The World We Saved

By Haley Todd Newsome

Published January 11, 2024

Hilda’s going-away party is bittersweet. I can’t believe we’ve been neighbors for so long, and now we just… won’t be anymore. But I also can’t believe that she’s going home after all these years.

Decades ago, Hilda’s family left their farm in Kenya. They had lovingly cultivated the land for generations, but after five straight years of drought, a wildfire devoured their home, their village and all that dry land surrounding it. After they left, Hilda suffered violence in the refugee camp. Her family and community pooled all their money to help her come to the United States.

When she got here, she was lucky enough to win asylum, based on what she had endured in the camp. The asylum system was still largely based on luck back then. Once she got lawful status, she became the fiercest advocate I’ve ever seen.

I got to know Hilda during her first congressional campaign. After she made it to the House, she sponsored a bill for humanitarian immigration protections for climate displaced people—those who had been forced to leave their homes due to the effects of climate change, just like Hilda. It modified existing pathways to the U.S., like humanitarian parole and the refugee resettlement process, while also creating a brand new pathway specifically for climate migrants. We both wept when it passed. It has protected over five million people now.

Ten years ago, Hilda’s niece got money through the United Nations fund to restore their village. The restoration project was long and difficult, but she was armed with both generational knowledge and a climate science degree. She spearheaded the reconstruction of their village. Now that the global temperature is starting to stabilize, rains are slowly becoming more consistent. The farmland is fertile. Hilda is going home. 

Even though I’m going to miss her deeply, I’m ecstatic that she’ll be reunited with her family and her land. We’re throwing this party to say goodbye and to celebrate how far we’ve come.

Ashley walks in the door, beaming her contagious smile. She works in marketing. She also has helped with a couple of Hilda’s campaigns. Unlike many of us, she’s never worked full-time in anything environmental or climate-related. For most of her career, she’s worked at makeup companies.

But when consumers started wanting “greener” products and those companies started catching on, Ashley made sure none of their marketing was greenwashing. She fought against convincing customers that the company’s products were environmentally friendly when they weren’t. One time, she called me in a rage after discovering that someone on her team had promoted a lipstick with “all-natural ingredients,” when it was actually full of PFAs. She helped the companies transition to less polluting, less toxic alternatives. And then, in her free time, she offered her marketing expertise to the climate movement. Some of her campaigns were sheer genius.

Ashley did what she could with what she had. She didn’t quit her full-time job and become a climate organizer; she advocated within her job and helped the climate movement when she could. She wasn’t paralyzed by what she couldn’t do—she just did her part. Sure, we needed full-time organizers and advocates, but that was always going to be just a few. What we really needed were millions, billions to play their own smaller role. Oceans are made of drops, after all. People like Ashley got us where we are today.

Tom leans on his daughter’s arm as he walks in. Caroline lives with him because he has a hard time getting around nowadays. I’m glad he made it to the party, and I know Hilda is too. He pours himself a generous glass of red wine and sits back in a comfy chair, sly smile on his face.

In 2023, Tom worked at ExxonMobil in mid-level management, although he refuses to say what department. On her 18th birthday, Caroline came downstairs and announced that she was moving in with friends. She looked her father in the eyes and told him that he was responsible for destroying the planet and she never wanted to speak to him again. She walked out the door without a second glance.

After two months without his daughter, Tom quit ExxonMobil. Of course he did. But he didn’t stop there. He urged his former coworkers to think about their families and put in their two-weeks notice. Eventually, he convinced so many people to join him that they had enough to found a clean energy company hellbent on beating fossil fuels at their own game. They knew all the insider tips and used them against the carbon majors. They won a lot of lawsuits. They enjoyed a few miracles along the way. A lot of other stuff happened, of course—legislation, international agreements, social movements. But Tom and his company transformed the energy infrastructure in our state, provided well-paying, less dangerous jobs to former coal miners and oil rig mechanics, and paved the way for a just transition to clean energy.

Now my house is solar-powered, Tom’s house is solar-powered, the whole street is solar-powered. Tom was one of the many, many dominoes in the chain that knocked down Exxon, and Chevron, and Shell. His daughter, a passionate activist, holds his arm today, laughing at his jokes and bringing him another glass of wine.

Emma, who never arrives without food in hand, brings fresh tomatoes from her garden. She’s led our community in regenerative agriculture, from community gardens to local farms, for decades. She joins me in the kitchen, chops up the tomatoes, and adds them to the salad.

At this point, it’s almost hard to believe that tomatoes like these used to come in plastic containers. It’s been so long since I tossed a piece of plastic into a trash bag made of plastic in a trash can made of plastic. When Emma opens my fridge to grab the salad dressing, it’s homemade, in a mason jar that we reuse over and over again. I have time to make my own salad dressing, now that the standard for full-time work is 5-6 hour days. Some of the food used is in recyclable containers that actually get recycled, here on U.S. soil. I remember how much it pissed me off every time I threw a plastic spinach container into my blue recycling bin, knowing that it wouldn’t really be recycled because we didn’t have enough domestic recycling infrastructure. Some of the food is in glass jars. Some is fresh from the local farmers’ market, wrapped in cloth bags. Some is straight from Emma’s backyard. So many puzzle pieces came together so that the food in my fridge isn’t contributing to pollution, emissions, or humanity’s demise. Emma was one of those puzzle pieces. The tomatoes from her garden are perfectly ripe.

Palmer brings his three kids, and everything gets noisier, crazier, and infinitely more fun. Little Andy is slightly obsessed with Tom, who grunts when the toddler climbs up on his lap. Brianna and Russ want to feel grown-up, even though they’re ten, so they offer to help in the kitchen. They each hold the wooden spoons for about five seconds before popping a squat on the counter stools and snacking on chips. They’ll never know what it was like. The 2020s, when we felt so powerless against corporate greed and an inept Congress. When we reached tipping points that we’ll never come back from. When wildfires, heat waves, floods, and hurricanes devastated cities, states, even whole countries. When, if we were being honest, we were scared as hell. When we fought like hell. The 2030s, when the fighting finally started to pay off. When we elected more climate-forward leaders. When those leaders passed climate-forward legislation. When fossil fuel companies were finally held accountable. When we started to turn things around. The 2040s, when things kept turning. When emissions started decreasing. When we reached net zero. When we won.

There are some species Palmer’s kids will never see, because they went extinct—sea turtles, monarch butterflies, blue whales. There are some wild places Palmer’s kids will never experience, because they were destroyed—so many coral reefs, the national forests that burnt to a crisp, most of Antarctica. There are so many people Palmer’s kids will never meet, because they lost their lives in wildfires, heat waves, droughts, floods, and more. Some things, we can never come back from.

But Palmer’s kids will also never experience the terror of the temperatures rising and rising and rising. They won’t have to sacrifice their dreams to fight for a livable planet. They won’t beg and plead and scream for elected leaders to just do something. They won’t feel like their lives are in the hands of fossil fuel companies. They’re growing up in a sustainable world—they’re not headed for an inevitable crash and burn. They’re living in the days of climate justice, and it was worth every ounce of fight and more.

While I have my back turned to rearrange pans in the oven, Brianna wiggles her way into my closet and grabs one of my blazers. She wears it around the house and pretends to be an attorney. Palmer starts to tell her to put it back, but I indulge her. She dissolves into a giggle fit when I call her “counsel” in a silly voice. Russ bangs a fork on the counter like a gavel. When Brianna objects to “Russ being annoying,” we all laugh.

It seemed too optimistic at the time, but it was obviously possible, because it happened. Tonight, I enjoy time with my friends and give Hilda an extra hug. This is the world we saved.