Character Profiles

There are infinite ways a person can be connected to the climate crisis—so many that it would be impossible to catalog them. Luckily, nobody wants an exhaustive catalog. Instead, they want living, breathing characters. So what follows are snapshots of people who are in some way connected to the movement or impacted by this chaos. Some are based on existing people, some are fictionalized or aggregated, but all are rooted in the stark psychological realities of how the climate crisis is showing up in people’s lives.

We also encourage you to look to real-life people doing this wild work. In our Library of Experts, we highlight a whole bunch of real humans who also happen to be amazing characters. Check out Dr. Sarah Myhre, a climate scientist dealing with sexual violence and exploring gender expression, or Sharon Lavigne, a special-ed teacher who is fighting the fight in Cancer Alley. Maybe dig into Rania Batrice, first-gen Palestinian from West Texas pushing the Green New Deal, or Favianna Rodriguez, a Latinx artist calling out the racist systems that keep Oakland polluted.

But before we get to those real-life heroes, we hope the fictional profiles that follow spark some ideas, and maybe even breathe life into some characters for your own stories.