On Climate Change, Listen to Our Children
By Brad Adams
Over those years, I was the Asia director at Human Rights Watch, working on issues like extrajudicial killings, torture, freedom of expression, and refugee rights—subjects that sadly now require unprecedented attention in the United States—in places like India, China, Myanmar, and Cambodia (where I had previously lived for 5 years). One topic that frequently came up was climate change, and though I was certainly aware and concerned, I didn’t work directly on it.
In my experience, most kids, whether in Cambodia or California, are naturally hopeful and excited about the future. This was certainly true of my carpool confidantes. But one pessimistic note regularly crept into their conversations: what would their futures look like in the era of climate change?
This all crystallized for me in a conversation I had with my son. A well-intentioned friend of mine had asked him the perennially annoying question: “What do you want to do with your life?” My son gave some sensibly vague response, and I later brought it up, telling him that he didn’t need to have an answer at this point in his life.
His reply ended up being one of the reasons I started Climate Rights International.
“I just want you to know that unlike you and mom, I don’t plan on having a career.”
“Ok,” I replied, “but we’ve never suggested you should think about a career. You should do what interests you.”
“What I mean is that I don’t plan on working back from a long-term goal, like you and Mom did.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because I don’t expect to have a future like you guys have had.”
“And why not?” 
“Climate change. There may be no world to live in. So why would I make decisions now based on the world being the same when I’m your age?”
My son was hardly an outlier.
Climate anxiety among young people is rampant and well-documented. It was around this time that huge numbers of high school and middle school students around the world were participating in the weekly Fridays For Future school walkouts inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg. We adults worried about their anxiety and applauded their idealism, but most of us nevertheless failed to put meaningful pressure on politicians to take action.
The facts and science are inescapable. Young people see it all around them: record temperatures, unimaginably destructive winter wildfires in L.A., hurricanes in New York, melting glaciers. While President Trump, arguably the world’s most prominent and dangerous climate change denier, has employed Orwellian tactics to banish all references to climate change from government programs and pretends that it’s a “hoax,” even the website of the National Institutes of Health still contains a prominent study about climate anxiety. It is as real as climate change itself.
People can hold many competing thoughts in their heads at the same time, so my son is getting on with his education and is indeed starting to plan his future. Like his parents, he knows he’s privileged. But as many as two billion children in poor countries—and poor children in wealthy countries—are not so fortunate. Take Niger, for example. Fifty-seven percent of the population is under 18; they and their families bake in temperatures reaching 120 degrees that often only decrease to 80 degrees overnight, all without access to clean drinking water or electricity (much less air conditioning). Arriving at school tired and unable to concentrate is a major barrier to academic success, which is the best path poor children have of escaping a future of abject poverty.
Discussions about climate change can be bleak, so I’m often asked what gives me hope. The most obvious answer is that the facts and science are clear; we know what the problem is and what we should do to address it. Despite an avalanche of disinformation from politicians and the fossil fuel industry, overwhelming majorities not only believe that climate change is real but want governments and companies to take stronger action. And then there is the huge global movement of Indigenous Peoples, urban activists, lawyers, progressive politicians, philanthropists, and others who understand the stakes and are fighting government and corporate greed and indifference on a daily basis.
Let’s be clear: it is the responsibility of older generations to fix the problem we created by rapidly phasing out fossil fuels and transitioning to renewable energy. Yet it’s heartening to see the many creative and visionary young people who are addressing their climate anxiety by leading efforts to make sure the world is safe for future generations. For example, in 2019 students from the University of the South Pacific in Fiji—whose home islands face submersion from rising sea levels—formed Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change in order to request the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to take action. In a historic decision, in July 2025 the ICJ ruled that the Paris Agreement and international law create legally binding obligations on states to use all means at their disposal to prevent significant harm to the climate system, including regulating private actors and fossil fuel activities.
It will be a long, hard road to successfully sue, pressure, and shame governments to implement the ICJ decision. Trump has made it even more difficult with his “drill baby drill” approach to energy policy, which also includes the bizarre and Luddite effort to stop desperately needed wind and solar projects.
But the Pacific Island Students and the wider public know that Trump and his cronies are on the wrong side of history. Climate change is an existential crisis that requires people of all ages and from all corners of the globe to work together. As U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres put it, “Half of humanity is in the danger zone, from floods, droughts, extreme storms and wildfires. No nation is immune. Yet we continue to feed our fossil fuel addiction… We have a choice. Collective action or collective suicide. It is in our hands.”
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Brad Adams is the founder and executive director of Climate Rights International. He served as the Executive Director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch from 2002-2022, where he oversaw investigations as well as advocacy and media work in twenty countries. He worked as the senior lawyer for the Cambodia field office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, the Guardian, Foreign Affairs, and the Wall Street Journal, among others, and periodically teaches International Human Rights Law and Practice at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.