These Are The Things Teens Will Miss If Climate Change Destroys Earth

“Everything. I’m only 17, I haven’t lived. It’s scary.”

Around the world, millions of people — a lot of them young students — took to the streets to demand action against climate change ahead of Saturday’s first-ever UN Youth Climate Summit in New York City.

In New York, students skipped school by the thousands to make their way to Manhattan’s Foley Square, where Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist and founder of main organizing group #FridaysForFuture, led an enormous march down Broadway to Battery Park. In clever signs and deafening chants, crowds made themselves very clear — the Earth as it exists now is dying, and if nothing changes, it will be too late to do anything about it.

BuzzFeed News sent photographers Erin Lefevre and Avery White to meet some of the teens and ask them a simple question that cuts to heart of why they march: “What will you miss about Earth when it’s too far gone to be saved?”

Kristina Dang, 17, from the Bronx

Avery Tsai, 9, from Brooklyn

Emily Lee, 16, from Brooklyn

Artemisa Xakriabá, 19, from Minas Gerais, Brazil

Melanie Franco, 17, from Queens

Sumaya Khatari, 13, from Brooklyn

George Kelly, 17, from the Bronx

Lenina Subhas, 9, from Queens

Hendrix Honig, 8, from Brooklyn

Aquinnah Lane Thurlow, 13, from Hoboken, New Jersey

Natalie De La Cruz, 17, from Manhattan

Jeanne Bransbourg, 16, from Brooklyn

Olivia Wohlgemuth, 17, from Brooklyn

Kelvin Cortez, 16, from Queens

Angus Parkhill, 14, from Brooklyn

Gloria Juela, 14, from Queens

Lou Ramdani, 13, from Lyon, France

Stella Hamlin, 11, from New York City




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