Rising Up In Defense of Earth

FEATURING EMMY SCOTT - Our nation and our world are overrun by billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, you’ll hear conversations with changemakers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week on Rising Up for Justice, Emmy Scott is my guest. She is Executive Director of Earth Guardians, a global organization powering young leaders to catalyze resources for resilient climate solutions. Emmy was recognized as the WWF 2025 Youth Conservation Leader of the Year. She spoke with me about the work her organization does all over the world and in North America.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Can you begin by telling us more about Earth Guardians. I explained climate solutions as a big part of it, but this is a youth-led organization. What exactly is Earth Guardians? What are your main goals? 

Emmy Scott: Yes, we're a 501 [c] [3] that works internationally, and we are youth-led, but we are for the youth as well. So we are powering youth-led, place-based solutions across 40-plus countries with a network of over 1,000 students. And we're giving them the tools to be able to make change happen in the communities that they know are important for their livelihoods, for their contribution, the way that they can uniquely contribute to the environmental movement. 

And so we act as an on-ramp, but also an ongoing ecosystem for people to find their place within this movement. And why specifically young people? Why are young people so important to this issue of climate? Yes, young people, Gen Z in particular, is one of the largest generations to have ever existed, honestly, in history. A lot of studies show that. 

And so it's really important that we're engaging young people, but Gen Z in particular, because our influence is massive politically, economically, culturally. And so young people being the driving force of the future, being the inheritors of the future, is why we are targeting young people and focused on young people. Indigenous young people especially, and young people of color, this is also a focus.