Seattle climate activist Jamie Margolin, 17, with a collection of the identification badges from climate youth activism conventions she has attended. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
19-year-old climate justice activist Jamie Margolin is already a force to be reckoned with. She was inspired to act after witnessing devastating wildfires in her home state of Washington in 2017, and seeing the devastating impact that Hurricane Maria had on Puerto Rico. Margolin is the co-executive director of Zero Hour, a youth-led climate action group. The group assembled in the summer of 2017 and are focused on the lack of action from officials around the world in response to the ever-increasing threat of climate crisis. In September 2019, she was part of a youth group that sued the Governor of Washington State over greenhouse gas emissions in the state and the lack of action surrounding climate change. She also appeared with fellow climate activist Greta Thunberg before the U.S. Congress to hold her leaders accountable and press for action on climate change.
Jamie’s work is truly remarkable, and imperative at this time. The climate crisis will only continue to get worse, and urgent action is needed to try and mitigate the damage to the planet and the people on it. In an April 2020 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, she impressed upon the powers that be to start treating climate change like they are treating the pandemic — as a clear and present danger; “the general idea of the way that they’re treating the coronavirus — with that urgency, that, ‘Oh, my god, this is an emergency, we need to act!’ — that’s how they need to be treating the climate crisis.”