Photograph by Tobias Nicolai / Connected Archives
WORDS BY YESSENIA FUNES
It’s not easy being a person who cares about this planet and its inhabitants. Some days, society feels like a never-ending onslaught of absolute trash. In South Korea, world leaders failed to agree on a plastics treaty during this year’s negotiations. The U.S. public just elected a president who is committed to drilling more oil and gas.
I could go on for days listing all the reasons to succumb to despair—reasons to feel hopeless. But what good does that do? Don’t we already know how bad things feel? What many of us miss, however, is all the good happening alongside the scary. Yes, global carbon dioxide emissions are set to reach a record high this year, but 2024 also saw a tremendous outpouring of commitment from people trying to create a new world where those emissions drop.
“It’s good to reflect on the wins and then also reflect on where we can go further, too,” said Olivia Moyle, a legal assistant at Opportunity Green, an organization focused on law, policy, and economics that publishes a regular blog on positive climate stories.
For Moyle, tracking the wins is about accountability. The organization works not only to “shout about the success” but also to “shame the slow movers and polluters.” This year’s victories may not put us on the path to restoring the planet, but they illustrate how change comes in waves.
Progress isn’t linear, but it’s there. And we’re witnessing it together. There’s beauty in our collective mourning. There’s power in our joint struggle to challenge the old and create anew. I look at 2024, and I see the beginnings of something. What that something is, I don’t yet know, but I have to believe—and you should, too—that it’s the world we’ve all been waiting for.
May this year’s glimmers of hope keep us forging ahead.
On April 17, 2024, Columbia University students erected the world’s first student encampment to fight for the Palestinian people of Gaza, whom Israel has been killing with impunity since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
The action echoed across the globe with at least 174 encampments springing up in response. While all students called on their universities and academic institutions to divest from the military, weapons manufacturers, and companies doing business with or in Israel, some also demanded divestment from the polluters whose oil is fueling the tanks and fighter jets bombing innocent Palestinians.
A few student encampments even honored the life of environmental activist Manuel Esteban Páez Terán, known as Tortuguita, whom a Georgia State Patrol trooper killed last year while he was in an Atlanta protest camp to protect the forest where the city is building a new police training facility. “Glory to the martyrs,” one sign at the Columbia camp read, an homage to both Tortuguita and Gaza’s lost ones. “Tortuguita vive. La Lucha Sigue,” it went on in Spanish.
“Tortuguita lives. The fight continues.”
“It’s good to reflect on the wins and then also reflect on where we can go further, too.”
Let’s face it: President-elect Donald Trump doesn’t have a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But the White House wasn’t the only seat up for grabs this election season. The people voted in a few new climate leaders to Congress.
The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) has tracked some of these local victories—from public transit advocate Laura Friedman in California to Sarah Elfreth, the youngest woman ever elected to the Maryland Senate. Washington voters also reaffirmed the state’s plan to make polluters pay for their emissions.
“There is hope that we can slow down, weaken, and maybe even stop some of the things Trump and his allies are going to try to do,” said Craig Auster, LCV’s vice president of political affairs. “A key piece of how we will do that is having really strong leaders in Congress and in state and local office.”
International spaces have historically left me incredibly disappointed. Climate talks have led us nowhere for nearly three decades now, but maybe international courts—and courts more broadly—are an avenue toward less talk, more action.
In April, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of a group of older Swiss women who argued that Switzerland was violating their human rights by failing to make adequate efforts to cut emissions. The victory took eight years from start to finish, but change takes time.
Take the International Court of Justice (ICJ), for instance, where island nations are currently arguing that the Court should recognize the legal obligation of high-emitting countries to protect the climate—and their responsibility for the harm that climate change is already causing. Pacific Island youth first began the process of launching the case in 2019. Five years later, they’re making history at the ICJ. The court’s ruling isn’t expected until next year, but the fact that the ICJ is hearing the case is a win on its own.
In the U.S., another group of young people is celebrating a court success. Hawaii officials settled a legal case in June with 13 youth climate activists who were arguing for the state’s transit department to take action to decarbonize by 2045. Now, the state is legally required to finally do it.
The International Energy Agency announced in June that, around the globe, renewable energy received double the amount of dollars that fossil fuels did. This year, $2 trillion is expected to funnel toward wind, solar, and battery storage. In 2023, that number was $735 billion.
Money talks, y’all, so this is an excellent sign.
Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of Brooklyn-based climate justice organization UPROSE, throws down for her neighbors. This year, her team locked in a community-owned solar array that will provide clean energy to residents and businesses in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Some 150 households in the neighborhood are expected to see a combined $1.24 million in energy savings over the project’s lifetime.
The final victory against the climate crisis will look like a return home for us all—away from consumerism and greed, away from extraction and exploitation.
“This project is a bold step forward in decarbonizing Sunset Park and will serve as a blueprint for frontline communities across the country,” Yeampierre said in a statement. “It’s also a powerful reminder that the most effective solutions to the climate crisis are led by those who are most impacted.”
In June, the Congressional Slow Fashion Caucus was born thanks to Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, and Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California. This caucus represents the first time the U.S. Congress has created a body to address the fashion industry’s devastating impact on the environment.
“Fashion is an often underrated or misunderstood industry in terms of its economic, social, and environmental impacts,” said Emily Stochl, the vice president of advocacy and community engagement for Remake, a nonprofit working to improve the fashion industry and help workers. “The establishment of the first-ever Congressional Slow Fashion Caucus appropriately elevates fashion’s many intersectional issues at a federal level by establishing a specific platform in Congress to discuss and address them.”
The caucus aims to make room for public policy that incentivizes slow fashion, builds a circular economy, and combats the fast fashion crisis.
In October, the last dam on the Klamath River, which runs between California and Oregon, came down. The dam removal project made history as the world’s largest. Now, the salmon—long prevented from returning to their ancestral waters—have come home. In fact, the fish now have access to 420 miles of habitat that was previously unavailable to them. Many of these waters feature cold-water springs, giving salmon some reprieve as the planet’s rising temperatures make waters warmer, too.
The return of the fish will surely boost the ecosystem, as well as the cultures of local tribes that historically relied on salmon for sustenance.
Every year, I feel real joy out of seeing where Indigenous tribes and nations have reclaimed their historic lands.
This year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave back over 2,800 acres to the Shasta Indian Nation. In Minnesota, the federal government returned over 11,000 acres of national forest land to the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. The Onondaga Nation in New York saw some 1,000 acres placed back under its stewardship thanks to a legal settlement. Outside the U.S., in Colombia, a court killed a carbon credit scheme that violated the rights of the Pira Parana Indigenous peoples whose lands private companies were negotiating around.
Nick Tilsen, CEO and founder of Indigenous rights group NDN Collective, reminds us that land back is about more than transactions, though.
“The land back movement is about dismantling the systems that made it possible for the stealing of our land in the first place and that continue to perpetuate our land being stolen today,” he said. “We actually really need to be thinking about land back as an abolitionist type of movement to dismantle some of these systems.”
Land back has always been about “liberation” and “justice,” Tilsen emphasized. Indeed, the final victory against the climate crisis will look like a return home for us all—away from consumerism and greed, away from extraction and exploitation. Here’s to more homecomings in 2025 and beyond.
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Your 2024 Climate Wins, Wrapped
