“I see Climate change, climate justice as a queer issue because climate change exacerbates every oppression just by making it harder to live for everyone.” ~ Z, March Organizer
Thousands of students around the world skipped school Friday to protest for action on climate change. These protests were initiated by young people, like 12-year-old activist Haven Coleman and 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to combat global warming. The Advocate spoke to lesbian, gay, and nonbinary youth at the Los Angeles protest in front of City Hall. Watch the video on the Advocate
there is no planet b: why climate change is an lgbtq issue
Noah C. Goodwin, Ph.D. Student - French at University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, GLAAD Campus Ambassador Alum
Global warming has been a topic in the news for as long as I can remember. Al Gore’s climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, winning the Nobel Prize is one of my earliest media memories. Although I may not have understood every part of the film at the time, I took away one big message: Global warming is bad and we have to stop it.
Much in the same vein, when I learned I was gay, I didn’t understand all the ins and outs of sexuality. Yet, society taught me that being a boy who likes boys was wrong. The same existential dread I felt around the end of the world due to global warming reared its head again, except this time it wasn’t about the whole world, just mine.
My world didn’t end when I came out—on the contrary, it expanded. Coming out to friends in high school and then publicly to everyone in college brought me in contact with a whole new world, one I wouldn’t have been able to join had it not been for the support I received from my community, people I’d met by getting involved with fighting climate change. While the fight was important to me, before I came out I had been so scared that I was going to be one of those people who loses everything: family, friends, support, and community. I was convinced that my family was going to disown me, throw me onto the street without a dollar or a blanket. The existential dread was akin to the overarching fear I felt about the destruction of the world. I had to find some way to understand myself and move forward. Coming out became one way to do this. Once I was out, I had the ability to show up more fully. So much of the fear I had felt about being queer dissipated. With the shrinking of this fear came the expansion of my hope, which allowed me to turn my gaze outward and see a future for the world. Read more via GLAAD