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Hands trembling, breath ragged, mind racing. I had no idea if I had the guts to do it. What would be the consequences? How would my fellow youth activists in the room react?
I’d been invited to the Voters of Tomorrow summit in Washington, DC, to listen to the White House representatives explain all they’d done for young people, not to pressure them to do more. As I deliberated, I turned to my trusted friends and colleagues at Gen-Z for Change and tearfully explained why I was thinking I had to act.
This time last year, the Gen-Z for Change team was on the White House lawn listening to Biden celebrate the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a $369 billion plan to electrify our homes, ramp up wind and solar power, and more (while also mandating the auction of new oil and gas leases in the Gulf Coast). Later in the fall, I was invited to the White House’s Hispanic Heritage Month celebration. I accepted these invites, and continued to use my platform to accurately communicate climate policy like the IRA and advocate for more action.
White House staffers have always been respectful to me and the team. Despite all my efforts, though, this practice of invites and kind words hasn't led to bold climate action. During the viral Stop Willow campaign, I sent emails to White House public engagement staffers urging them not to approve the project. Over 1.1 million people wrote to the administration to try to stop Willow, but the administration green-lit it anyway.
And it wasn’t just me. Climate communicator and scientist Alaina Wood had also spoken up about her disappointing internal conversations with Team Biden after the Willow Project’s approval.
During the Voters for Tomorrow summit, in the minutes leading up to the White House press secretary’s speech, I was reminded of all the avenues we had exhausted. Emailing didn’t work. Private conversations didn’t work. Writing letters didn’t work. Maybe publicly and directly asking for commitments would.
On a personal level, I had just visited my family in Ecuador, for the first time in 16 years. I climbed 15,400 foot mountains and spent quality time with my grandfather, speaking almost exclusively in Spanish. At one point, my abuelo told me his spirit is with me always: on mountains, in my home in California, no matter where I am. So, despite my fears and reservations — and feeling my abuelo’s spirit — I interrupted Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre as she recited Biden’s climate successes:
“Excuse me for interrupting, but asking nicely hasn't worked out," I began. "A million young people wrote to the administration pleading not to approve a disastrous oil-drilling project in Alaska and we were ignored. So I'm here channeling the strength of my ancestors and generation. Will the administration stop approving new oil and gas projects and align with youth, science, and frontline communities from the north slope of Alaska to Louisiana?"
As you can hear in the video, my first few sentences were full of nerves. Standing up to the Biden administration directly — an administration I voted and campaigned for in 2020 and at an event to encourage youth turnout for 2024 — felt like a massive cliff jump. Every natural instinct was telling me not to jump.
Still, my words were backed by the science that insists that we cannot afford new oil, gas, and coal development if we are to meet our climate goals. They were backed by the current reality of billions of people impacted by extreme heat, drought, wildfires, storms, famine, and other fossil fuel-intensified disasters. And they were bound by Biden’s own words, spoken when he was a candidate: “No more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.”
I could do this, I told myself. Hold the ground, relay the science. Tell the truth about what’s happening.
And here’s the truth: The oil and gas industry artificially jacks up our energy costs and pollutes our air, water, and bodies, all while making a profit of hundreds of billions of dollars. And yet: The Biden administration totaled 6,430 oil and gas permit approvals in its first two years, outpacing the Trump administration’s 6,172 approvals over the same timeframe. The Biden administration’s 2023 record alone includes fast-tracking the Mountain Valley Pipeline in the debt ceiling bill, holding a 73 million acre, Italy-size, offshore oil lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico, approving exports for the Alaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, and more.
On August 10, 2020, when Joe Biden accepted the Democratic nomination for president, he said, “One of the most powerful voices we hear in the country today is from our young people. They’re speaking to the inequity and injustice that has grown up in America. Economic injustice. Racial injustice. Environmental injustice.” But three years later, many young people don’t feel like the president is living up to his promise and still hearing their voices.
From October 2022 to March 2023, after the approval of the Willow Project, support by those ages 18-29 for Biden’s climate and environmental policy dropped 13%, down to 35% approval. With just over a year until the 2024 general election, President Biden’s continuing support for fossil fuels is putting his support from young people — a key to Democratic victories in 2020 and 2022 — at risk.
Karine Jean-Pierre's response to my question was this: “Biden has taken more action on climate change than any other president.” But that wasn’t what I was asking, nor is that enough.
A quarter of emissions come from fossil fuel extraction on public lands. The Biden administration must stop comparing itself to the very low bar of past administrations and instead stop approvals of new coal, oil, and gas projects, set a managed decline of current fossil fuel production, halt the hundreds of billions of private dollars that fund fossil fuel projects abroad, and support workers transitioning out of the industry. And at the very, very least, declare a climate emergency.
As Frederick Douglass proclaimed in “The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies,” which Representative Justin Jones powerfully recited in his speech after my interruption, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” The climate strikes for a Green New Deal in 2019 helped lead to President Biden passing the IRA. We have and will only make progress if we push our leaders in the right direction.
Young people are committed to doing exactly that. Since Thursday, July 27, the video of me interrupting Karine Jean-Pierre has been viewed over 29 million times across social media. This comes less than five months after the Stop Willow campaign, which received over 1.1 billion views across three TikTok hashtags; 1.1 million letters sent to the White House; and five million petition signatures. These moments are no fluke, and will inevitably keep happening until action is taken.
So what will it be, Joe?
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