Dear readers,
This is your Editor in Chief, Zara Miller, welcoming you to Saplings. In an age of constant change, I decided to found this youth-led newspaper, a platform that hopes to commensurate with the story of climate change and its profound impact on humanity and the planet.
I believe that we are all in this together. There’s no hiding place in the face of climate change, and I’ve slowly noticed the ways our planet is changing. I see changes when my city builds new parking lots over vital wetland ecosystems. When urban heat islands negatively impact marginalized communities. When NASA stated 2020 tied 2016 as the hottest year on record. When there are now a total of 41,415 species on the IUCN Red List. When climate change may be irreversible by 2030. The environmental crisis is one of overconsumption, carbon emissions, and corporate greed. But it’s also a crisis of miscommunication. For too long, hard data buried environmentalists in an echo-chamber, but in 2023, I hope storytelling will finally enable a united global response to the environmental crisis.
So how can one newspaper make a difference? Well, it can’t. Not really. Not unless enough people are pleading for change that everyone else has to perk up their ears and listen. As Malala Yousafzai stated while addressing the United Nations in 2013,
“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”
I hope you choose to pick up your pen, join Team Saplings, and tell your story because emotion resonance, not cold statistics, will bring home the scale of the climate crisis—and the need for action.
