This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.

Ever since I was evacuated on a raft from my home in the pouring rain during Hurricane Harvey, I have cared about climate action. When I was 15, I learned that climate change intensified the Category Four hurricane that decimated Houston, Texas in 2017. That same year, I joined the Jewish Youth Climate Movement as a climate activist.

Now, amid my regular high school activities, I devote several hours a week to writing about climate change, and planning and attending actions demanding a better future for me, future generations and the world.

Throughout my activism, I have watched, with increasing anxiety, the climate clock tick and the world experience more and more climate change-fueled disasters. More recently, I have seen extreme hypocrisy from the federal government and major companies that backtrack on promises to lower emissions and fight the climate crisis. These decisions all but confirm that the choking wildfire smoke I face in my new home in Denver will get worse and that my activism has not been enough to single-handedly stop the crisis.

This climate neglect by the current administration starkly contrasts with the start of my activism during the Biden administration. During his term, climate change was acknowledged (a low threshold), and combating it was even one of the administration’s goals, eventually leading to the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act, an imperfect but historically large climate spending bill.

The hope that this bill instilled in youth activists is now being undone by historic levels of climate denial, gutting clean energy initiatives and research and new federal investment in fossil........

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