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Time Magazine
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Washington Governor Jay Inslee on the Power of Local Action
Jay Inslee believes in the power of local action—even in overcoming national pushback. 'Right now, we know these are hard days. We've got a person in the White House who must have been scared by wind turbines as a young man,' the three-term Democratic governor of Washington State said at the 2025 TIME Earth Awards on April 23. 'But despite the bad news coming out of Washington, D.C., we have a magic vehicle for progress that is the states.' Despite the President withdrawing the U.S. from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and dismantling climate initiatives across the country, 'Donald Trump cannot stop a state from defeating climate change,' Inslee said. In 2021, Inslee signed into law Washington's Climate Commitment Act, which requires the state's largest polluters to cap emissions and purchase allowances for the amount they pollute, which the state reinvests into clean energy. He has passed laws requiring a 100% clean—meaning generated from renewable or zero-carbon resources—electrical grid by 2045, invested billions of dollars into solar power and electric vehicles, and launched state programs to help businesses and residents transition to clean energy. President and CEO of American Forests, the oldest forest conservation non-governmental organization in the U.S., Jad Daley, who presented the award to Inslee, said Inslee's leadership is 'needed now more than ever.' 'The Governor's leadership in Washington State alone would merit this award,' Daley said. But Inslee 'went a pivotal step further' in 2017—when Trump first tried to withdraw from the Paris Agreement—by co-founding the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 24 states that pledged to maintain pace with the goals set forth in the accord. Member states include Michigan, where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed into law an extensive climate package in 2023 that would push the state towards 100% clean energy by 2040, and Maine, where Gov. Janet Mills has signed multiple clean energy and solar power bills. 'The cheapest electricity today is clean energy,' Inslee said. 'We are the answer to inflation, to give people cheap, inexpensive, clean energy.' Inslee ended on a call to action. 'This is the United States, and every one of those states has the capability of advancing clean energy and fighting climate change,' Inslee said. 'I'm tired of playing defense. We need to play offense right now.'
Time Magazine
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley on Building Bridges Toward a Better Climate Future
Barbados may be a small country in size and population, but Prime Minister Mia Mottley has seen that the Caribbean nation plays a big role in the fight against the climate crisis. In her speech at the 2025 TIME Earth Awards in Manhattan on April 23, Mottley pointed to the late Pope Francis, who 'remained forthright in stating what was necessary for us at the personal level, but also the level of the planet Earth: we have to work to save the planet.' 'He said clearly that we need a conversation which includes everyone, not some of us, but everyone, since the environmental challenge that we are undergoing and its human roots concern and affect us all.' Mottley, who became the first female Prime Minister of Barbados in 2018, isn't afraid to pave the way. She has implemented a plan to phase out fossil fuels and transition to 100% renewable energy by 2030. Mottley is clear about the contentious political climate that affects environmental action. 'We are at an awkward stage in the world's development,' Mottley said. 'When you hear companies and financial institutions that a year ago were still promoting the importance of climate finance all of a sudden say they don't need it and they don't believe in it anymore, you begin to wonder if this is real.' But she's also clear-eyed about what's at stake, including the fact that the historically largest polluters are often the richest nations yet don't bear the brunt of the climate crisis' impacts. Rather, less developed countries in the Global South, like Barbados, which faces rising sea levels and more frequent storms, often do. Mottley launched the Bridgetown Initiative at COP26 in 2021, as a plan to push rich countries to support developing nations in adapting to climate change by aiming to mobilize trillions of dollars in green investments. 'If we don't get this equation correct, it is going to destabilize our access to food and water, our access to security,' she said. Part of the key, she said, is in finding the 'love language' that makes conversations between opposing sides—climate activists and climate deniers—possible. 'We're not going to win all the battles in the current geopolitical climate, but we can win a battle where there is common purpose.' Mottley implored businesses and individuals to eschew apathy and indifference—and for world leaders to join in on the conversation around the climate crisis, regardless of political differences. 'The truth is that if we look back at history, we know that history doesn't move in a straight line, but it is important that we keep the trajectory and the direction moving in the right way,' Mottley said. 'There are people whose very existence depends on us finding ways of building bridges through this difficult and challenging time.'
Time Magazine
26-04-2025
- General
- Time Magazine
Selassie Atadika on the Importance of Food to Tackling Climate Change
Climate change is impacting the world's food supply: as extreme weather events become more common, the future of crops around the world is at risk. This loss isn't in some distant future, says Selassie Atadika, founder of Midunu, an experimental restaurant in Accra that features what she has dubbed 'New African Cuisine.' 'It is actually happening, quietly, throughout the planet—as the climate shifts, seeds vanish and ancestral knowledge disappears before we actually have a chance to pass it on,' Atadika warned at the TIME Earth Awards in Manhattan on April 23. Regions across Asia and Africa are already experiencing higher frequencies of floods and drought—disrupting crop-growing patterns. Midunu uses food to advocate for sustainable agriculture and makes its dishes using local and seasonal ingredients along with traditional grains and proteins. Soon, Atadika plans to launch the Midunu Institute, a space to research, preserve, and teach the principles of African foodways—which she hopes can help offer solutions to many of the world's most pressing issues. Many researchers and farmers are beginning to turn to Africa's indigenous crops—like finger millet and pigeon pea—as a climate resilient solution to the country's growing food demand. It's an approach Atadika believes is the way forward. 'The recipe for what comes next— it's already here,' she said. 'It's in the hands that still remember. It's in the kitchens that still honor the land. It's in communities that nourish without waste, without forgetting.' Atadika insists that prioritizing indigenous knowledge is not about nostalgia. 'It's [a] scalable model [of] climate resilience, cultural preservation, and economic dignity. We're talking about value kept at origin. We're talking about leadership from the Global South—rooted, rigorous, and ready.'
Time Magazine
26-04-2025
- Health
- Time Magazine
Former Republican Senator Bill Frist on How Climate Is a Health Issue
Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Senator Bill Frist wants everyone to know that the climate crisis is a health crisis. 'After decades in medicine, in that operating room as a surgeon, and then 12 years in the United States Senate, and then a lot of time as a healthcare entrepreneur, I came to see something fundamental, that the health of our planet and our globe…and the health of the human being himself, we've regarded those as separate, when in truth, they are inseparable,' Frist said at the TIME Earth Awards in Manhattan on April 23. Frist began his career as a physician and surgeon before joining the Senate in 1995. Since retiring, he's turned his focus to the climate crisis. Now, he believes that to get people to connect with the climate crisis it has to be made personal. 'No one wants their child to develop asthma from polluted air, no one wants to watch a loved one suffer from a heatwave,' Frist said. 'When we view the Earth's health… through the lens of human health—we touch those individual hearts and minds and move people with that common language.' Frist said his experience advocating—and seeing meaningful change—on big issues like reducing smoking, controlling HIV, and slashing childhood traffic fatalities, has shown him that climate action is possible—as long as people come together with a shared goal. And the will is there: 70% of Americans recognize climate change as a serious concern. He urged doctors and nurses to 'be the messengers' of the climate crisis. 'It's those healers and doctors and nurses who are on the front lines. It's them responding to the health impacts of the natural disasters that we know are occurring more frequently and with greater intensity, the spreading of diseases from deforestation and the changing climates that we know all are occurring, and the repercussions of polluted water and soil on health.' He closed out his speech with a message to 'lead with health.' 'Because in the end, it isn't just about saving the planet.' Frist said. 'It is about saving lives and saving people.'
Time Magazine
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Michael Bloomberg on the Responsibility to Take Action for the World
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks it's about time we got our act together on the climate fight. During a speech at the TIME Earth Awards in Manhattan on April 23, the U.N. Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions and founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies mentioned some recent climate disasters—from the Los Angeles fires to record breaking storms in the Caribbean and the Southeast—and called the widespread destruction 'results of us not paying attention.' 'This is the mistakes we've made for many, many years, coming back to haunt us. And unless we get our act together, it's going to get a lot worse,' he said. 'We are part of the environment. Without the environment, we are nothing.' He noted that—though the Trump Administration has rolled back many major environmental rules and policies since taking office—it doesn't mean the fight is over. 'Most of the past two decades, leadership on climate change in the U.S. hasn't come from Washington,' he said. 'It has come from the bottom up, from cities and states, activists and grassroots groups, businesses and investors and philanthropists.' 'We've got to just roll up our sleeves, team up together, and get to work here,' he said. It's a call to action he does not take lightly: The former mayor has helped close more than 300 coal-fired power plants in the U.S. and reduced New York City's emissions by nearly 20%. And, after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, his foundation Bloomberg Philanthropies stepped up along with other funders to cover the gap. Bloomberg said the climate fight is not a partisan one. 'We have a responsibility to leave a better world for our children and grandchildren. And that's not a Democrat or Republican idea. It's not even an American idea,' he said. 'It's a value that stretches across political ideologies and national boundaries. And in this time when some people seem more divided than ever, it ought to be something that really unites us.'
