Xiye Bastida

Xiye Bastida, Climate activist on the urgency of her work. When I gave the closing speech at the World Leaders Summit at COP26 last year, most of the world leaders had already left. Standing backstage beforehand, I’d heard Prime Minister Modi of India and various heads of state speak and thought, ‘This is it, next they’re going to be listening to me.’ After an announcement that an Indigenous Mexican youth activist was giving the closing speech, I went on stage and the room was practically empty. I understand they all have busy schedules, but not staying three minutes to hear the voice of the next generation was startling to me. I still gave the speech as if the room was full, because it’s stories like mine that move people to act.

At President Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate last April, 40 virtual squares pop up on a screen, showing an array of presidents and prime ministers flanked by brightly colored flags. The focus shifts as each leader delivers the technical language of energy transitions and emissions targets mixed with universalist platitudes. There’s a dissonance to the proceedings: warnings of blood-chilling disasters—fires, floods, drought and crop failure, ecosystem collapse—delivered with globalist detachment. Then, halfway through the presentation, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken introduces a teen climate activist. Like everyone else, she is straight-faced. But her words vibrate with anger, fear, desperation. She tells the leaders that they are in denial. They’re talking about cutting back on coal and gas and oil. “You need to accept that the era of fossil fuels is over,” she says. Then she makes her most searing indictment. “The people here are mostly from the Global North,” she tells the leaders. “The systems that uphold the climate crisis rely on the existence of sacrifice zones.” She means that wealthy nations have picked out certain groups to bear the consequences of their pollution: poor countries in the Southern Hemisphere, Black and brown neighborhoods in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

Saturday morning at the Teen Vogue Summit in Los Angeles featured a panel on climate justice, moderated by Teen Vogue’s Politics Director, Allegra Kirkland. The panel included three young climate activists: Xiye Bastida, co-founder of the Re-Earth Initiative, Isra Hirsi, organizer and co-founder of U.S. Youth Climate Strike, and Leah Thomas, founder of Intersectional Environmentalist.

This is an excerpt from "Stone Soup for a Sustainable World: Life-Changing Stories of Young Heroes" by Marianne Larned, available on Amazon and Target. Xiye Bastida is a featured keynote speaker at VERGE 21. As a child, Xiye Bastida had learned from her father's indigenous Otemi-Toltec culture to respect the...

Xiye Bastida already knows what it means to have her life forever altered by the effects of climate change. The 19-year-old climate activist grew up in San Pedro Tultepec, Mexico, where unprecedented rainfall caused flooding that kept her from attending school. When she moved to New York City in 2015, she saw the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy and knew that the climate crisis was happening everywhere.

This article was translated from our Spanish edition using AI technologies. Errors may exist due to this process. This story originally appeared on México Desconocido. Xiye Bastida, 19 years old and originally from Mexico, caught the eye of the world for her speech during the recent Climate Summit. "Excellencies, President...

A teenage activist has been lauded for her powerful speech at the White House summit on Thursday, where she told global leaders that the climate crisis was the results of actions of powerful people like them. Xiye Bastida, a Mexican-born, 19-year-old student, was introduced by US Secretary of State Antony...

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Mr. President, thank you very much. And now it’s a true pleasure and honor to introduce another leader: climate activist Xiye Bastida. Xiye grew up in the town of San Pedro Tultepec, in Mexico. She’s a member of the Otomi-Toltec Nation. She’s experienced first-hand the devastating impact of climate crisis.

What kind of cities do we want to live in? What do we believe is important for a good life? And what makes a good home for all of us? SPACE10 with gestalten have teamed up to gather insights from world-renowned experts to explore a better urban future for humanity. Compiled in a book entitled The Ideal City, the findings draw five core principles: The city of tomorrow should be resourceful, accessible, shared, safe, and desirable.