the Battery Urban Farm was born in just one year.

“We set out to create something for us, our environmental club, that could continuously live for our high school, Millennium, just to help students learn, ‘How do we grow things that support our lives?’” Edman said. “Especially being in the city and we don’t necessarily see or have access to that kind of space.”

Edman said that initially, the space was only meant to last one season, but 13 years later, the urban farm still lives today. The space is now home to a wide variety of produce, ranging from crunchy green cucamelons, sweet yellow cherry tomatoes to even Jambu — a Brazilian flower that completely numbs the tongue when bitten into.

The Battery Urban Farm currently spans about an acre, nearly the size of a football field, holding rows and rows of green crops in wooden planters displaying all the farm’s different vegetables, with the Battery Park Conservancy fully administering the green space all year long with the help of 214 volunteers. The farm strives to produce food that it deems culturally relevant to the communities around them, with crops such as callaloo, choi sum and Chinese red noodle beans. The produce that the farm generates is usually sent out to organizations such as the Coalition for the Homeless.

Outside the farm’s metal gates are sidewalks and benches full of New Yorkers and tourists alike, drawing many into the garden. This year alone, the farm welcomed 5,000 thousand visitors, according to Adam Walker, The Battery Conservancy Programs Manager. From the garden, those who enter are able to see the most iconic symbol of New York City, Statue of Liberty.

One of the many volunteers at the farm is Erin Boyajian, who has been coming to the farm for the last two years.

“I grew up in the country, but more in the suburbs, there were farms, but you didn’t go on them, that was just what you saw when you drove by,” Boyajian said. “Having that feeling of just interacting with the soil and producing things [at the farm] was really such a game changer. And so many people are missing out on that, we’re so removed either in the city or in the suburbs.”

But it’s been impossible to ignore the much bigger problem that has really struck the farm hard this year, New York City’s drought. The New York City Mayor declared a drought warning last month, which was the city’s first in 20 years. The lack of rainfall this year, combined with the three heat waves that hit New York City over the summer, has disrupted this year’s crop production immensely.

“We’re in a strange period of climate change, and that means some wild weather, some really rainy seasons, some really hot seasons, some smoky air seasons,” said Walker. “As an outdoor education provider, that can sometimes limit what we’re able to do with students, since we don’t have an indoor space available for classes or community meetings.”

But climate change isn’t the only challenge the farm faces. For Walker, one of the biggest challenges the farm faces is funding.

The farm is fully funded by private donations and grants. But some past donors to the Battery Urban Farm have disappeared or discontinued their funds. Alexandra Moncion, a spokesperson for Popular Community Bank Foundation, said that the institution hasn’t supported the conservancy since 2020 — the last time the farm had applied for a grant from the foundation. Another donation partner listed on the Battery Urban Farm’s website, CME Group Community Foundation, dismantled in 2019 according to a spokesperson for the company.

“Funding is our limiting factor across the whole park and the farm included,” Walker said. “We see such an interest from schools and teachers to be engaged in this hands-on work of stewarding the landscape, learning to grow food, learning to care for our local ecology, we have many schools that would like to be bringing their students regularly throughout the year and engaging with the space in a really more robust way than a single field trip, but in our effort to try to make this experience accessible to schools across the city, we have to limit how many times some schools can visit, because we just don’t have the staff or the capacity to have so many groups returning repeatedly, and so that’s hard to see so much interest and not be able to deliver on that.”

The placement of the farm, although convenient at the time to adhere to the local schools, has also presented issues for the farm. The 1 train tunnel, which extends directly below the farm, poses problems with drainage for the farm. Walker also said that the tall towering skyscrapers, including One World Trade Center, surrounding the farm can also cast shadows over the farm that can limit its access to sunlight.

However, he added that the location does have some advantages, including the fact that it rarely sees animals coming inside the farm to consume its produce. With the space expanding to welcome schools from all five boroughs, the one train allows for those interested in the farm to stumble into it right as they leave the station. The ferry, which is visible from the farm, also allows for visitors to be able to easily access the space.

Even with the challenges, the farm has still been able to act as a space for students to be able to take a break from the chaos of the city.

With its foundations in education, the farm has mostly focused its mission on providing education to local schools in New York City about the practice of growing food.

Melissa Metrick, the manager of the NYU Urban Farm Lab, said that green spaces in the city can be a great tool for students to be able to learn more about the process of creating food.

“Teaching people how to grow food, I feel like that’s a very important skill to have that a lot of people have lost,” Metrick said. “It’s just awareness: where food comes from, knowing the different seasons, knowing how to practice it sustainably, and also just thinking about the city ecosystem in general — that there is actually one — and you could help produce one by growing plants.”

Colby Zentner, a Spanish and health teacher at The High School of Economics and Finance near Battery Park, has brought his class to the Battery Urban Farm for the past two years and said that the farm has been a way to keep students engaged with nature and expand their learning outside the classroom.

“Being able to take the kids out and be in this beautiful urban garden right in the heart of the financial district, is really incredible,” Zetner said. “The students loved it from day one, and they were like, ‘Oh my gosh, we have to go back.’”

All these years later, Edman also works as a teacher for the New York City’s Department of Education and hopes to one day bring her students to the farm as part of her class. Now after all this time, Edman sees the opportunity to bring her class to the farm as a full circle moment and a chance to remind herself of the ability people have to make change within their community.

“Not only did we learn something about ourselves in terms of we can create an idea and it can come to fruition — even as crazy as it seemed in that moment — but that it was just a really beautiful moment of teamwork,” Edman said. “I’m so grateful because it’s something that I can look back at and this is a tangible thing from my high school experience that still lives and still benefits people.”

How Battery Park’s urban farm planted its roots in the city — and survived was originally published in The Beat: Climate City on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Lauren Ng, president of NYU’s chapter of the Food Recovery Network (FRN), visited every pizza restaurant near NYU’s campus, asking if, in the following weeks, she could pick up any boxes of pizza that had not sold at the end of the night. She was successfully able to donate the extra pizza to food-insecure populations.

The NYU chapter also recently distributed meals at the Chelsea Community Fridge, organized a Thanksgiving Food Drive, and even held a speaker’s event to teach students how to decrease food waste daily.

“In my mind, it’s a no-brainer,” Ng explained. “If we have these two issues where one sector of the population has so much food available to them that’s being wasted, whereas there are a lot of people who don’t have enough food, then it just seems like that should be funneled to our neighbors.”

Approximately 16% of today’s world’s population is composed of youth between 15 and 24 years old, and by 2030, that number is projected to grow by almost 7%. Statistics show that 65% of the youth think about how healthy or nutritious their food is, and 33% think about whether it impacts the environment, like Ng. Her chapter of FRN is one of many youth-led organizations powered by the rising awareness of food insecurity and other food-related issues.

These companies strive to fix broken food systems. This includes reducing food waste, improving food distribution, promoting sustainable food production, and reducing the number of food-insecure Americans, which currently stands at one in seven people. However, the question remains: Why now?

Food 4 Thought is an organization that works toward reducing animal food production and encourages people to switch to plant-based diets. Switching from animal-based food consumption, the current trend, to plant-based diets would create enough food in the food systems to feed 350 million more people–more than eliminating all the food loss from the production cycle.

“I really started getting more into the health and wellness side of it [food and nutrition] when I had an autoimmune illness in middle school,” Navin Durbhakula, the CEO of Food 4 Thought, said. “I had to cut out half of the foods that I love from my diet. I was sad at first, but then I saw the positive results of cutting out all these foods, which triggered a lot of my symptoms. I felt like, ‘wow, food is really powerful,’ and I realized there had to be other people with similar experiences to mine.”

Durbhakula reflected on why he thinks other members of Gen-Z are taking this initiative to improve food sustainability.

“People are on social media and can become educated on issues very easily — whether or not the education is accurate, they can connect with people about issues they care about and find those communities online,” Durbhakula said. “Our generation also seems to be very forward-thinking in terms of solutions to challenges that are currently being faced, and that could also just be because we’ve reached a sort of tipping point where we’re seeing a lot of these impacts happening in the world.”

In addition to the rise in allergies and other food-restrictive illnesses among younger populations, there is a shared sentiment of becoming more detached from the production process. Each generation feels further removed from how or where their food was grown, as Lily Viggiano, a manager of the University of Waterloo’s GreenHouse program, explains. The GreenHouse program, a community-based organization, aims to help students and community members create environmental change and gain the resources necessary to succeed. Recently, the GreenHouse program began a student-centered farm garden in Waterloo. They tore down the previously existing garden that had not been well-maintained or tended to, grew produce ranging from tomatoes to herbs to beans, and hosted two soup kitchen lunches.

“Someone I worked with hit me with a quote: ‘My grandfather had a farm, my father had a food garden. I have a can opener,’” Viggiano said. “It’s kind of cheesy, but it speaks to the fact that with each generation, we are getting further and further separated from the food that we eat, and there’s a huge desire with young people, in particular, to get reacquainted with that process.”

The Food Recovery Network is an organization that aims to recover surplus food and donate it to nonprofit organizations to feed food-insecure populations nationwide. Students at the University of Maryland saw tons of food wasted when dining halls closed every day. Sarah Corbin, Food Recovery Network’s director of communications, explained that those students began this program to recover and donate food from dining halls to hunger relief organizations. With chapters in almost 200 schools and 8,000 students involved nationwide, the organization has recovered 18.3 million pounds of food.

“We are so far removed from our food system. We go to the grocery store, and the chicken is packaged up in a plastic container–we don’t know where it comes from, we don’t have ownership in that,” Corbin said. “Hopefully, we even have a grocery store near us where we can purchase that chicken, so if we had more control of food production on a local level, I think some of these issues would not exist.”

Another inspiration for getting involved is the direct impact of food policy on their lives or loved ones following the pandemic. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — a government program aimed at assisting low-income persons in purchasing food and maintaining nutrition — experienced a 15% monthly benefit increase in 2021 during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Food pantry usage by families with children tripled during the height of the pandemic, and today, it remains almost double its pre-pandemic level, at 18%.

“During the pandemic, the government expanded SNAP, and so, that was a big thing, and that was, and that was well received, and it helped lots of Americans, and now, post-COVID, that funding is drying up, and those benefits have decreased,” Ng explained. “That leaves these Americans who, for a bit of time, had these federal resources to fall back on without another option, so I think post-pandemic people have become more passionate about food insecurity because COVID put a spotlight on it.”

However, according to Viggiano, the issue of food insecurity is more complicated than subsidies and benefits can solve. Almost 14% of the country lives in food-insecure households. However, nearly 40% of the entire US food supply is discarded yearly — the equivalent of every person in America throwing out 975 average-sized apples.

“The government can’t just try to, you know, put money into things and give people temporary vouchers for this and subsidize that, so there’s a very deep understanding among the youngest that I speak with where they understand that,” Viggiano said. “It’s a huge systemic issue, and there needs to be a real shift in how decision-makers go about their business.”

Climate change anxiety is another reason the new generation sees this growth in youth-led organizations. According to the EPA, around 37% of methane emissions are caused by livestock and agriculture, and food waste accounts for 58% of methane emissions from landfills. With methane emissions responsible for around 30% of the rise in global temperatures, Gen-Z is worried about the future of climate change.

69% of Gen-Z feel anxious about the future of addressing climate change, while only 41% of the older population shares that sentiment, according to a study by Pew Research. That study also showed that 32% of Gen Z and 28% of Millenials have donated, contacted an official, or volunteered to change the climate sphere, compared to only 23% of Gen X and 21% of older adults.

“Food is something that really encompasses so many different fields. Some people come at it from a climate angle, some a health angle.” Rehman Hassan, the Act4Food’s USA youth leader, said. “And some people come from it from a water sanitation, basic needs, and economic perspective.”

Hassan himself got involved with Act4Food when he lost his grandfather and felt that medical professionals didn’t significantly focus on nutritional prevention to address preventable heart diseases and cancers. He learned through the experience that a person’s healthcare quality largely depended on wealth and race. Act4Food globally advocates for affordable and nutritious diets for everyone, minimizing climate change from food production and reducing food waste’s contribution to 58% of landfill emissions.

“Money talks in the US government, unfortunately, that means that lots of us turn to other ways to express ourselves,” Hassan said, “as a result, many younger people went locally to address these pressing issues.”

The next generation wants to solve the broken food systems. But how? was originally published in The Beat: Climate City on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Alexa Donovan

Student-written operas about the earth. A singing capitalist polar bear. Textile art visualizing river temperature data. Rainbow tree stumps. Weavings made with shredded newspaper articles about the climate crisis.

Aside from their loosely connected focus on the climate, all of these works of art have something in common: You can see them at New York University.

As the largest private research university in the country with over 65,000 students and more than 14 million square feet of property in NYC, the university and its population are bound to have a large impact on the environment, and the administration has taken steps to combat that. Universities are increasingly becoming major players in the conversation around the climate crisis, with over 1,000 higher education institutions worldwide pledging in the UN’s “Race to Zero” campaign, committing themselves to carbon neutrality by 2050.

A new survey by the University of Cambridge found that many people trust universities to change the path of the crisis — 61% of adults “expect global research universities” to develop innovations to combat climate change. And universities, especially large-scale and well-funded ones, are trying to foster these changes in many different ways.

One of these ways is through art focused on the climate, a trend that has exploded on campuses recently. Climate art is not a new phenomenon — it has been around for decades, taking storm during the 1970s ecofeminist art movement — but its popularity at universities has grown because of today’s increased focus on the climate crisis.

“The impacts of climate art can help inspire individuals to learn how to take climate action,” said Alisson Vera, the program administrator for NYU’s Office of Sustainability. “It’s important to explore all ways of communicating about the climate crisis to ensure a call to action reaches everyone.”

Even though this art has become prominent on NYU’s campus, some have questioned its importance within the broader issue of the looming disaster.

The NYU/Tisch Opera Lab ran the “The Climate Opera Project” around Earth Day in 2024. The Opera Lab is a collaborative project between the American Opera Project and NYU Tisch’s Graduate Department of Musical Theatre Writing and the Department of Design.

Every year, the students at the Lab receive a new prompt and are given a few months to produce their operas. In 2020, the theme was climate change, but the production was canceled due to the pandemic.

In 2022, Randall Eng, who co-leads the Lab, was in NYU’s Bobst Library when he saw a university-sponsored climate exhibition entitled “THIS IS NOT A DRILL” in the lobby. He met the group working on this project and got in contact with the Office of Sustainability.

“I talked to [the Office of Sustainability] and was like ‘we have these operas that are on this topic that never got to see the light of day … and I feel like what [the students] wrote about is more urgent now than it was, even then,” Eng said.

With the Office’s help, “The Climate Opera Project” was produced this year. The performances were composed of four short operas about a capitalist polar bear, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a “Tree of Life” and the overconsumption of earth’s natural resources. Eng explained the production of the operas would not be possible without funding from the Office, which he said “was substantial.”

NYU’s Office of Sustainability was founded in 2007 with the primary goal of making the university carbon-neutral by 2040, which is currently ahead of schedule. It leads many on-campus initiatives “to build a healthier and more sustainable future.”

According to the Office’s website, NYU has over 2.5 million square feet of LEED-certified building space, a seven percent per calorie reduction of emissions from food, over 600 courses focused on sustainability and more than $150,000 being awarded to students and faculty every year for “innovative ideas and environmental action.” The university earned the #8 spot on the QS World University Rankings Sustainability Rankings for 2024.

“NYU is really a leading force in university climate structuring,” said Sidney Snyder, the President of Sunrise NYU. “The physical steps that they’re taking to be carbon neutral and green are great.”

A large aspect of the Office of Sustainability’s programming lies in its funding of alternative climate solutions and research methods. Beyond the typical focus on things like green energy and transportation, the Office also funds climate projects that take on various creative forms.

“We fund projects focused on operations, academics, research and design and more,” Vera said. “Climate art projects are one of the many projects that help create a greener NYU while encouraging the community to explore taking climate action.

Despite overall satisfaction with NYU’s sustainability initiatives, Snyder explained that, in her opinion, these artistic climate initiatives aren’t drastically important on a campus like NYU, since the reality of the climate crisis is not really up for debate among students.

“It’s not really a debate whether climate change is real here,” Snyder said. “The important part is getting people involved… if the art shows are doing that, then [the art] is helpful, but if it’s just drawing attention to the crisis, that isn’t really helpful on a university level.”

According to Eng, the Opera Project did foster action-driven change from viewers. For the audience members who watched the performances due to their interest in opera, the tales had an emotional impact that caused reflection.

“Most of [the operas] were kind of foretelling a future where it’s sort of cautionary,” Eng said. “I think that has an emotional impact on the audiences who were coming to it, not necessarily because of subject matter, but who were then going back home and taking the initiative of ‘what does that mean for the way I live my life if I don’t want this future to happen? How can I change that?’”

Eng believes that the audiences who were seeing the operas due to an interest in climate were impacted differently. The urgent nature of the climate crisis is felt in a much different way by watching performances about it.

“Anyone who’s dealing with an issue that is dire, they don’t get to spend a lot of time in light,” Eng said. “To have [the satirical polar bear] piece, it’s not light, it’s still quite dark, but it allowed for some levity … it was making its point in a way that was not just making you feel hopeless.”

Another way these sentiments are spread on campus is through visual arts projects. This fall, the NYU Gallatin Galleries hosted a solo exhibition of artist Tali Weinberg’s work, called “Heartwood,” organized by professor and curator Keith Miller. Weinberg’s work focuses on the relationship between the human body and climate change.

Weinberg’s sculpture “Heat Waves/ Water Falls” is a visualization of 2023’s extremely hot summer months and the effect of these temperatures on the body. The sculptural work consists of hanging plastic medical tubes that are wrapped in plant fibers, with the colors representing temperature data for river basins in the United States.

“The physicality of the work, seeing those things hanging there in space … has a physical response,” Miller said. “It’s not just visual … I think that communicates ideas differently.”

Another work, “An almost limitless horizon / The margins of well-understood science,” is a woven tapestry, which has a shredded New York Times Magazine article, “The Trillion Gallon Question: California’s dams are vulnerable, and thousands of lives hang in the balance. How long does the state have to avert disaster?” physically threaded throughout the work.

“Tali is a multi-disciplinary artist, and one of those disciplines is research around the environment,” Miller said, on the choice to show Weinberg’s work at the gallery. “The use of plastics, health, and the body… seemed really interesting to me from the beginning.”

Miller explained that Weinberg’s work resonated with many viewers, and the response to the show was “really positive.”

As is clear on NYU’s campus, artists are focused on the climate crisis, and that artwork holds space in academics and research as a method to fight for change — whether it’s through musical research or visual representations of a changing earth. While art may not be the end-all solution to the looming climate emergency, its ability to start conversations and elicit innovation has allowed the university to embrace it as one path toward a sustainable future.

“I think we are on the precipice of disaster,” Miller said. “Anything that can be done should be done. So, if that’s showing art, blocking pipelines, voting, or passing legislation, all of it needs to be done.”

How NYU is using art for environmental change was originally published in The Beat: Climate City on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.