The next generation is taking on the climate crisis

“That was the moment where I felt like I could speak up. Even with all my identities, I could be authentically myself. And I was just so proud — proud to see all these people come together. So amazed that so many people care. And also so filled with life. That’s when I knew ... this is kind of what I want to do the rest of my life,” Salgado Altamirano says. “Keep on lifting up voices.” 

Many U.S.-based climate activists cite personal connections with the environment — time spent along rivers and lakes, camping trips in remote areas or a connection to working on the land — as the driving force behind their environmental advocacy. Salgado Altamirano came into climate activism by a different route.

Born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and raised there until she and her family immigrated to Wisconsin in 2015 when she was 14, Salgado Altamirano says the scope of climate change and its impact didn’t click with her until a high school biology teacher explained the disproportionate effects experienced by lower-middle-income countries.

Fueled by a realization that climate change’s impacts are felt in drastically different ways around the globe (and that the conversation around the climate crisis is dominated by white voices), Salgado Altamirano decided she wanted to learn more about the issue.

This eventually led to her reinvigorating a green club at Vel Phillips Memorial High School that Salgado Altamirano encouraged her friends to join. She pushed for other forms of activism, too, but was met with skepticism from family and friends, many of whom — like Salgado Altamirano — were pursuing U.S. citizenship and saw political activism as too risky. 

Still, she kept pushing and continued to organize with her classmates. As the years went on, Salgado Altamirano became more interested in protesting and political activism, leading her and other Madison high schoolers to form the Youth Climate Action Team, which went on to organize the city’s first youth climate march.

Since then, Salgado Altamirano’s activism has only expanded. During her years studying political science and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she’s been involved in the Wisconsin Student Climate Action Coalition that organizes rallies, sit-ins and other protests.  

In 2020, she joined Gov. Tony Evers’ Task Force on Climate Change as a policy adviser at the invite of then-Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who chaired the task force. Salgado Altamirano says Barnes invited her to join the group in large part because of her frequent protests outside his office at the Capitol.  

All of Salgado Altamirano’s work since her high school days, she says, has been designed to level the playing field for those without a voice. 

“[The] climate crisis is something that, whether we like it or not, we are confronting, we will confront, and it will affect me and my generation, especially people who oftentimes don’t have a say in the conversation.” 

A New Generation 

Salgado Altamirano is one of a growing number of youth leaders taking action on the climate crisis and making their voices heard on an issue they argue has seen inadequate action from political leaders. 

In the few short years since that March day — followed later that year by the September 2019 Global Climate Strike, when Greta Thunberg and millions of others marched to speak up about governmental inaction on climate change — the disastrous effects of ignoring the problem have only become more apparent. Last year alone, record-breaking Canadian wildfires brought thick haze and hazardous air to major cities across the U.S.; intense rains in Vermont created catastrophic flooding; federal officials recorded the most billion-dollar climate disasters in U.S. history; and global temperatures reached their highest level in recorded history. Here in Wisconsin, we experienced our first February tornado in recorded weather history, as well as one of the largest day-to-day temperature swings ever — 70 degrees in one day, 11 degrees the next. 

Local environmental advocates like Akanksha Denduluri say everyone has a role to play in preventing even worse impacts caused by a warming world. 

In early November 2023, Denduluri, 17, and other students organized the third-annual Youth Climate Action Conference (formerly the Dane County High School Climate Conference), which brought together more than 200 people, including students from more than 30 Wisconsin high schools.  

The goal of the conference, Denduluri says, was to address climate anxieties and give young people the tools to implement change. 

“I truly believe in channeling what you’re good at, what you value, what you find joy in and finding avenues that can help you help the climate … and that can help you grow as a person and an advocate,” says Denduluri, a high school student enrolled in Madison College’s STEM Academy Program, where she studies genetics, engineering, physics and more. 

For Denduluri, that means exploring her interest in science, particularly genetics and engineering, by pursuing research in the agricultural and environmental worlds to help crops withstand future climate-induced afflictions. 

For another local climate leader, passion has led to a career in the political world. Charles Hua, 23 — founder and executive director of the recently formed organization PowerLines, and a keynote speaker at the 2023 Youth Climate Action Conference — says that with persistence and the right strategy, young people can be strong advocates for change, especially if they’re interested from an early age. 

“The seed was planted by my second-grade teacher, who taught about climate change, and I think that’s really important because it goes to show if you plant the seed early, it can really lead to a lot of things down the road that I didn’t even realize,” he says. 

Hua has engaged with local officials and organizations to make small-scale changes; in 2019, he and other students successfully petitioned the Madison Metropolitan School District to commit to transitioning to 100% renewable energy by 2040, making the district the largest in the nation at the time to make such a pledge. 

MMSD leaders have since faced pushback for suggesting they might alter their pledge and delay the 100% green transition by a decade. Hua says MMSD leaders should maintain the commitment to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2040, and that funding opportunities made by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law make this especially important. 

Kathy Kuntz, director of Dane County’s Office of Energy & Climate Change, has worked alongside local youth leaders for several years now to help bring more attention to their messages. “There is a lot of grassroots momentum in this space,” she says. 

Her work with UNA-Dane County to help coordinate the annual student-run Dane County High School Climate Conference has given youth leaders like Salgado Altamirano, Denduluri and Hua a larger platform to make their voices heard. An important part of her work, Kuntz says, is knowing when to step back and listen. 

“We have a generation of young people here who are looking at what they see on the news and going, ‘I’m not sure I have a future,’  ” she says. “By the time 2050 comes — a year that’s become a significant benchmark for major carbon neutralization goals around the globe — many young climate advocates will be entering their 40s. [That’s] a time when many people are trying to support budding families, further develop their careers and root themselves deeper into their communities.” 

None of which is possible if there’s an existential threat hanging overhead. 

With that in mind, Kuntz says it’s imperative for people in positions like hers, and across other disciplines, to respect youth leaders’ perspectives and enable them to make the changes they want to see. 

Salgado Altamirano, Denduluri and Hua are just the latest in a long line of Wisconsinites fighting to solve the environmental challenges of their time. Since the earliest days of human settlement in what’s now known as Wisconsin, humanity and environmentalism have been inextricably linked. 

A Tradition of Coexistence

Humankind’s modern relationship with nature is an extractive one. Forests are cut down for timber and to make room for agriculture; mountains are stripped for minerals; water is pumped from lakes and rivers to create desert oases otherwise impossible to sustain. The cycle repeats over and over until an area is depleted of all that once made it valuable — and until the next corporation finds a new tract of land ready for pilfering. 

But that wasn’t always the case. 

For thousands of years, Indigenous tribes have coexisted with the natural world in what is now Wisconsin. Their stories have been passed down via oral tradition for generations. 

Patty Loew, a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe and a longtime journalist, writes in her book “Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal” that many Native stories have often centered the synergistic relationship with the natural world they’ve had for thousands of years. 

“From the stories and songs passed down to present generations of Native Americans, we can make inferences about the relationships early inhabitants had with the animals and plants that sustained them,” she writes.

The Ho-Chunk sing about their respect for deer in a part of the state where their ancestors once hunted; the Potawatomi describe plants that nourished them, particularly corn, as strange visitors that blessed the first people with “an abundance of growing things,” Loew writes; the Ojibwe tell a story of four animals who helped usher in the seasons, bringing new prosperity for all. 

While their traditions and stories vary, the histories of Wisconsin’s 12 tribal nations have fostered a strong connection to the land — animals and plants alike. Their stories show a sacred reverence for everything nature has to offer, and with it a responsibility to ensure future generations can experience it — an idea Loew calls a “seventh-generation earth ethic.” 

Loew describes the philosophy as one that “requires decision-makers today [to] consider the impact of their actions on generations 240 years in the future.” 

Take the Menominee Tribe’s continued stewardship of the Menominee Forest, for example. The forest itself had supported tribal members with fish and wildlife to eat for thousands of years. 

When the boundaries of what now makes up the Menominee Reservation were finally set in 1854 after years of pressure from the U.S. government, tribal members faced increased calls to maximize profits from the logging opportunities their land offered. But they resisted.

Instead, the Menominee opted for sustainable logging practices in which they cut down only mature trees instead of clear-cutting entire forests like commercial loggers do. In the time since, the forest has remained one of the healthiest on the planet, while also giving modern researchers insights into how to conduct sustainable logging in other parts of the world. According to the Wisconsin State Journal, an astronaut aboard the space shuttle once said the forest looked like a “jewel” because of its stark contrast to the farmland that surrounds it.

Loew writes that there’s as much cuttable timber in the Menominee Forest as there was in 1854 — proof of a different, more protective relationship with the land. 

Some tribal nations in Wisconsin are also leading the effort to adopt clean energy in order to make their communities more resilient. After severe flooding caused widespread power outages on the Bad River Band’s reservation near Lake Superior, tribal leaders decided to invest in a micro-grid installation that’s powered by solar panels and includes enough battery storage to outlast another historic flood. 

The Bad River Band’s decision to switch to renewable, self-sustaining energy demonstrates a continued commitment to ensuring future generations’ survival while simultaneously minimizing future damage to the environment. 

As activists, policy makers, scientists and others who are invested in preventing further climate catastrophes look for solutions, it seems likely they’ll find answers within Indigenous peoples’ long history of coexistence. 

Planting the Seed 

For John Muir, coexistence with nature involved enjoying vistas of prairies, forests and nearby Fountain Lake in Montello, Wisconsin, where his family settled in 1849. As a young boy, he spent hours staring at the natural world around him, and these experiences would go on to influence his worldview, prompting ideas of protected spaces open for all to enjoy. 

In his early adult life, Muir studied at UW–Madison, where he learned more about botany, biology and geology, which further influenced his dive into nature’s offerings. 

Muir founded the Sierra Club in the early 1890s after successfully lobbying to designate Yosemite as a national park in California. In the years that followed, the Sierra Club went on to lobby for the creation of other parks that have become major landmarks in America’s National Park System.

After Muir’s passing in 1914, the Sierra Club continued to grow, eventually becoming an instrumental part of future environmental movements throughout the 20th century.

Not long after Muir died, another voice with even stronger ties to southern Wisconsin came to fill a similar role: Aldo Leopold.

A Wisconsinite by birth, Leopold is best known for “A Sand County Almanac,” a book that, in part, chronicles his time observing wildlife patterns while living on land near Baraboo. The book also features a series of essays reflecting on times spent around different landscapes of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. 

Often heralded as a seminal piece of writing in the modern conservation movement, Leopold’s definition of “The Land Ethic” has gone on to become one of the most influential environmental texts in modern times, helping to recontextualize humanity’s relationship with the land for the post-industrial era.

In 1949, in the foreword for his “A Sand County Almanac” — published after his death in 1948, when he was 61 — Leopold called out modern society’s tendency to prioritize comfort over conservation and saw it as one of the modern age’s most important divisions. 

“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us,” he wrote. “When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

Teachings by Leopold and Muir — who are now heralded as two of the most influential naturalists and conservationists in U.S. history — would later go on to inspire contemporary figures whose influence could be felt around the globe. Among them was a junior senator from Wisconsin who would spearhead one of the modern environmental movement’s most recognizable traditions.

Then-senator and later governor of Wisconsin Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day in 1970. 

The annual celebration is recognized by 1 billion people as a day of action to push for climate and environmental reform. It’s often cited as one of Nelson’s greatest achievements, but Nelson and other Wisconsin activists weren’t strangers to implementing direct policy changes that have led to enduring efforts in the modern environmental movement. 

The Threats We Face 

Established in 1970 and later renamed after Nelson himself, UW–Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies has become a powerhouse in environmental science, especially in a time when trend predictions and data analyses are so critical to addressing climate change. 

The consensus among the scientific community is firm: Humanity is contributing to climate change, and those changes are exacerbating devastation to the land and threatening humanity itself. Those threats stretch beyond the natural world, too.

The Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts, using data from global satellites and models, predicts three key changes for Wisconsin’s climate over the next 30 years: warmer and shorter winters, a modest increase in overall precipitation and more frequent heavy rainfall events. 

Warming temperatures, which are expected to be most noticeable in the winter, threaten shorter winter recreation seasons and thus the tourism industry. Sewage systems in urban centers aren’t designed to manage the influx of heavy rainfalls predicted by climate models, and agricultural runoff during similar events already poses a major risk to the dairy state’s waterways. While green energy sources are growing in popularity, reliable and sustainable green energy distribution remains a challenge.

Researchers at the Nelson Institute are among those looking for science-based solutions to local and global challenges. 

The work of the Nelson Institute demonstrates that environmental issues touch nearly every part of our lives in some way — from tracking Amazonian deforestation thousands of miles away (by following supply chains of commodities like leather sourced from cattle raised on cleared land) to examining how greener lifestyles here at home can bring benefits to both personal health and the environment.

Collaborations between the Nelson Institute and university-affiliated groups like the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts — which analyzes prediction models to provide data-driven examples of solutions that can help curb the impacts of climate-related shifts within the Badger State — have proven to be an invaluable resource for public and private institutions alike.  

These are initiatives Paul Robbins, environmental researcher and dean of the Nelson Institute, hopes remain strong as communities work to adapt to an uncertain future.  

“I want the Nelson Institute’s legacy to be the environmental legacy that is the people’s legacy,” Robbins says. “It’s the legacy of the people of Wisconsin coming to terms with a changing environment, and being able to call upon the university and make the changes that they want in their community; that they want to make with each other; [that] they want in their businesses, that they want for their corporations, that they want in their schools. I want to be able to say the Nelson Institute was always there when they called.” 

No doubt, some of our contemporary environmental challenges require innovative thinking well beyond what leaders from the 19th and 20th centuries could have possibly imagined. But solutions for many of the threats we face already exist; the challenge is finding ways to implement them. 

Resistance Then and Now 

The way many Wisconsin political and business leaders view the state’s land is impacted by the legacy of colonialism. Just as Leopold lamented, land is primarily viewed as a commodity to be bought and sold, and to extract natural resources from. However, as the effects of a changing climate begin to negatively affect costs and resource availability in more industries, there may soon come a time when lawmakers have no choice but to adopt a new perspective. 

Environmentalists have long faced pushback from lobbyists and politicians with business interests. Shifting administrations add to these complications. Wisconsin’s most recent two governors have differed radically in their approach to conservation. 

Wisconsin is known nationally as a purple state — one that swings back and forth between red and blue candidates, depending on the year. That’s been relatively true of Wisconsin’s statewide politics over the decades, but Republican wins in 2011 gave the party control of the governorship, Assembly and Senate, and with them, unprecedented control over the state’s future during a time when conversations about the dangers of climate change were gaining more and more traction. 

As first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in 2016 — at the direction of then-Gov. Scott Walker — removed wording from its website about humanity’s contribution to climate change, replacing it with more vague language claiming the science wasn’t settled. It was a decision that was met with public scrutiny. 

Walker’s successor, Gov. Tony Evers, who took office in 2019, is leading with an opposite approach. 

Aside from reinstating the language about climate change to the DNR’s website, Evers and his administration have set ambitious goals for tackling the challenge, including efforts to make the state carbon-free by 2050. 

Evers’ Task Force on Climate Change, which the governor established in 2019 via executive order, published its findings in December 2020 and focused on issues ranging from climate justice and energy to agriculture and the development of resilient communities. 

Among the report’s key recommendations were prioritizing public and green transportation, maintaining Wisconsin’s natural spaces (including forests and wetlands, which reduce flooding impacts on communities during major rain events) and promoting agricultural practices that retain the health of local soils and waterways. 

Many of the proposals outlined in the final report have since been introduced to the Wisconsin State Legislature with little movement. In November 2023, Democratic legislators reintroduced their Forward on Climate bill package, which includes proposals to fund green energy programs, support local climate mitigation and resiliency efforts, and set academic standards for teaching about climate change in classrooms statewide. 

Democratic legislators first introduced the bill package in 2019. None of those bills received hearings in any Republican-controlled legislative committees during any of the sessions they were presented. 

Aside from new legislative proposals, the transition away from fossil fuels and to renewable energies is often met with resistance from companies and lobbyists who may see a green transition as a threat to the status quo and their bottom line. A bill introduced in 2021 that would allow Wisconsinites to participate in privately owned solar projects separate from utility companies failed to pass in 2022 because of pushback from utilities. A similar bill introduced in 2023, which had support from both Republicans and Democrats, also failed to pass that same year.

Few issues have escaped the effects of political polarization, and the climate crisis is no exception. The fact remains that every community is vulnerable to climate change’s impacts in some way, and mitigating those effects hinges on community collaboration and input. 

Finding a Path Forward 

While county governments have relatively limited authority in Wisconsin, Dane County’s Kuntz says there’s still room for offices like hers to help move the conversation around climate action forward. She points toward the county’s Climate Champions program, which highlights success stories around Dane County. The geothermal system that heats Epic System’s campus is the largest in the country; the Oregon School District boasts the first net-zero energy school in the state; Zoe’s Pizzeria in Waunakee delivers all of its pizzas via electric car.  

“There’s sort of a core to the sensible way to use resources and to think about the impact you make that I think is really baked into Midwestern DNA in a lot of ways,” Kuntz says. “So, part of this is reconnecting with some of that and going, well wait, this is just about being responsible the way that we all intended to be responsible.” 

Each measure on its own isn’t enough to bring an end to the crisis, but together they help build a larger narrative around shifting away from fossil fuels and practices that endanger our collective future — and we need to see it. 

Wisconsin serves as a great example of what organized efforts can accomplish with a bit of foresight. Robbins says efforts by environmental leaders like Leopold are why many of us are able to enjoy the outdoor spaces we know and love today. Leopold’s work to restore the natural prairies and grasslands native to southern Wisconsin, which were all but destroyed as more people moved to the state in the 19th century, is the reason we still have places like the UW Arboretum. 

“Somebody ought to thank Wisconsin for stepping up and being the transformative, visionary land manager that made a sustainable future possible,” Robbins says. “You live in somebody else’s sustainable future, because the land did not look like this in 1933.” 

Ongoing research at UW–Madison, continued pushes for legislation addressing climate change and environmental issues, and support from local leaders like Kuntz have opened up opportunities for young organizers to start conversations with people around the county and state about the work that’s still left to do. 

That, Denduluri says, helps inspire more people to get involved, even if they’re unfamiliar with the scope of the issues at hand. 

“There’s a lot of people out there who are like, ‘Oh, I’m just not interested in the environment. I’m not interested in going to these conferences and learning,’ ” Denduluri says. “And in a way, it’s your choice, but at the same time, this is our world and every single choice we make has an impact.” 

Salgado Altamirano agrees. All it takes to move the needle is sparking more people’s curiosity about the world around them. 

“You don’t have to know all about climate justice, know all the jargon,” Salgado Altamirano says. “All you have to do is have the willingness to want to be curious, learn more, and really be out there and be bold about it.” 

An Early Success

One success story that took root around the same time as Earth Day’s founding was a statewide (and later nationwide) ban of DDT, a toxic chemical that had been used for years to kill mosquitos and other insects. In Wisconsin, it all started in 1960 with Village of Bayfield resident Lorrie Otto, who noticed something disturbing while tending to her yard: Birds of all kinds kept showing up dead without much explanation. The cause: DDT, which was being used by local governments (including Madison’s) to eradicate unwanted pests in thousands of spraying campaigns nationwide.

Spurred by this, Otto took action to protect her lawn, and helped spearhead the adoption of natural landscaping. Environmentalists have supported this practice in an effort to maintain biological diversity, which sustains the delicate balance within the Earth’s ecosystem. Traditional lawns — characterized by short-cut grass and sometimes other non-native plants — became popular in the 1950s, when many cities adopted this kind of lawn care for vanity reasons. Manicured lawns became commonplace especially within urban and suburban environments due to developmental sprawl. But look around nearly any neighborhood in Madison now and you’ll likely see at least a few natural lawns.

Otto’s insistence on maintaining a natural lawn, which she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel she did in part to create “an enchanting place for [her] children to play,” eventually led to conflicts with Village of Bayfield leadership, who claimed Otto’s yard was overrun with weeds. A back-and-forth continued for a while, with the village at one point mowing part of Otto’s yard. The village would later pay Otto a settlement for having done so.

When pushes for action on DDT at the village level didn’t move far, Otto eventually took her fight to the state level, asking the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to rule on whether DDT fit the state’s definition of a pollutant.

Energized in part by the national conversations about the potential harms of pesticides like DDT raised in Rachel Carson’s 1962 seminal book “Silent Spring”, Otto and others who opposed toxic chemicals made their arguments in early 1970, helping to showcase the scope of DDT’s negative effects.

In March 1970, shortly after the DNR hearings, state lawmakers banned DDT statewide, becoming the second state to do so (Michigan was the first). Just two years later, the Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT on the national level. Today, a movement called “No Mow May” encourages people to avoid cutting their lawn for the month of May to protect pollinators.

The late 1960s and early 1970s — which also saw the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (1970), major amendments to the Clean Air Act (1970), and the passing of the Clean Water Act (1972) and the Endangered Species Act (1973) — are now often seen as the dawn of the modern environmental movement. Wisconsinites helped usher in that new era.

Logan Rude is a contributing writer and former editorial intern at Madison Magazine who now works for Clean Wisconsin.

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