How I became an environmentalist: A small-town story with global implications

Featured in the first edition of MakingIt Magazine.  MakingIt Magazine is a new quarterly publication from the United Nations Development Organization (UNIDO), dedicated to the role of industry as a dynamic force in wealth creation and development on the one hand, and the need to ensure the environmental and social sustainability of industry on the other.

It’s not surprising that new, popular movements and organizations are emerging in response to the ecological crisis. Climate change is the most important challenge facing humanity – and the rest of the planet – today. It threatens the balance of the global systems and relationships most fundamental to life – like the polar icecaps (the world’s fresh water storage system and a natural reflector of excess heat and light from the sun) and global ocean and air currents (the world’s circulatory system). These threats are serious, and demand immediate attention. But they are not why I became an environmentalist. My story is much smaller, about one family in one town on the west coast of the United States.

Growing up in Suisun, California

I grew up in a little California town called Suisun, about 50 miles from San Francisco. In retrospect, it is easy for me to see how my childhood was my impetus into activism – and into environmentalism. But I didn’t know it at the time.

What I did know was that, compared to the rest of the United States, my family was poor. Even in the richest country in the world, I had to sign up for my school’s free lunch programme. That meant I had to stand in a separate line, apart from my friends and most of the other students, clearly visible as too poor to pay for lunch myself.