Fighting for Her Future.

• Date: 22 June 2020
• Author: Kwoka, Bethany
• Published date: 22 June 2020
• Author: Kwoka, Bethany

IF SHE WEREN'T A CLIMATE ACTIVIST, 22-YEAR-OLD ANIA WRIGHT WOULD BE STUDYING AGRICULTURE AND TRYING TO START HER OWN FARM. "Maybe I'll do it in the future," she says. "But for now, I have other things."

Those "other things" include planning climate actions in her Maine college town and sitting on Governor Janet Mills' Climate Council to help decide the future of climate policy in the state. She's also attended two United Nations climate conferences, most recently last fall in Madrid. In fact, she's between events at the conference when we first connect to talk about her work helping her home state establish a strong climate law--only the third of its kind in New England.

Every state in the region has a goal to reduce its carbon pollution, but only Massachusetts, Connecticut, and now Maine have binding laws that mandate these cuts. These laws, which CLF is working to pass in every New England state, take a holistic approach to decarbonization--the process of getting dirty fuels like oil and gas out of our lives and our economy.

"Binding laws drive a process to figure out how to achieve the emissions cuts we need," says CLF Senior Attorney Emily Green. She helped lead the push to pass Maine's law last year and now sits on a working group for the Climate Council. "But that process must also be inclusive. We want to make sure that we're hearing from different people in Maine and not just the usual suspects."

That's where Wright comes in. By the time she was 20, Wright had already seen the fate of future generations ignored when politicians...