Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Sunrise AU
- Climate Defiance, a youth-led activism group, is organizing protests in Washington, DC.
- Its members are angry that President Joe Biden broke a campaign promise on oil and gas drilling.
- Biden also signed the most significant US climate law, but activists warn it isn't enough.
- This article is part of Insider's weekly newsletter on sustainability. Sign up here.
Rylee Haught constantly worries about developing a disease.
The 23-year-old climate activist grew up in Parkersburg, West Virginia, where a manufacturing plant that for decades was owned by DuPont produced a toxic substance that contaminated the drinking water of some 100,000 people.
The substance was among a group of "forever chemicals" — or PFAS — that don't break down in the environment and were largely unregulated until this year, when federal limits in drinking water are slated to take effect. Exposure to PFAS has been linked to cancer, liver damage, fertility and thyroid problems, and asthma.
"People in my area have much higher rates of cancer and long-term illnesses," Haught told Insider. "Sometimes it's hard to know the origin. Is it because they were stuck in the coal mines for decades? Or because they lived close to the DuPont plant?"
That exposure to environmental risks led Haught to climate activism. This year she joined Climate Defiance as its student recruitment lead. The new youth-led activism group creates nonviolent disruptions to pressure politicians to end fossil-fuel extraction from public land and water. On Saturday, the group plans to blockade the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington, DC.
The protest is part of a flurry of civil disobedience by an international network of climate activists, including when demonstrators threw soup and mashed potatoes at famous paintings last year. The movement is partially bankrolled by the Climate Emergency Fund. Its executive director, Margaret Klein Salamon, said the nonprofit raised $6 million last year, double the amount it raised in 2021.
She added that the media doesn't cover the climate crisis like the emergency it is, such as by making it front-page news each day. So the White House Correspondents' Association dinner is an appropriate target, Salamon said.
Haught, like many young voters worried about the climate crisis, is angry with President Joe Biden's decision to approve the $8 billion Willow oil project in Alaska. Biden during his 2020 campaign promised to stop new oil drilling on public lands. The administration last month also sold oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico, citing provisions in Biden's signature climate law, The Inflation Reduction Act, requiring the sale. The auction was among some concessions that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia locked in for the fossil fuel industry.
Even so, the IRA is the most significant climate action in US history, with $369 billion in tax breaks and grants for renewable energy, electric vehicles, and home appliances, and investments in communities overburdened by pollution. Analysts have estimated it could help slash US greenhouse-gas emissions by upward of 40% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.
In recent weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency has also proposed the strictest limits on vehicle pollution and is preparing to crack down on emissions from power plants, according to media reports.
Haught said these actions are important but aren't enough to avoid catastrophic levels of warming. She pointed to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which found that existing fossil-fuel infrastructure alone would blow through the world's carbon budget — the amount of emissions it can afford before the planet is 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than preindustrial levels.
Haught said that Biden, who this week announced his reelection bid, should end fossil-fuel extraction on federal lands if he wants to again win over younger voters who were key to his 2020 victory. In a survey conducted in January 2022 by Pew Research Center, about 48% of Americans 18 to 29 said the US should exclusively use renewables.
The White House did not return requests for comment.
Haught acknowledged she had little political choice because GOP candidates have shown paltry interest in prioritizing climate action. In the meantime, she said, public disruptions are the most effective way to draw attention to the crisis.
"If you're putting your body on the line and risking a record of arrest, that shows you're serious," Haught said. "It also gets people fired up and helps build the movement."