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Climate Basics for Kids from Center for Climate and Energy Solutions

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Climate Basics for Kids from Center for Climate and Energy Solutions

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This page will help you understand the science behind climate change, the impacts of a changing climate, and how you can help slow climate change and prepare for it. We've also created a list of resources and activities for educators and students of all ages.

The Science

Science paints a clear picture: Climate change is happening; it is caused mostly by humans; and it creates many serious and damaging effects. The primary cause of climate change is human activities - like driving cars, creating electricity, and cutting down forests - not natural changes in the climate. These human activities release gases into the atmosphere called greenhouse gases, which slowly warm the planet, creating climate change.

The climate is very complex, and there are still some things we don't know about it. But through centuries of studies and experiments, we've been able to create a strong understanding of how the system works, and how humans are changing it.

The Greenhouse Effect

Imagine a greenhouse made of glass used to grow plants, like flowers and vegetables. The greenhouse keeps the plants inside warm even when it's cold outside because it traps heat from the sun. The earth's atmosphere acts like a greenhouse: When light from the sun passes through the atmosphere, some of it is absorbed by the Earth's surface to heat it, but some heat is also trapped in our atmosphere by certain gases. These heat-trapping gases are called greenhouse gases, and they act like a blanket, keeping the earth warm. This greenhouse effect is a natural process that makes the planet comfortable to live.

But human activities are increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. One type of greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, has reached a level in our atmosphere that the Earth hasn't seen for more than 400,000 years! Plants, soils, and the ocean can absorb carbon dioxide, but they can't keep up with all the extra greenhouse gases that we have been releasing. And some greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for a long time, from hundreds to even thousands of years. All these gases are making things hotter than natural, so we need to stop producing them to avoid climate change.

Weather vs. Climate

Weather refers to the state of the atmosphere in a short period of time, like minutes or days. It includes lots of things we are familiar with, like temperature, humidity, precipitation, and wind speeds. The weather changes every day, but the climate is much more consistent because it measures the patterns of weather over long periods of time (at least several decades). Let's say you were going to visit Florida for a few days in June. You would expect it to be hot and humid, because that's what the climate of Florida is usually like in June. It might turn out to be hot during your trip, or it could rain or be cloudy. All of those are examples of possible weather during those days.

The Greenhouse Effect Explained

Where do greenhouse gases come from?

Up until about 150 years ago, humans did not produce many greenhouse gases. That changed as the human population grew, we cut down forests to make way for cities and farms, and important inventions and technology, like in-home electricity and cars, transformed the way we live.

These inventions and technologies need energy. Some types of energy called fossil fuels - like coal, oil, and natural gas - have become important sources of that energy. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We call the release of these gases emissions.

Today in the United States, electricity and transportation (cars, trucks, and planes) are responsible for almost 60 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. The rest comes from agriculture, industry - such as factories that make products we use - and from energy we use in our homes and businesses.
Learn more about U.S. greenhouse gas emissions here.
Greenhouse Gases

The most common types of greenhouse gases are:

Carbon Dioxide (CO ₂): Carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas created by human activities. It makes up 80 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Most carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere when fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) are burned for electricity and transportation, and because of other processes like making cement. Carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and stored when it is absorbed by plants, soils, animals, and the ocean as part of the carbon cycle.
Learn more about how energy emissions are controlled in the United States.

Methane (CH ₄): Methane is the next most common greenhouse gas emitted by human activities. It makes up 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Most methane emissions come from raising livestock (like cows), but methane is also released when coal, natural gas, and oil are produced and transported, and when organic waste (like food) decays in landfills. Methane is a stronger gas than carbon dioxide, meaning it creates more warming, but it stays in the atmosphere for a shorter time.
Learn more about how industrial greenhouse gases like methane are controlled in the United States.

Nitrous Oxide (N ₂ O): Most nitrous oxide is emitted by agricultural activities, like applying fertilizer, but it also comes from industrial activities, burning fossil fuels, and other sources. It makes up 6 percent of U.S. greenhouse emissions. Nitrous oxide is even more powerful than methane and carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere.

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), Perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6): Try saying these gases three times fast! They're called "fluorinated gases" for short. These gases combined make up only 3 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. That may sound small, but they are very important to solving climate change because they stay in the atmosphere for a very long time (sometimes for thousands of years!) and are much more powerful warmers than all other gases. These gases are made by humans and are used to cool our refrigerators, freezers, buildings and cars.

U.S. Greenhouse Gases by Gas Type and Sector, 2021

Impacts of a Changing Climate

Because of increases in greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures are rising. Each of the past four decades has been warmer than the previous one. 2016 and 2020 were the warmest years on record, and the six warmest years have all been since 2010.
Learn more about the relationship between extreme weather and climate change.
The following charts show how emissions and temperatures have gone up since 1900, and how they could continue to change in the future. If we continue to emit more and more greenhouse gases, the temperature of the Earth will rise a lot - maybe as much as 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. Even if we reduce our emissions right now, the temperature of the Earth will still rise slightly, but we might be able to keep the rise below 2 degrees Celsius (or about 4.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Two degrees might not sound like much, but scientists agree that even that small amount of warming can have large impacts on humans and the environment.

Past and Projected Changes in Carbon Emissions and Temperature

Rising global temperatures affect many things, like extreme weather, human health, food supply, and ecosystems. These impacts are already being felt today, and groups like the poor, elderly, and others are especially vulnerable.
Impacts of climate change include:

Heat waves. Heat waves are long periods of time with temperatures that are hotter than normal. As the Earth warms, more areas will be at risk for hotter and more common extreme heat waves. Learn more about the link between climate change and extreme heat.

Heavy precipitation and storms. Heavy precipitation - like rain or snow - is becoming more common in many locations, which can lead to flooding and other dangerous weather. As seas warm, coastal storms like hurricanes are also becoming more frequent and damaging. Learn more about the link between climate change and heavy precipitation and hurricanes.

Sea level rise. Sea levels have risen about 8 inches since 1880 because glaciers and ice sheets are melting and seas are warming. Scientists predict that, with 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, sea levels could rise by as much as 1.8 feet this century, which would harm communities living on islands and near coasts. These rises could be even higher if glaciers in Greenland or Antarctica melt very quickly.

Threats to habitats and animals. Warming temperatures, rising seas, melting ice, and other impacts of climate change can threaten the habitat of many plants and animals. Some species are moving to new habitats, but others may struggle to adapt and become endangered or extinct.

Ocean acidification. Extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans, making them more acidic. This can make it difficult for corals and organisms that form shells to survive, which can create problems in the food chain for other sea animals.

Wildfires. These are fires that burn large amounts of forests and brush. When they are not controlled, wildfires can destroy homes and be deadly. The number of large wildfires and the length of the season when they're most likely and threatening have been increasing in recent years. Find out how climate change will worsen wildfire conditions.

Drought. A drought is a period with little rain and not enough water. Global warming will increase the risk of drought in some places and make it harder to grow food. Learn about the links between climate change and drought.

How can you help?

Even though climate change sounds scary, we still have time to avoid some of the worst impacts. Everyone can play a part, including government, businesses, and you.

There are two main things we need to do:

The first is to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change. By choosing cleaner ways to power our homes, offices, and cars, and being more efficient and less wasteful, we can produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

There are lot of things you can do to help, like turning off the lights when you leave a room to reduce the electricity you use, walking or biking where you can, or planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide. If you do any of these things, make sure you communicate with other people (like your family, teachers, and friends) about why you're doing them! Communication can inspire more people to change their habits and help save the climate.

Look for more ideas on what we can do together and individually.

The second is to prepare for life in a changing climate. Even if we could stop creating greenhouse gases tomorrow, the climate would still change some because of our past emissions. So we need to make sure our buildings, roads, businesses, and communities are ready for the climate changes that we can't avoid. This includes things like helping cities on the coast prepare for floods, preventing wildfires in our forests, and more.

Learn how communities and companies are preparing.

The power of YOUth

Around the world, young people are learning about climate change and taking action. In fact, young people are some of the most important voices in the climate movement because you can inspire powerful people to create a better future for you.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist or a politician to make a difference in the fight against climate change. Whatever your talents are, there's a role for you to play. Some young people, like Greta Thunberg, Vanessa Nakate, and others, are leading the Fridays for Future movement to tell their governments to create strong policies to fight climate change. Other students are inventing new technologies to cut emissions and reduce waste. And others are using their creativity to bring awareness to climate change by writing music and creating art.

You can also look for ways to get involved in your community - maybe you can help your school set up a composting program to keep food waste out of the landfill. Maybe your synagogue or mosque needs help switching to energy efficient lights. Maybe you can write a letter to your local government to encourage your community to prepare for extreme weather or wildfires. Everyone can do something to fight climate change.

Check out our Educator Resources page for activities you can do to learn more about how climate change works and how you can be a part of the solution.
C2ES thanks the Alcoa Foundation for its support, which allowed us to develop our Climate Classroom content. As a fully independent organization, C2ES is solely responsible for its positions, programs, and publications.

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This page will help you understand the science behind climate change, the impacts of a changing climate, and how you can help slow climate change and prepare for it. We've also created a list of resources and activities for educators and students of all ages.

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What Is Climate Change? Everything You Need to Know About Global Warming from Teen Vogue

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What Is Climate Change? Everything You Need to Know About Global Warming from Teen Vogue

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Everything You Need to Know About Climate Change

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Like what the “greenhouse effect” actually is.

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Climate Science, Explained in 10 Graphics from World Resources Institute

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Climate Science, Explained in 10 Graphics from World Resources Institute

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Climate Science, Explained in 10 Graphics

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Thousands of people are expected to attend this weekend’s People’s Climate Movement march. It’s a good moment to reflect on the facts—what we know about climate change today, and what impacts we can expect in the future.

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Climate Change 101 with Bill Nye from National Geographic

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Climate Change 101 with Bill Nye from National Geographic

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In the new video above, Bill Nye the Science Guy explains why climate change is much more than a buzzword. "It's a real and serious issue," he says.

In fact, the world's leaders are debating what to do about it this week in Paris. It's true Earth's climate has changed through time naturally due to slight changes in the planet's orbit, Nye notes, "but climate change as we know it today is characterized by an abrupt increase in the Earth's temperature."

That's 1.2 to 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer over the past century. Ten of the last 13 years were the warmest on record (including this year, according to a recent report). And 97 percent of climate scientists think this warming has been caused by human activity, Nye says.

"That means you, and me," he says, thanks to all the things we do that result in more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Those gases keep more of the sun's heat trapped near the surface, resulting in rising temperatures, a warming ocean, rising sea levels, and more natural disasters.

Although the effects of climate change are threatening, "scientists still believe there are things we can do on a personal level to help," says Nye. Those strategies include recycling and reusing things, walking and using public transit, turning off unused appliances, and eating less meat.

"When it comes to climate change, the main takeaway is it's real," says Nye. "And although we are part of the problem, we can also be part of the solution."

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Bill Nye Tells You What You Need to Know About Climate Change

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The Science Guy says it's not too late to avoid the most serious effects of global warming.

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The world struck a major climate deal in Poland. So, what’s in it? From Public Radio International

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The world struck a major climate deal in Poland. So, what’s in it? From Public Radio International

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By the time the final meeting of this year's global climate summit was gaveled into session in Katowice, Poland, it was past 9 p.m. on Saturday. Exhausted negotiators were more than 24 hours past their deadline, and workmen were already starting to disassemble the conference venue around them.

But Michał Kurtyka, the Polish official presiding over the meeting, told delegates it was worth it.

"You have worked on this package for three years," he said. "Every single step forward is a big achievement. And through this package, you have made a thousand little steps forward, together. You can feel proud."

Soon after, nearly 200 countries unanimously agreed to new rules governing international action on global warming - and kept alive an international effort to combat climate change that has often seemed on rocky ground.

The accord is a follow-up to the breakthrough 2015 Paris Agreement, in which countries committed to keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. The "rule book" adopted in Katowice sets out how countries should measure their greenhouse gas emissions, report on emissions cuts and hold each other accountable.

"The rule book puts meat on the bones of Paris, enabling it to operate," said Sue Biniaz, who was the state department's top lawyer on climate change for decades and helped draft the Paris Agreement. "It would have been hard to imagine this extensive a rule book a few short months ago."

That's in part because of the political backdrop. President Donald Trump has said he will pull the US out of the agreement as soon as he can, in 2020, and delegates worry that Brazil's new president could follow the US out the door. Meanwhile, key members of the European Union, including the UK, Germany and France are distracted by politics at home. And the US and China, who together drove the Paris Agreement, are in a standoff over trade.

Related: US a wild card as climate negotiators race to meet Friday deadline

"Who would have thought five years ago that you would have China, the US, Brazil and Europe all committing to a binding set of rules?" said Jennifer Morgan, the head of Greenpeace International.

But for Morgan and many others, the agreement in Katowice did not go far enough. Advocates pointed out that pledges made by countries so far won't cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. Morgan said it was a major failure that the final agreement didn't include a strong commitment that countries would increase their ambitions as fast as the current science indicates is necessary to avoid the worst warming.

"A rule book alone is not going to get us there," Morgan said. "We have a climate emergency right now. And I expect leaders to take that seriously and go beyond their comfort zones to stand up for the most vulnerable in their own countries and around the world."

What's in it?

Under the Paris Agreement, countries must set a goal for cutting greenhouse gas emissions - and then every five years, they must report on what they've achieved, compare global progress to the overall goals of the Paris Agreement and make new pledges to reduce emissions even more.

The agreement was designed to ratchet up emissions cuts over time. But that process only works if countries can hold each other accountable, said Camilla Born, of the climate think tank E3G.

The Katowice package sets that framework, creating standards for reporting emissions. The agreement also includes transparency guidelines so that countries can verify each other's progress - guidelines that the US and China were credited with jointly negotiating.

It also solved one of the long-running points of contention in climate talks by ensuring that all countries - developed and developing countries alike - will eventually face the same reporting standards. China and developing nations had resisted a common standard for years, arguing that it was unfair to hold them to standards they might not have the capacity to meet.

"The fact that we have one set of rules is really important," Born said, adding that it lets countries essentially compare apples to apples.

The agreement also includes a process for rich countries to increase the amount of money they will pay to help poorer countries adapt to climate change. Developing countries say current commitments are still nowhere near enough, but Born said it's a start.

"They'll provide greater clarity and predictability on that finance," Born said. "What that means is developing countries can plan to deliver climate action with the certainty that money will come and help them do that."

What's not in it?

Many countries were infuriated when the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait blocked language "welcoming" a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that concluded the world must limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or face catastrophic impacts. Ultimately, the final agreement included weaker language, welcoming the "timely completion" of the report.

Speaking for a coalition of the world's least developed countries, Ethiopia's representative said the US and its allies were seeking to undermine science that indicates more ambitious action is needed.

"It is unfathomable that while women, men and children all over the world suffer at the hands of climate change, a small handful of parties refused to welcome the science that confirms the devastation we are already experiencing in our countries," he said.

The final agreement also postponed key decisions on how to set up markets for trading international carbon credits after Brazil demanded changes that other nations argued would create accounting loopholes.

"No rules are better than bad rules, and that's what we went with," said E3G's Born.

What's next?

The next big milestone will come in September 2019. That's when UN Secretary-General António Guterres plans to convene a meeting rallying countries to step up their targets under the Paris Agreement. Advocates hope countries will announce more ambitious pledges at the meeting.

In a statement read by UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa, Guterres told delegates, "Climate change is still running faster than us."

Having agreed to the rule book, Guterres wrote, countries must turn their attention to redoubling their efforts: "From now on, my five priorities will be: ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition."

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The world struck a major climate deal in Poland. So, what's in it?

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Negotiators created rules to help the world meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. But the UN climate chief still told the delegation, "Climate change is still running faster than us."

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Not all environmentalists eat tofu: the hunters fighting climate change from the Guardian

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Not all environmentalists eat tofu: the hunters fighting climate change from the Guardian

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I first read about Bald Knob, Arkansas, in 2010, after thousands of poisoned blackbirds dropped dead from the sky in nearby Beebe. On first look, Bald Knob has an unsettling aesthetic: a sparsely populated town, a bygone agricultural zone with toppled silos, old trailers, taxidermy businesses, boarded-up shops and a Waffle House. It's a narrative cliche to present a rural place below the Mason-Dixon line this way, yet the scenery fits the bill.

I've lived in places like these, where a casual observer sees a weathered town and locals just see home. I proceed with caution anyway. I'm also unsettled by news reports of armed white nationalists marching at the capitol building in nearby Little Rock. I know this is how a lot of people experience the rural south - sorting through stereotypes and history as they go, wondering how much of the old south is present in the new.

The 12,900-acre Bald Knob Refuge, which sits about 60 miles north-east of Little Rock, is a blend of both the old and new south. It's a former rice farm that has grown rice and soybeans in order to provide much-needed habitat and fuel for migratory waterfowl like pintail ducks and snow geese since 1993.

A half-mile into the refuge, the truck ahead of me spooks an unfathomable cloud of waterfowl. Hundreds of thousandsof ducks rise from the wetlands, calling and circling. It's breathtaking to witness. Later, a huge flock of lesser snow geese passes above me. My heart pounds; it's moving to hear so many wingbeats overhead, to see the formations of a thousand white birds in the blue sky.

Another truck comes by. The man rolls down his truck window and asks, "You OK?"

"Fine," I tell him, climbing down from the roof of my rental car, and showing him my camera. "Watching birds. You?" I ask even though I can see his rifle in the back.

"Out scouting hunting spots," he says, flashing a charming smile. "You can get a better view if you take the road 'round that way." He points me toward a new route, then takes off.

The relationship between hunters and conservation has always surprised me. Yet it's often imperative to the success of major initiatives in the south, thanks to the influence of the not-for-profit organization Ducks Unlimited, which has a worldwide membership of 700,000 and has helped conserve over 13m acres of habitat. There are more than 34 million sportsmen and women in the United States.

Sportsmen and traditional environmentalists aren't always mutually exclusive, or easy co-conspirators. But, there is a critical need for information to flow between those on the ground and those in policy. In order to address the urgent realities of climate change, traditional environmentalists must continue to find ways to communicate and partner with non-traditional audiences: hunters, big agriculture, fishermen, corporations and loggers.

I wanted to talk to people in the south who already work on these frontlines, and are able to build bridges between seemingly disparate audiences.

Charlie Phillips, clammer and entrepreneur, is one of those men who's lived several lives, as a fishmonger, horse trader and shrimper.

"I'm one of those rare Republicans that believe that if you don't take care of your environment, your environment can't take care of you," he says. Phillips, the owner of Sapelo Sea Farms in Georgia, makes his living growing clams, so water quality is crucial to him, which is why he serves on boards and tries to help scientists and fishermen find common ground.

He's frank about climate change and how it's affecting his industry. He talks about the onset of "king tides", and fish stock moving north as waters warm. He was working on the back of a shrimp boat in 1968 when Hurricane Camille hit. "I saw the big ships washed up on shore," he tells me. "I've seen what big hurricanes can do. They're worse now. Things aren't what they used to be."

"Listen," he says. "Fishermen just want to be able to catch what they want to catch and be left alone."

He says working fishermen end up not trusting scientists because the scientific reports don't match up with what they witness firsthand on the water every day. Reports from scientists, he says, "feel three or four years behind what the fishermen see". He thinks it's crucial for fishermen and scientists to interact and learn more from each other. "We've gotten really good at throwing rocks at each other," he tells me. "But we need to give up on throwing rocks. It's not conducive to fixing problems."

Phillips is focused on what he cares most about: water. He's evangelical about it. "It affects everything," he says. "Wildlife, business, eco-tourism." He bought his father's restaurant, the Fish Dock, and uses the menus to educate customers about local water testing results. "I took poetic license," he tells me, laughing. "I don't use the word 'fecal', just 'water quality'."

The following day I talk with Dr Zakiya Leggett, a forester and professor at North Carolina State University whose research focuses on carbon sequestration and soil ecology. She talks about her empathy for freshmen, many of whom tell her at the beginning of her class through a pre-course survey that they don't believe in climate change. They tell her she shouldn't try to change their minds.

"We have to remember," she says, her tone compassionate, "especially if these students are coming fresh from home, that they haven't had time to form their own opinions." She adds, "Maybe I can't impress my 'opinions,' but I will give them the facts, like graphs of temperatures rising."

Leggett estimates that half of her students are coming from a rural environment. Born in Memphis, she recalls the difficult time she had adjusting when she went from the Tuskegee University to Duke University. She remembers struggling with elitism herself.

Now she mentors students through this vulnerable transition, and is able to forge connections with first-generation college students and conservative students, as well as students of color - all groups who might otherwise struggle to join conversations about the scientific realities of climate change.

Dr Todd Merendino, the manager of conservation programs in the Ducks Unlimited Texas field office, negotiates strategic partnerships with wildlife state agencies, agricultural producers, hunters, biologists, private landowners, petrochemical companies and the oil industry. A hunter and fisherman, he has a practical, outcomes-focused approach to his work.

"Our mission is waterfowl and habitats," he says. "I look for symbiotic relationships. Common ground. Common goals."

He speaks with corporations about responsible growth and convinces them that "wetlands and marshes are your insurance policy against flooding". He ticks off the nature of their conversations: flood storage capacity, coastal restoration projects, storm surge abatement, initiatives that keep the marsh healthy.

Ducks Unlimited recently completed a beneficial dredge use project near Port Arthur, Texas, which will move 2m cubic yards of dredge material to restore approximately 1,300 acres of the Salt Bayou Marsh watershed, an important migratory bird flyway recently degraded by hurricane damage. It's generally more expensive to utilize dredge material in this manner, he says, but smarter to move it to a place where it serves a purpose.

Merendino's work has large-scale outcomes, and with that objective in mind he welcomes chances to partner with corporations and big agriculture. "If the rice industry went away," he points out, "the amount of waterfowl habitat loss would be insurmountable, impossible to overcome."

After seeing the beauty and importance of the Bald Knob Refuge, the scale, necessity and complexity of this work impresses me.

It's easy to be an armchair activist in 2019, or make condescending online comments about the state of climate change activism in the south. But it's much more difficult to swim against the ideological current, or to operate between two exasperating worlds in a hands-on way, in search of real impact.

There is certainly more opportunity for cooperation and partnership, and places where more traditional environmentalists like me could find common ground with a hunter in Arkansas or a fisherman in Georgia, so that we could, quite frankly, save what we both love.

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Not all environmentalists eat tofu: the hunters fighting climate change

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Progressives should think twice about who their allies are. Conservatives, especially the hunters among them, can be environmentalists too

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Is Human Activity Primarily Responsible for Global Climate Change? From ProCon.org

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Is Human Activity Primarily Responsible for Global Climate Change? From ProCon.org

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Is Human Activity Responsible for Climate Change? 13 Pros and Cons

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The pro side argues the rising levels of greenhouse gases is from burning fossil fuels, the con side argues the planet is capable of absorbing those increases.

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What Does Free Speech Mean? from United States Courts

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What Does Free Speech Mean? from United States Courts

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Among other cherished values, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech. The U.S. Supreme Court often has struggled to determine what exactly constitutes protected speech. The following are examples of speech, both direct (words) and symbolic (actions), that the Court has decided are either entitled to First Amendment protections, or not.

The First Amendment states, in relevant part, that:

"Congress shall make no law...abridging freedom of speech."

Freedom of speech includes the right:

Not to speak (specifically, the right not to salute the flag).
West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).

Of students to wear black armbands to school to protest a war ("Students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.").
Tinker v. Des Moines, 393 U.S. 503 (1969).

To use certain offensive words and phrases to convey political messages.
Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).

To contribute money (under certain circumstances) to political campaigns.
Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976).

To advertise commercial products and professional services (with some restrictions).
Virginia Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748 (1976); Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U.S. 350 (1977).

To engage in symbolic speech, (e.g., burning the flag in protest).
Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989); United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990).

Freedom of speech does not include the right:

To incite imminent lawless action.
Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969).

To make or distribute obscene materials.
Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957).

To burn draft cards as an anti-war protest.
United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968).

To permit students to print articles in a school newspaper over the objections of the school administration.
Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988).

Of students to make an obscene speech at a school-sponsored event.
Bethel School District #43 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675 (1986).

Of students to advocate illegal drug use at a school-sponsored event.
Morse v. Frederick, __ U.S. __ (2007).

Disclaimer: These resources are created by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for use in educational activities only. They may not reflect the current state of the law, and are not intended to provide legal advice, guidance on litigation, or commentary on legislation.

DISCLAIMER: These resources are created by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for educational purposes only. They may not reflect the current state of the law, and are not intended to provide legal advice, guidance on litigation, or commentary on any pending case or legislation.

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Among other cherished values, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech. Learn about what this means.

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The Scientific Importance of Free Speech from Quillette

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The Scientific Importance of Free Speech from Quillette

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The Scientific Importance of Free Speech

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These are merely tools that help us to accomplish a far greater mission, which is to choose between rival narratives, in the vicious, no-holds-barred battle of ideas that we call "science".

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Bill of Rights

During the summer of 1787, a group of politicians, including James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, gathered in Philadelphia to draft a new U.S. Constitution.

Antifederalists, led by the first governor of Virginia, Patrick Henry, opposed the ratification of the Constitution. They felt the new constitution gave the federal government too much power at the expense of the states. They further argued that the Constitution lacked protections for people's individual rights.

The debate over whether to ratify the Constitution in several states hinged on the adoption of a Bill of Rights that would safeguard basic civil rights under the law. Fearing defeat, pro-constitution politicians, called Federalists, promised a concession to the antifederalists-a Bill of Rights.

James Madison drafted most of the Bill of Rights. Madison was a Virginia representative who would later become the fourth president of the United States. He created the Bill of Rights during the 1st United States Congress, which met from 1789 to 1791 - the first two years that President George Washington was in office.

The Bill of Rights, which was introduced to Congress in 1789 and adopted on December 15, 1791, includes the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

First Amendment Text

The First Amendment text reads:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
While the First Amendment protected freedoms of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition, subsequent amendments under the Bill of Rights dealt with the protection of other American values including the Second Amendment right to bear arms and the Sixth Amendment right to a trial by jury.

Freedom of Speech

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech. Freedom of speech gives Americans the right to express themselves without having to worry about government interference. It's the most basic component of freedom of expression.

The U.S. Supreme Court often has struggled to determine what types of speech is protected. Legally, material labeled as obscene has historically been excluded from First Amendment protection, for example, but deciding what qualifies as obscene has been problematic. Speech provoking actions that would harm others-true incitement and/or threats-is also not protected, but again determining what words have qualified as true incitement has been decided on a case-by-case basis.

Freedom of the Press

This freedom is similar to freedom of speech, in that it allows people to express themselves through publication.

There are certain limits to freedom of the press. False or defamatory statements-called libel-aren't protected under the First Amendment.

Freedom of Religion

The First Amendment, in guaranteeing freedom of religion, prohibits the government from establishing a "state" religion and from favoring one religion over any other.

While not explicitly stated, this amendment establishes the long-established separation of church and state.

Right to Assemble, Right to Petition

The First Amendment protects the freedom to peacefully assemble or gather together or associate with a group of people for social, economic, political or religious purposes. It also protects the right to protest the government.

The right to petition can mean signing a petition or even filing a lawsuit against the government.

First Amendment Court Cases

Here are landmark Supreme Court decisions related to the First Amendment.

Schenck v. United States, 1919: In this case, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Socialist Party activist Charles Schenck after he distributed fliers urging young men to dodge the draft during World War I.

The Schenck decision helped define limits of freedom of speech, creating the "clear and present danger" standard, explaining when the government is allowed to limit free speech. In this case, the Supreme Court viewed draft resistance as dangerous to national security.

New York Times Co. v. United States, 1971: This landmark Supreme Court case made it possible for The New York Times and Washington Post newspapers to publish the contents of the Pentagon Papers without risk of government censorship.

The Pentagon Papers were a top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. Published portions of the Pentagon Papers revealed that the presidential administrations of Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had all misled the public about the degree of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Texas v. Johnson, 1990: Gregory Lee Johnson, a youth communist, burned a flag during the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas to protest the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

The Supreme Court reversed a Texas court's decision that Johnson broke the law by desecrating the flag. This Supreme Court Case invalidated statutes in Texas and 47 other states prohibiting flag-burning.
Freedom of Religion:
Reynolds v. United States (1878): This Supreme Court case upheld a federal law banning polygamy, testing the limits of religious liberty in America. The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment forbids government from regulating belief but not from actions such as marriage.

Braunfeld v. Brown (1961): The Supreme Court upheld a Pennsylvania law requiring stores to close on Sundays, even though Orthodox Jews argued the law was unfair to them since their religion required them to close their stores on Saturdays as well.

Sherbert v. Verner (1963): The Supreme Court ruled that states could not require a person to abandon their religious beliefs in order to receive benefits. In this case, Adell Sherbert, a Seventh-day Adventist, worked in a textile mill. When her employer switched from a five-day to six-day workweek, she was fired for refusing to work on Saturdays. When she applied for unemployment compensation, a South Carolina court denied her claim.

Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971): This Supreme Court decision struck down a Pennsylvania law allowing the state to reimburse Catholic schools for the salaries of teachers who taught in those schools. This Supreme Court case established the "Lemon Test" for determining when a state or federal law violates the Establishment Clause-that's the part of the First Amendment that prohibits the government from declaring or financially supporting a state religion.

Ten Commandments Cases (2005): In 2005, the Supreme Court came to seemingly contradictory decisions in two cases involving the display of the Ten Commandments on public property. In the first case, Van Orden v. Perry, the Supreme Court ruled that the display of a six-foot Ten Commandments monument at the Texas State Capital was constitutional. In McCreary County v. ACLU, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that two large, framed copies of the Ten Commandments in Kentucky courthouses violated the First Amendment.
Right to Assemble & Right to Petition:
NAACP v. Alabama (1958): When Alabama Circuit Court ordered the NAACP to stop doing business in the state and subpoenaed the NAACP for records including their membership list, the NAACP brought the matter to the Supreme Court. The Court ruled in favor of the NAACP, which Justice John Marshall Harlan II writing: "This Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one's associations."

Edwards v. South Carolina (1962): On March 2, 1961, 187 Black students marched from Zion Baptist Church to the South Carolina State House, where they were arrested and convicted of breaching the peace. The Supreme Court ruled in an 8-1 decision to reverse the convictions, arguing that the state infringed on the free speech, free assembly and freedom to petition of the students.

Sources

The Bill of Rights; White House.
History of the First Amendment; The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Schenck v. United States; C-Span.

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First Amendment - Rights, U.S. Constitution & Freedoms

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The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the freedom of speech, religion and the press. It also protects the right to peaceful protest and to petition the government.

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Tinker vs. Des Moines: Protecting Student Free Speech from National Constitution Center

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Tinker vs. Des Moines: Protecting Student Free Speech from National Constitution Center

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Tinker v. Des Moines: Protecting student free speech

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On February 24, 1969, the Supreme Court ruled that students at school retain their First Amendment right to free speech.

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Freedom of speech-the right to express opinions without government restraint-is a democratic ideal that dates back to ancient Greece. In the United States, the First Amendment guarantees free speech, though the United States, like all modern democracies, places limits on this freedom. In a series of landmark cases, the U.S. Supreme Court over the years has helped to define what types of speech are-and aren't-protected under U.S. law.

The ancient Greeks pioneered free speech as a democratic principle. The ancient Greek word "parrhesia" means "free speech," or "to speak candidly." The term first appeared in Greek literature around the end of the fifth century B.C.

During the classical period, parrhesia became a fundamental part of the democracy of Athens. Leaders, philosophers, playwrights and everyday Athenians were free to openly discuss politics and religion and to criticize the government in some settings.

First Amendment

In the United States, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech.

The First Amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights-the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. The Bill of Rights provides constitutional protection for certain individual liberties, including freedoms of speech, assembly and worship.

The First Amendment doesn't specify what exactly is meant by freedom of speech. Defining what types of speech should and shouldn't be protected by law has fallen largely to the courts.

In general, the First Amendment guarantees the right to express ideas and information. On a basic level, it means that people can express an opinion (even an unpopular or unsavory one) without fear of government censorship.

It protects all forms of communication, from speeches to art and other media.

Flag Burning

While freedom of speech pertains mostly to the spoken or written word, it also protects some forms of symbolic speech. Symbolic speech is an action that expresses an idea.

Flag burning is an example of symbolic speech that is protected under the First Amendment. Gregory Lee Johnson, a youth communist, burned a flag during the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas to protest the Reagan administration.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in 1990, reversed a Texas court's conviction that Johnson broke the law by desecrating the flag. Texas v. Johnson invalidated statutes in Texas and 47 other states prohibiting flag burning.

When Isn't Speech Protected?

Not all speech is protected under the First Amendment.

Forms of speech that aren't protected include:

Obscene material such as child pornography

Plagiarism of copyrighted material

Defamation (libel and slander)

True threats

Speech inciting illegal actions or soliciting others to commit crimes aren't protected under the First Amendment, either.

The Supreme Court decided a series of cases in 1919 that helped to define the limitations of free speech. Congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917, shortly after the United States entered into World War I. The law prohibited interference in military operations or recruitment.

Socialist Party activist Charles Schenck was arrested under the Espionage Act after he distributed fliers urging young men to dodge the draft. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction by creating the "clear and present danger" standard, explaining when the government is allowed to limit free speech. In this case, they viewed draft resistant as dangerous to national security.

American labor leader and Socialist Party activist Eugene Debs also was arrested under the Espionage Act after giving a speech in 1918 encouraging others not to join the military. Debs argued that he was exercising his right to free speech and that the Espionage Act of 1917 was unconstitutional. In Debs v. United States the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Espionage Act.

Freedom of Expression

The Supreme Court has interpreted artistic freedom broadly as a form of free speech.

In most cases, freedom of expression may be restricted only if it will cause direct and imminent harm. Shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater and causing a stampede would be an example of direct and imminent harm.

In deciding cases involving artistic freedom of expression the Supreme Court leans on a principle called "content neutrality." Content neutrality means the government can't censor or restrict expression just because some segment of the population finds the content offensive.

Free Speech in Schools

In 1965, students at a public high school in Des Moines, Iowa, organized a silent protest against the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands to protest the fighting. The students were suspended from school. The principal argued that the armbands were a distraction and could possibly lead to danger for the students.

The Supreme Court didn't bite-they ruled in favor of the students' right to wear the armbands as a form of free speech in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District. The case set the standard for free speech in schools. However, First Amendment rights typically don't apply in private schools.

Sources

What does free speech mean?; United States Courts.
Tinker v. Des Moines; United States Courts.
Freedom of expression in the arts and entertainment; ACLU.

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Freedom of Speech - Origins, First Amendment & Limits

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Freedom of speech-the right to express opinions without government restraint-is a democratic ideal that dates back to ancient Greece. In the United States, the First Amendment guarantees free speech, though the United States, like all modern democracies, places limits on this freedom.

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How federal law draws a line between free speech and hate crimes from PBS Newshour

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How federal law draws a line between free speech and hate crimes from PBS Newshour

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WASHINGTON - Incendiary rhetoric has seeped into 2016 presidential politics, surfaced in the public debate over accepting Syrian refugees into the U.S. and popped up repeatedly following terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch has expressed concern about the potential for an anti-Islam backlash similar to one that followed the Sept. 11 attacks and vowed that the Justice Department would punish "actions predicated on violent talk."

"Advocates are certainly reporting to us an increased concern around incidents, threats and potential hate crimes that they're bringing to our attention," Vanita Gupta, the head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

But the spectrum of hateful expression is broad, encompassing acts that are clearly illegal - such as firebombing a mosque - as well as vague and distant threats that, while noxious, might well be protected by the First Amendment.

Establishing the line between protected speech and a federal hate crime can be challenging for prosecutors and courts and depends on the facts of each particular case. Here's a look at how federal law treats hate speech:
WHAT DO FEDERAL LAWS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THIS?
The signature hate crime statute - the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act - makes it illegal to physically harm someone based on their race, religion, national origin, gender or sexual orientation, among other characteristics.
DOESN'T THE CONSTITUTION ALLOW ME TO SAY WHATEVER I WANT?
To a large degree, yes. The First Amendment offers broad free speech protections and permits membership in organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, that espouse hateful ideologies.

But while the Constitution gives latitude to hate speech and offensive rhetoric, court decisions in the last century have carved out notable - though narrow - exceptions to free speech guarantees and authorized prosecution for language deemed to fall out of bounds.

Comments intended as specific and immediate threats brush up against those protections, regardless of a person's race or religion. So do personal, face-to-face comments meant to incite imminent lawlessness, such as a riot.

A 1942 Supreme Court decision called Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire - which involved a Jehovah's Witness who cursed at a city marshal, calling him a "damned fascist" - articulated a "fighting words" doctrine that restricted insults intended to provoke an "immediate breach of the peace."
ARE THREATS AGAINST THE LAW?
They certainly can be, but that depends on various factors. Determining what constitutes an actual threat - as opposed to a vague and far-off remark - is a tricky, fact-specific question.

In Virginia v. Black, a seminal 2003 Supreme Court decision on cross-burning, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor described "true threats" as statements in which "the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals."

In other words, the more specific and immediate the threat, the more likely it'll be regarded as illegal.

"It's one thing to say, 'Kill all the Jews,' versus 'Kill that Jew who was my kid's school teacher who gave him an F,'" said James Weinstein, a constitutional law professor at Arizona State University.

Justice Department officials say context matters greatly in such cases, making it hard to generalize too broadly. Hateful threats that the target interprets as a joke, or that are discussed among friends but not leveled at anyone in particular, likely would be harder to prosecute federally.

"It requires specificity, it requires intent and it requires a certain sense of imminence," Gupta said.
HOW OFTEN ARE SUCH CASES INVESTIGATED?
The FBI says local law enforcement agencies reported 5,479 hate crime incidents in 2014.

In a Dec. 3 speech to the Muslim Advocates organization, Lynch said that more than 220 defendants had been charged with hate crime offenses in the last six years. Those include a Utah man who threatened an interracial family with death and a man who admitted tying a rope around the neck of a James Meredith statue on the University of Mississippi campus.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the attorney general said, the Justice Department has headed more than 1,000 investigations into acts of "anti-Muslim hatred" and bigoted behavior, leading to more than 45 prosecutions - including of a New York man who e-mailed death threats to an employee at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and of a Texas man convicted in 2013 of threatening to bomb an Islamic center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Among incidents in the last two months: a caretaker at a Philadelphia mosque said he found a severed pig's head outside on the sidewalk, and CAIR, a Muslim advocacy group, reported getting a hate letter with a white powdery substance at its Washington offices.

"I think, sadly, that number is going to continue," Lynch said.

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How federal law draws a line between free speech and hate crimes

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WASHINGTON - Incendiary rhetoric has seeped into 2016 presidential politics, surfaced in the public debate over accepting Syrian refugees into the U.S. and popped up repeatedly following terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino.

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Online Speech from Freedom Forum Institute

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Online Speech from Freedom Forum Institute

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The Freedom Forum's mission is to foster First Amendment freedoms for all.

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Plastic pollution: how humans are turning the world into plastic from United Nations

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Plastic pollution: how humans are turning the world into plastic from United Nations

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Modern life would be impossible without plastic - but we have long since lost control over our invention. Why has plastic turned into a problem and what do we know about its dangers? This video is a collaboration with UN Environment and their Clean Seas campaign, If you want to take action to turn the tide on plastics, go to cleanseas and make your pledge. We also partnered with askscience on reddit - on you can talk to experts and ask questions about about plastic pollution today!

Sources used in the video

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Plastic pollution: how humans are turning the world into plastic

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Modern life would be impossible without plastic - but we have long since lost control over our invention. Why has plastic turned into a problem and what do we know about its dangers?

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How Much Plastic is in the Ocean? From PBS

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How Much Plastic is in the Ocean? From PBS

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Be Smart | How Much Plastic is in the Ocean? | Season 5 | Episode 10 | PBS

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Ocean plastic pollution is a massive environmental problem.

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What Happens to All That Plastic? From Earth Institute at Columbia University

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What Happens to All That Plastic? From Earth Institute at Columbia University

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What Happens to All That Plastic?
Editor's Note (11/27/2017): This post was updated with new statistics on plastic waste generation and recycling, as well as new information on methods of reuse.
What would modern life be like without plastic? According to The World Economic Forum, plastic production has exploded over the last half-century, growing from 16.5 million tons in 1964 to 343 million tons in 2014; it is projected to double by 2036. Where does all of it go when we're done with it?

In 2014, Americans discarded about 33.6 million tons of plastic, but only 9.5 percent of it was recycled and 15 percent was combusted to create electricity or heat.

Most of the rest ends up in landfills where it may take up to 500 years to decompose, and potentially leak pollutants into the soil and water. It's estimated that there are already 165 million tons of plastic debris floating around in the oceans threatening the health and safety of marine life. And an average of 8.8 million more tons enter the oceans each year, including microplastics, tiny particles less than five millimeters long from cosmetics, fabrics or the breakdown of larger pieces, which may be ingested by marine wildlife.

Relatively little of our plastic waste is recycled because there are various types of plastic with different chemical compositions, and recycled plastics can be contaminated by the mixing of types. Plastic waste is also contaminated by materials such as paper and ink. Separating plastics from other recyclables, and different types of plastic from each other, is labor-intensive and so far there has been no easy solution.

Although the Society of Plastic Industries developed seven codes to distinguish types of plastic for recycling, in reality, only two-polyethylene terephthalate (PET, used for synthetic fibers and water bottles) and high density polyethylene (HDPE, used for jugs, bottle caps, water pipes)-are routinely recycled. But in more and more cities like New York and Chicago, low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plastic bags are now being recycled too. And increasingly, the recycling industry's use of near‐infrared spectroscopy, which can identify the chemical composition of plastics, is improving the efficiency and speed of recycling.

Plastics that can be recycled are first sorted, shredded and rid of impurities like paper. The shreds are then melted and formed into pellets, which can be made into other products.

MoistureShield in Arkansas, and Virginia-based Trex recycle polyethylene into outdoor decking material, fencing, and doors and windows. Coca Cola is increasing the amount of recycled plastic in its bottles to 50 percent.

Plastic is made from petroleum or natural gas in a chemical process that combines smaller molecules into a large chainlike molecule, often with other substances added to give it particular qualities. (Some, like phthalates and bisphenol A, can have harmful health effects.) Plastic production is estimated to use four percent of global oil production-both as the raw material and for energy in the manufacturing process. Because these polymers embody energy from fossil fuels (and actually have a higher energy value than coal and wood), leaving so much of it in landfills is not only an environmental hazard, it is a huge waste of a valuable resource that could be used to produce electricity, heat, or fuel.

The Plastics Division of the American Chemical Council asked the Earth Institute's Earth Engineering Center to explore ways of recovering the energy inherent in non-recycled plastics. The 2011 report, which was updated in 2014, determined that the amount of energy contained in the millions of tons of plastic in U.S. landfills is equivalent to 48 million tons of coal, 180 million barrels of oil, or one trillion cubic feet of natural gas. If all this plastic were converted into liquid fuel, it could produce 5.7 billion gallons of gasoline, enough to power 8.9 million cars per year. And the fact is, there are now technologies that can put all this waste to good use.

The report examined three ways of utilizing non-recycled plastic for energy production: converting it directly into liquid fuel, using separated plastics as fuel in special types of power plants, and increasing the amount of garbage burned in waste-to-energy facilities.

Plastics can be converted into crude oil or other types of products through pyrolysis, a high heat process that does not use oxygen. Agilyx, an Oregon-based company, has developed a system that heats polystyrene from foam cups, packaging materials, and Styrofoam to create a styrene monomer, a building block of the plastic industry. The final liquid product can be sold to other refiners to produce oil or to make more polystyrene.

Plastic2Oil in Niagara Falls, NY, uses unwashed, unsorted waste plastic to produce ultra-low sulfur fuels that do not require further refining. The company maintains that its process is "highly green, clean and scalable."

A number of other companies in the U.S., Africa, Asia and Europe are investing in technology that produces liquid fuel from plastic wastes.

According to the updated Earth Engineering Center report, power plants specially designed to use non-recycled plastics as fuel could theoretically produce 61.9 million MWh of electricity, enough to power 5.7 million homes.

Burning more garbage inwaste-to-energy facilities would recover the energy inherent in plastics and reduce greenhouse gas emissions since landfills emit methane (a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide) as garbage decomposes. Unlike incinerators of the past, modern waste-to-energy facilities produce electricity and heat in boilers designed for complete combustion. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said they produce electricity "with less environmental impact than almost any other source of electricity."

If the amount of garbage sitting in U.S. landfills in 2011 was burned in waste-to-energy facilities, it could theoretically yield enough electricity to power 13.8 million households and reduce coal use by 100 million tons a year. In 2015, 71 waste-to-energy facilities and four other power plants in the United States burned 29 million tons of garbage, generating nearly 14 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity.

A 2009 United Nations Environmental Programme report on converting plastic waste into a resource described the production of gaseous fuels, using high heat to decompose plastic waste, and solid fuel derived from a mixture of waste plastic, paper, and wood. The materials are first shredded, sorted then made into pellets. A number of companies in Japan are producing both solid and gaseous fuels. The Showa Denko company, headquartered in Tokyo, uses heat gasification to recycle plastic waste into ammonia, used to manufacture many products, and CO2 for carbonization.

Liter of Light, a grassroots movement with partnerships around the world, has found another way to recycle plastic bottles. It helps energy-poor communities convert discarded soda bottles into solar bottle bulbs to illuminate homes and streets. The organization has installed over 350,000 bottle lights in more than 15 countries.

The best solutions for our plastic problem are still to reduce our use of them, and to reuse and recycle whenever possible. More policies that ban plastic bag use, require bottle deposits and expand recycling would help. But millions of tons of plastic waste still sit in landfills around the country; technologies that are able to tap this waste as a resource can offer multiple benefits, helping to clean up the environment, lessen our dependence on foreign oil, decrease our use of non-renewable virgin resources, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and generate energy.

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Americans discard about 33.6 million tons of plastic each year, but only 9.5 percent of it is recycled and 15 percent is combusted in waste-to-energy facilities. What happens to the rest of it?

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An Engineering Wunderkind's Ocean Plastics Cleanup Device Hits A Setback from NPR

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An Engineering Wunderkind's Ocean Plastics Cleanup Device Hits A Setback from NPR

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The path to innovation is not always a smooth, straight line. In some cases, it's U-shaped.

In September, a 2,000-foot-long floating barrier, shaped like a U, was dispatched to the Great Pacific garbage patch between Hawaii and California, where roughly 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic have formed a floating field of debris roughly twice the size of Texas. Made of connected plastic pipes, the barrier was meant to catch and clean-up the plastic.

Invented by Boyan Slat when he was just 17, the barrier has so far done some of what it was designed to accomplish. It travels with wind and wave propulsion, like a U-shaped Pac-Man hungry for plastic. It orients itself in the wind and it catches and concentrates plastic, sort of.

But as Slat, now 24, recently discovered with the beta tester for his design, plastic occasionally drifts out of its U-shaped funnel. The other issue with the beta tester, called System 001, is that last week, a 60-feet-long end section broke off.

The first issue, Slat said, was likely due to the device's speed. In a September interview with NPR, he said the device averages about four inches per second, which his team has now concluded is too slow. The break in the barrier was due to an issue with the material used to build it.

"In principle, I think we are relatively close to getting it working," Slat said in an interview Saturday with NPR's Michel Martin. "It's just that sometimes the plastic is also escaping again. Likely what we have to do is we have to speed up the system so that it constantly moves faster than the plastic."

For the material failure, Slat said his team will probably try to locally reinforce the system to combat the problem of material fatigue.

"If you have a paper clip and you move that back and forward many times, essentially the material gets weaker," he said. "That's likely what has happened with material of the cleanup system."

Slat and the team at his nonprofit, The Ocean Cleanup, are now bringing the system back to Hawaii for repairs and upgrades. Slat told NPR in 2016 that his structure is 10 times further away from land than the world's most remote oil rig, subject to battering waves and storms.

When the material failure occurred, it wasn't due to the result of a major Pacific storm. It was just normal wear and tear, Slat said.

"We've had conditions twice as worse as we had last weekend, but the system already sort of moved back and forth about 1.5 million times since it's been out there," he said.

With an estimated cost of $24.6 million reported by Forbes, and a challenging work environment, the project is high-risk and Slat hopes, high-reward.

But experts on plastic pollution have expressed concerns about the project's effectiveness.

George Leonard, chief scientist at Ocean Conservancy, told NPR in September that only 3 to 5 percent of the total amount of ocean plastic actually winds up in systems of circulating currents. He estimates that about 8 million metric tons of plastic go into the ocean each year - roughly the equivalent of one dump truck full of plastic every minute.

Critics say efforts should be aimed at preventing plastics from going into the ocean in the first place, and that Slat's barrier project could divert resources away from that goal. Others have expressed concern about the barrier's impact on marine wildlife.

Slat said that marine wildlife is be able to safely pass underneath a 10-foot deep screen under the pipe meant to catch debris. However, Wired reported that the pipes could attract and lead animals straight into plastic-polluted waters, and may also shed nano-sized particles of plastic into the water when hit with the sun's rays.

The concern is that ultraviolet light from the sun can potentially disintegrate the plastic, but The Ocean Cleanup responded by telling Wired that the high-density polyethylene plastic used in their tubes can reflect UV radiation.

Slat's confidence in his design hasn't wavered, and said he was unfazed by the current setbacks.

"Considering the things we have been able to prove in the past few months and considering the problems that we have faced, they seem quite solvable," he said. "I'm confident that the team will be able to design appropriate solutions for this and that we'll have the system back in the patch in a few months from now."

His team hopes to make the system fully operational sometime this year. If the project succeeds, Slat's vision is to deploy a fleet of 60 more devices, projected to remove half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch's plastic within five years.

In this vision, one he has held since his teens, support vessels would act like ocean garbage trucks; ships would carry the plastics back to land, where they would be processed, recycled, and reused - not dumped back into the ocean.
The audio for this story was produced by Dana Cronin and edited by Natalie Winston.

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An Engineering Wunderkind's Ocean Plastics Cleanup Device Hits A Setback

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Four months into its testing phase, the Ocean Cleanup's plastic-catching device isn't catching as much plastic as intended.

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Plastic Oceans
There are increasing high levels of man-made pollution in many of the world's seas and little actually disappears. By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the world's oceans.
We live on a blue planet; the world's oceans cover three quarters of the Earth. They contain 97% of the Earth's water and are currently absorbing around a third of the CO2 being produced by our activities and so helping in part by acting a buffer for some of the impacts of climate change. (30 to 40% of the carbon dioxide from human activity released into the atmosphere dissolves into oceans, resulting in the creation of carbonic acid.) Ocean acidification is therefore a rising concern. The average pH balance is dropping and as a result the growth of calcifying organisms such as corals and shellfish is being reduced. Acidification alone, though, is not the only pollution problem faced by the world's seas, and others are escalating at an even faster rate. The impacts and implications are huge and growing.

Around 80% of marine pollution comes from land-based activities. Waste runs or is dumped into drains and rivers and hence the seas. Oil, fertilisers, sewage, plastics and toxic chemicals are all part of the mix. Oil spills are less frequent but in many countries without an established recycling system, used oil is thrown down the drain or poured directly into rivers. Nutrients in fertiliser runoff from farms and lawns produce algae, depleting dissolved oxygen and suffocating marine life, causing dead zones in places such as the Gulf of Mexico and the Baltic. In many regions, untreated sewage still flows into the seas - 80% of urban sewage discharged into the Mediterranean is untreated. A recent addition to the challenge is the role of desalination plants, cropping up in areas of water stress from the Middle East to Australia and California. As a core by-product of their water purification process, they add salt into the seas, so increasing salinity and hence acute toxicity.

While all of the pollutants are having severe negative impact, perhaps the most visible - hence one that will drive the biggest change in the next decade - is plastic. Around 275 million tons of plastic waste is generated each year around the world; between 4.8 million and 12.7 million tons is either washed or dumped deliberately into the sea. The World Bank expects the planet's municipal solid waste to double within 15 years, much of this in the form of single-use plastic items. Bottles, bags, balloons, packaging, shoes - all take decades to break down. This waste is ingested by pretty much every marine animal including fish, dolphins, seals and turtles. So far, plastic has been found to be blocking the digestive tracts of at least 267 different species.

Although this is a global problem, the epicentre of plastic pollution is clear. Today 60% of the plastic waste in the ocean comes from just 5 countries - China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The media already talks about the Great Pacific Garbage patch. By 2025, plastic consumption in Asia will increase by 80%, surpassing 200 million tons; some are calling for specific interventions in these 5 countries. Regionally, the EU is aiming to halve plastic bag use by 2018 but this is not an international standard. Industry experts expect that by 2050 we will be producing three times as much plastic as we do today; on a volume basis, the WEF sees that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the world's oceans.

Plastic pollution is however not alone as an increasing danger to the world's seas. One politically sensitive issue now is associated with dredging and land reclamation. Whether in the South China seas, where China is creating islands built on coral reefs, or in Indonesia, where sand mining has been providing Singapore with the resource to add 130 square kilometres of artificial 'reclaimed' land in the past 40 years, mining has evidently moved from land to sea.

With all the consequences of our actions now becoming apparent, the question is what will change going forward? Has ocean pollution become such a significant issue that there will be tangible change within the next decade? Some think so. Foremost, and largely because of plastic waste, the visibility of the impact is clear in the media and policy bodies. The UN has included as its 14 th Sustainable Development Goal the ambition to "conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources." A core 2025 objective is to prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, especially land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution.

Unfortunately, much of the world's oceans are not part of any one country's territorial waters. More than 40 per cent of the planet's surface (80 million square miles - seven times the area of the whole African continent) is ocean that belongs to everyone and no one - and hence is largely unregulated. While fishing, environmental, tourist and defence policies all unite to seek to protect and manage the sea close to a nation's shoreline, beyond a notional 12 to 200-mile limits it is largely a free-for-all. This is where the fish, dolphins and plankton are taking the hit. No one is setting the global rules and few are agreeing on a better way.

When will the balance tip? When will the negative impacts on our environment, the ecology and, most significantly from a financial perspective, a good share of our food resources start to change attitudes? Some are putting their faith in China to set new standards, but these may only apply locally. At a global level some see that a rethinking of the value of the 'blue-economy' is required. The Global Ocean Commission, for one, has called for adoption of an ambitious, long-term goal of zero plastic waste into the marine environment. This will require partnerships and behaviour changes that simply do not exist today, and the end of Europe and the US shipping its waste to Asia. If we start to see waste as a resource in the next decade, will perceptions - and maybe behaviours - shift?

Whether seeking to protect food supplies or looking to fulfil UN development goals, bringing order to the high seas is seen as critical for the future. We have already overshot the planetary limits on biodiversity and nitrogen; as the consequences become more apparent, can we avoid the same for ocean pollution?

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There are increasing high levels of man-made pollution in many of the world's seas and little actually disappears. By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the world's oceans. We live on a blue planet; the world's oceans cover three quarters of the Earth.

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When the Mermaids Cry: The Great Plastic Tide from plastic-pollution.org

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When the Mermaids Cry: The Great Plastic Tide from plastic-pollution.org

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By Claire Le Guern
Last updated in November 2019.

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How Ocean Pollution Affects Humans from planetaid.org

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How Ocean Pollution Affects Humans from planetaid.org

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How Ocean Pollution Affects Humans - Planet Aid, Inc.

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By Andrew Dilevics The environment pays a heavy price for our "fast fashion" habits. The textile industry regularly contaminates waterways with dyes and waste, and washing our synthetic clothing releases plastic microfibers into the ocean. Growing enough cotton to produce just one t-shirt requires up to 700 gallon of water!

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7 Ways To Reduce Ocean Plastic Pollution Today from Oceanic Society

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7 Ways To Reduce Ocean Plastic Pollution Today from Oceanic Society

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Plastic pollution is one of the greatest threats to ocean health worldwide. But, there are many solutions to plastic pollution that you can participate in today. This article covers some of the basic facts about ocean plastic pollution and provides several specific plastic pollution solutions that everyone can take part in.

The Ocean Plastic Pollution Problem

With skyrocketing plastic production, low levels of recycling, and poor waste management, between 4 and 12 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean each year-enough to cover every foot of coastline on the planet! And that amount is projected to triple in the next 20 years. Let that sink in for a moment.

In the ocean, plastic pollution impacts sea turtles, whales, seabirds, fish, coral reefs, and countless other marine species and habitats. In fact, scientists estimate that more than half of the world's sea turtles and nearly every seabird on Earth have eaten plastic in their lifetimes. Plastic pollution also mars otherwise beautiful beaches, coastlines, and snorkel and dive sites worldwide, even in remote areas such as Midway Atoll.

One of the reasons that plastic pollution is such a problem is that it doesn't go away: "plastics are forever." Instead, plastic debris simply breaks down into ever-smaller particles, known as microplastics, whose environmental impacts are still being determined.

Plastic Pollution Solutions: 7 Things You Can Do Today

Everyone can do something to help solve the plastic pollution problem, and millions of people worldwide are already taking action to reduce their plastic use. Here are seven ways you can make a difference, starting today.

1. Reduce Your Use of Single-Use Plastics

Wherever you live, the easiest and most direct way that you can get started is by reducing your own use of single-use plastics. Single-use plastics include plastic bags, water bottles, straws, cups, utensils, dry cleaning bags, take-out containers, and any other plastic items that are used once and then discarded.

The best way to do this is by a) refusing any single-use plastics that you do not need (e.g. straws, plastic bags, takeout utensils, takeout containers), and b) purchasing, and carrying with you, reusable versions of those products, including reusable grocery bags, produce bags, bottles, utensils, coffee cups, and dry cleaning garment bags. And when you refuse single-use plastic items, help businesses by letting them know that you would like them to offer alternatives.

2. Support Legislation to Curb Plastic Production and Waste

As important as it is to change our individual behaviors, such changes alone are insufficient to stop ocean plastic pollution. We also need legislation that reduces plastic production, improves waste management, and makes plastic producers responsible for the waste they generate. There are a variety of ways that you can support local, national, and international legislation that provide critical solutions to reduce plastic pollution. One such effort in the United States is the 2021 Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, a comprehensive federal bill that aims to address the plastic pollution crisis, and there are a number of state level initiatives to introduce extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation that makes plastic producers and distributors responsible for their products and packaging at the end of life.

At the international level, hundreds of organizations and businesses successfully worked together with United Nations member states to enact a global plastics treaty, signed by 175 member states, that will set global rules and regulations to reduce plastic pollution. And legislation that limits, taxes, or bans unnecessary single use plastic items, such as plastic bags, takeout containers, and bottles, has been successfully enacted in many places globally, and you can support the adoption of such policies in your community too. Here is a comprehensive resource and toolkit on legislative approaches to limiting plastic bags, foodware, microplastics, and more.

3. Recycle Properly

This should go without saying, but when you use single-use (and other) plastics that can be recycled, always be sure to recycle them. At present, just 9% of plastic is recycled worldwide. Recycling helps keep plastics out of the ocean and reduces the amount of "new" plastic in circulation. If you need help finding a place to recycle plastic waste near you, check Earth911's recycling directory. It's also important to check with your local recycling center about the types of plastic they accept.

4. Participate In (or Organize) a Beach or River Cleanup

Help remove plastics from the ocean and prevent them from getting there in the first place by participating in, or organizing a cleanup of your local beach or waterway. This is one of the most direct and rewarding ways to fight ocean plastic pollution. You can simply go to the beach or waterway and collect plastic waste on your own or with friends or family, or you can join a local organization's cleanup or an international event like our Global Ocean Cleanup or the International Coastal Cleanup.

Take Our 7-Day Fight Plastic Waste Challenge

Join the global movement to fight plastic waste with our 7-day challenge. With just a few minutes a day, you'll be on your way to reducing ocean plastic pollution from home.
Take the Challenge

5. Avoid Products Containing Microbeads

Tiny plastic particles, called " microbeads," have become a growing source of ocean plastic pollution in recent years. Microbeads are found in some face scrubs, toothpastes, and bodywashes, and they readily enter our oceans and waterways through our sewer systems, and affect hundreds of marine species. Avoid products containing plastic microbeads by looking for "polythelene" and "polypropylene" on the ingredient labels of your cosmetic products (find a list of products containing microbeads here).

6. Spread the Word

Stay informed on issues related to plastic pollution and help make others aware of the problem. Tell your friends and family about how they can be part of the solution, or host a viewing party for one of the many plastic pollution focused documentaries, like A Plastic Ocean, Garbage Island: An Ocean Full of Plastic, Bag It, Addicted to Plastic, Plasticized, or Garbage Island.

7. Support Organizations Addressing Plastic Pollution

There are many non-profit organizations working to reduce and eliminate ocean plastic pollution in a variety of different ways, including Oceanic Society, Plastic Pollution Coalition, 5 Gyres, Algalita, Plastic Soup Foundation, and others. These organizations rely on donations from people like you to continue their important work. Even small donations can make a big difference!

These seven ideas only scratch the surface for ways you can help address the growing problem of plastic pollution in the oceans. The important thing is that we all do something, no matter how small. For more ideas and resources, sign up to join our Blue Habits community of people worldwide committed to joyful daily actions that improve ocean health.

Reduce Plastic Pollution From Home with Our 7-Day Challenge

Join the global movement to fight plastic waste by participating in our 7-day challenge.
Take the Challenge

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7 Ways to Reduce Ocean Plastic Pollution Today

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Plastic pollution is one of the greatest threats to ocean health worldwide. But, there are many solutions to plastic pollution that you can participate in

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A Dutch Teenager Had a Dream to Clean Up the World's Oceans. 7 Years On, It's ComingTrue from TIME

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A Dutch Teenager Had a Dream to Clean Up the World's Oceans. 7 Years On, It's ComingTrue from TIME

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For someone who gets violently seasick, Boyan Slat spends a lot of time thinking about the ocean. The Dutch inventor has designed the world's first ocean plastic cleanup system but admits he won't be on the ship with it when it launches out of San Francisco on Saturday. "I am not a man of the sea," he says.

After five and a half years of hard work, the 23-year-old Slat will watch from dry land as System 001 - a floating barrier nearly 2,000ft long - snakes its way out under the Golden Gate Bridge into the Pacific. Its destination is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a gyre of plastic waste twice the size of Texas held in position by ocean currents between California and Hawaii.

If all goes to plan, Slat says, an array of 60 systems could reduce the amount of plastic there by half by 2025. "I hope that this will be a turning point for the plastic pollution problem," Slat tells TIME in a phone interview a few days before the launch, in between final preparations. "For sixty years it has only gotten worse and worse. Now hopefully we're turning the tide."

The eradication of the garbage patch, and more broadly the salvation of our oceans, has been Slat's single-minded goal ever since he was 16 years old, when a diving trip to Greece yielded more plastic bag sightings than fish. Struck by the idea for a floating barrier that could collect plastic using the power of ocean currents alone, he founded his company, The Ocean Cleanup, aged just 18.

Boyan Slat, CEO of The Ocean Cleanup The Ocean Cleanup

The idea grabbed imaginations around the world. In 2015, an early prototype of System 001 was featured on TIME's list of the best inventions of 2015. The project has come a long way since then, Slat says. "It takes a trained eye to see the similarities."

What was originally envisaged as a large rigid barrier arranged around a central tank for collecting plastic, is today an unmanned, modular system that moves with the currents, naturally gravitating to areas of higher concentration. From the air it looks like a pipeline sitting on the surface of the sea, but beneath the waves lies a 10ft deep 'skirt,' which traps plastic accumulated by the current.

Because the system is solid rather than a net, Slat says sea life will be protected from becoming ensnared. The hope is that plastic will accumulate as if on a seashore, ready to be collected by boats and taken for recycling.

It's an ambitious plan, and one that has received millions of dollars of funding thanks to fast-shifting public opinion on plastic. In December 2017, 193 countries signed a U.N. resolution to eliminate ocean plastic pollution, and big corporations like McDonald's are moving to remove single-use plastics from their stores. (Some say not fast enough.) The U.N. says over 8 million tons of plastic still enter the oceans each year - the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic every minute.

But reducing our addiction to plastic is just one half of the equation, Slat says. "These garbage patches won't go away by themselves. Even if we were to close the tap today the plastic would still be there in 100 years."

System 001 floating in the San Francisco Bay before its launch The Ocean Cleanup

Slat sees his mission as a race against time. Plastic gradually breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces called microplastics which can eventually enter the food chain. Currently, however, just 8% of the plastic mass in the Pacific garbage patch is microplastics, according to research carried out by The Ocean Cleanup published in the journal Scientific Reports. "But of course what's going to happen over the next few decades is that all the other 92% of plastic will be turned into microplastics as well," Slat says. "So the sooner we get it out, the better."

A thorny question remains in what will happen to the plastic that is brought back to shore from The Ocean Cleanup's systems. Slat says he wants to turn it into branded merchandise, but acknowledges that all depends on the quality of the plastic, which remains a mystery. In any case, most of the plastic in the oceans is single-use, Slat argues. "By not making it into anything single-use, you can already reduce the chances of it ending up back in the oceans by 99%," he says.

But it's possible that lots of the waste returned to land will have to be carted off to third-party recycling plants and eventually recycled into more single-use plastics that might one day return to the oceans. The task ahead isn't so much Herculean as Sisyphean.

Nevertheless, Slat isn't dissuaded easily. "Big problems require big solutions," he says. "If anyone has any better ideas, we'd love to know."

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This Dutch Teen Dreamed of Cleaning Up the Ocean. Now, It's Happening

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For someone who gets violently seasick, Boyan Slat spends a lot of time thinking about the ocean.

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The Surprising Solution to Ocean Plastic by David Katz, TED Talk

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The Surprising Solution to Ocean Plastic by David Katz, TED Talk

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David Katz: The surprising solution to ocean plastic | TED Talk

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Can we solve the problem of ocean plastic pollution and end extreme poverty at the same time? That’s the ambitious goal of The Plastic Bank: a worldwide chain of stores where everything from school tuition to cooking fuel and more is available for purchase in exchange for plastic garbage -- which is then sorted, shredded and sold to brands who reuse “social plastic” in their products. Join David Katz to learn more about this step towards closing the loop in the circular economy. “Preventing ocean plastic could be humanity’s richest opportunity,” Katz says.

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Straw No More | Molly Steer | TEDxJCUCairns

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You Can't Just "Clean Up" the Plastic in the Ocean. Here's Why. from Teen Vogue

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You Can't Just "Clean Up" the Plastic in the Ocean. Here's Why. from Teen Vogue

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Plastic Planet is a series on the global plastics crisis that evaluates the environmental and human costs and considers possible solutions to this devastating man-made problem.

All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Since the early 1950s, there has been an estimated 8.3 billion tons - and counting - of plastic produced on the planet, according to a 2017 study published in the Science Advances journal. The United Nations Environment Program reports that roughly 60% of that lump sum has made its way to landfills or the ocean. Each year, an estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic ends up in the ocean, according to the advocacy group Ocean Conservancy. Some calculations predict that there could be more plastic by weight in the ocean than fish by 2050.

The situation is so dire that the ocean is already home to five notable trash vortexes, more commonly known as garbage patches: the North Atlantic Gyre, the South Atlantic Gyre, the South Pacific Gyre, the Indian Ocean Gyre, and the North Pacific Gyre. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, located in the North Pacific Gyre between California and Hawaii, is the most notorious as it is the largest of the five, with an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of trash. For measure, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is three times the size of France and weighs as much as 43,000 cars. And according to experts, it is growing "exponentially."

The fundamental issue with plastic is that it's largely not biodegradable. This means it cannot be broken down into reusable compounds. Instead, it degrades over time into smaller particles also known as microplastics, which are defined as pieces that are five millimeters in length or less, according to the National Ocean Service. While these tiny particles aren't floating at the top of the ocean, they pose a threat: Aside from contaminating the waters, plastic in the ocean injures and kills marine animals - collectively, it has impacted at least 800 species worldwide. Humans are impacted as well, as microplastics make their way into our food through seafood, water, and sea salt. Unfortunately, little is known about the scale of the problem since research is in its preliminary stages.

Some nations carry a larger burden of the blame than others. According to a 2015 study published in Science Advances, the top six countries for ocean garbage are China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. But other nations are not necessarily free from blame. The same study found that the United States, for example, contributes as much as 242 million pounds of plastic trash to the ocean every year.

Tackling the man-made environmental disaster - both cleaning up the existing plastic pollution in the ocean and preventing further damage - is not easy. "It is not as simple as going out there and just scooping up these floating islands of trash," Nick Mallos, the director of Ocean Conservancy's Trash Free Seas program, tells Teen Vogue.

Currently, a nearly 2,000-foot-long floater, essentially a floating trash collector, has made its way to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to take a stab at tackling the existing problem - it's the brainchild of 24-year-old Boyan Slat, who conceived the idea for his contraption in 2013 and started the Ocean Cleanup. Slat's device, a high-density polyethylene pipe, travels with the wind, waves, and storms and sweeps up plastic along the way. It also includes a 10-foot-long impermeable underwater skirt that picks up plastic that isn't on the surface. The plastic will then be removed from the water and taken by boat to shore, where it will be processed for recycling.

The first step of the Netherlands-based organization is to collect the larger floating plastic objects before approaching the smaller pieces. Within five years, the Ocean Cleanup hopes to remove half of the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Now, weeks in, Business Insider has reported things don't appear to be going as they should be: The garbage collected by the device is drifting into sea instead of staying trapped. "Although we are not harvesting plastic yet, based on the current results, we are positive we are close to making it work," wrote Slat in an update in November, adding that his team believes "the first solution [they] will attempt could potentially remediate both of these causes."

A spokesperson for the Ocean Cleanup told Teen Vogue that Boyan and the rest of the team are "highly confident" that finding a solution is just "a matter of time," noting that all other aspects of the system - surviving rough weather and not harming marine life - are working well aside from not being able to keep the trapped plastic. "These kinds of issues are certainly something that they anticipated," said the spokesperson. "Expecting the unexpected is inherent to the process when you move from modeling and testing to reality. It also stresses the importance of going out there because reality is the ultimate test for the beta system."

Elsewhere, U.K.-based the Plastic Tide, founded by Peter Kohler, uses drone-mounted cameras, machine learning, and citizen science to take aerial photos and train a "machine-learning" algorithm to recognize plastic trash. The idea would be to track the existing plastic and the spread of plastic to home in on where to prioritize cleanup efforts.

Another element is reducing the amount of plastic that gets into the ocean going forward: In 2015, Reuters reported that research was released based on data from 2010, showing that more than 8 million tons of plastic go from land to the ocean each year.

Emma Tonge, a communications and outreach specialist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Marine Debris Program, tells Teen Vogue that "prevention is the key to solving the marine debris problem over time." She uses the analogy of an overflowing sink: You can't fix the buildup without turning off the faucet. For marine debris, cleaning up nearshore and coastline regions is akin to turning off the faucets.

"Shorelines and coastal areas are easy to access, and we try to get these debris items before they have the chance to get to the ocean," says Tonge, whose program's main focus is prevention.

Ocean Conservancy's Trash Free Seas program organizes an international coastal cleanup that it says is the world's largest volunteer effort and works with businesses and individuals to implement change in practices and behaviors that impact ocean health. The Ocean Conservancy also has a mobile app - called Clean Swell - that allows individuals to record each item of trash they collect, which is later used by scientists and policymakers. While cleanups won't solve the marine plastic debris problem, it makes a difference. Mallos says it is a "Band-Aid, not a cure," but says cleanups have an "immediate and direct impact."

Encouraging corporations to use less plastic is one way to reduce the odds of plastic debris: Putting less plastic on shelves means less is purchased, consumed, and discarded.

"Corporations that either make plastic - the actual material - or make products that use plastic in their packaging have a very big responsibility in this problem," Mallos says. "There are some products out there, like plastic bags and expanded polystyrene food and beverage packaging - these are materials and types of products that simply no longer have a place in our economy. They pose a very severe risk to the marine environment when they leak into the ocean. And we know that there are suitable alternatives for these products that deliver the same utility and functionality as these products."

A 2018 brand audit conducted by environmental activist group Break Free From Plastic of more than 187,000 pieces of plastic trash across 239 cleanups spanning 42 countries shed light onto potential offenders. Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestlé were the most frequent multinational brands collected in cleanups. A PepsiCo spokesperson told Teen Vogue the company is "committed to achieving 100% recyclable, compostable, or biodegradable packaging by 2025" and strives to "use 25% recycled plastic content in [their] plastic packaging by that same year." Coca-Cola told Teen Vogue it has placed "ambitious goals" for the company's World Without Waste vision: It aims to "collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one [they] sell - regardless of where it comes from - by 2030" and "use an average of 50% recycled content in our bottles and cans by 2030." Teen Vogue has reached out to Nestlé and will update once we hear back.

Some significant progress is also being made by other companies. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a U.K.-based environmental charity, launched a campaign to get corporations on board with accountability. So far, more than 250 organizations - including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever, H&M, S.C. Johnson, and L'Oréal - have pledged to eradicate plastic waste within seven years. These organizations have pledged to reuse, recycle, or compost 100% of their plastic packaging by 2025.

Mallos also spotlights two other areas that need work. One is creating appropriate waste collecting and recycling infrastructure for existing plastic goods in the market to guarantee responsible disposal. The other is to look at innovative materials that can replace some of the most problematic forms of plastic that currently exist. "Corporations have a very important role in supporting and catalyzing investment and innovation in many of those fronts," Mallos says.

And then there is consumer accountability. A recent wave of consumer activism has led to the widespread ban of straws, which are especially problematic since they cannot be recycled. A noble endeavor, no doubt, but according to a Bloomberg Opinion essay, straws only account for 0.03% of total plastic waste. To truly fight ocean plastic pollution, a broader approach is needed.

Mallos says individuals can help in three ways. One is to reevaluate our daily plastic waste footprint and make decisions to reuse things like plastic bags and water bottles. Second is to send a message with your purchasing power: Watch what you buy so corporations take into account consumer preference and purchasing habits. Lastly, advocate for smart policy - like plastic bag bans - that "deliver locally appropriate solutions."

The Ocean Conservancy's 2018 Coastal Cleanup Report gathered data from beach cleanups across the globe to identify common trash items: cigarette butts, food wrappers, plastic beverage bottles, plastic bottle caps, plastic grocery bags, other plastic bags, straws and stirrers, plastic takeout containers, plastic lids, and foam takeout containers. "For the first time ever, all of the top 10 items found globally were made of plastic," Mallos says. "We know that globally, plastic production is increasing. What we're seeing now on the beaches is a manifestation of that production.

"This is a global, complex issue. And everyone has a role to play. That ranges from us as individuals all the way up to governments and corporations," Mallos says.

"No matter who you are, you're connected to the ocean. No matter where you live, you're connected to the ocean," Tonge says. "Everyone can really have a part to play, no matter how small or large that part is."
For more information on the global plastics crisis, read the rest of the Plastic Planet series.

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You Can't Just "Clean Up" the Plastic in the Ocean. Here's Why.

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In this Plastic Planet reported feature, we explain why ocean cleanup isn't the best approach to combat the global plastics crisis.

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New tools aim to better predict blooms of toxic algae from Science News for Students

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New tools aim to better predict blooms of toxic algae from Science News for Students

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algae Single-celled organisms, once considered plants (they aren't). As aquatic organisms, they grow in water. Like green plants, they depend on sunlight to make their food.

app Short for application, or a computer program designed for a specific task.

asthma A disease affecting the body's airways, which are the tubes through which animals breathe. Asthma obstructs these airways through swelling, the production of too much mucus or a tightening of the tubes. As a result, the body can expand to breathe in air, but loses the ability to exhale appropriately. The most common cause of asthma is an allergy. Asthma is a leading cause of hospitalization and the top chronic disease responsible for kids missing school.

bacteria (singular: bacterium) Single-celled organisms. These dwell nearly everywhere on Earth, from the bottom of the sea to inside other living organisms (such as plants and animals).

biology The study of living things. The scientists who study them are known as biologists.

bloom (in microbiology) The rapid and largely uncontrolled growth of a species, such as algae in waterways enriched with nutrients.

carbon dioxide (or CO ₂) A colorless, odorless gas produced by all animals when the oxygen they inhale reacts with the carbon-rich foods that they've eaten. Carbon dioxide also is released when organic matter burns (including fossil fuels like oil or gas). Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping heat in Earth's atmosphere. Plants convert carbon dioxide into oxygen during photosynthesis, the process they use to make their own food.

cell The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism. Typically too small to see with the unaided eye, it consists of a watery fluid surrounded by a membrane or wall. Depending on their size, animals are made of anywhere from thousands to trillions of cells. Most organisms, such as yeasts, molds, bacteria and some algae, are composed of only one cell.

chlorophyll Any of several green pigments found in plants that perform photosynthesis - creating sugars (foods) from carbon dioxide and water.

colleague Someone who works with another; a co-worker or team member.

computer model A program that runs on a computer that creates a model, or simulation, of a real-world feature, phenomenon or event.

computer program A set of instructions that a computer uses to perform some analysis or computation. The writing of these instructions is known as computer programming.

cyanobacteria A type of bacteria that can convert carbon dioxide into other molecules, including oxygen.

cyst A group of cells that form a type of bubble-like shell or sac. Some cysts develop as a result of disease or tissue damage. Others may develop as a normal, protective during certain phases of a parasite's maturation.

diarrhea (adj. diarrheal) Loose, watery stool (feces) that can be a symptom of many types of microbial infections affecting the gut.

dolphins A highly intelligent group of marine mammals that belong to the toothed-whale family. Members of this group include orcas (killer whales), pilot whales and bottlenose dolphins.

domoic acid A toxin produced by some algae. If ingested by humans or other animals, it can cause brain damage, seizures and memory problems.

endangered An adjective used to describe species at risk of going extinct.

environment The sum of all of the things that exist around some organism or the process and the condition those things create. Environment may refer to the weather and ecosystem in which some animal lives, or, perhaps, the temperature and humidity (or even the placement of components in some electronics system or product).

Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) A national government agency charged with helping create a cleaner, safer and healthier environment in the United States. Created on Dec. 2, 1970, it reviews data on the possible toxicity of new chemicals (other than foods or drugs, which are regulated by other agencies) before they are approved for sale and use. Where such chemicals may be toxic, it sets limits or guidelines on how much of them may be released into (or allowed to build up in) the air, water or soil.

flagella (sing. flagellum) A thread-like structure that comes out of certain types of cells. The term derives from the Latin word for whip. And that's because the structures serve like oars to help these cells travel.

freshwater A noun or adjective that describes bodies of water with very low concentrations of salt. It's the type of water used for drinking and making up most inland lakes, ponds, rivers and streams, as well as groundwater.

global warming The gradual increase in the overall temperature of Earth's atmosphere due to the greenhouse effect. This effect is caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons and other gases in the air, many of them released by human activity.

kelp A type of large seaweed that is usually a type of brown algae. They grow underwater and form large forests, providing habitat for many organisms. Some kelp forests are so large they can be seen from space.

marine mammal Any of many types of mammals that spend most of its life in the ocean environment. These include whales and dolphins, walruses and sea lions, seals and sea otters, manatees and dugongs - even polar bears.

microcystins A class of toxins produced by some freshwater algae that are also known as cyanobacteria. Most of these toxins work by poisoning the liver.

microscope An instrument used to view objects, like bacteria, or the single cells of plants or animals, that are too small to be visible to the unaided eye.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (or NOAA) A science agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Initially established in 1807 under another name (The Survey of the Coast), this agency focuses on understanding and preserving ocean resources, including fisheries, protecting marine mammals (from seals to whales), studying the seafloor and probing the upper atmosphere.

nutrient A vitamin, mineral, fat, carbohydrate or protein that a plant, animal or other organism requires as part of its food in order to survive.

oceanography (adj. oceanographic ) The branch of science that deals with the physical and biological properties and phenomena of the oceans. People who work in this field are known as oceanographers.

organism Any living thing, from elephants and plants to bacteria and other types of single-celled life.

paralysis (adj. paralytic) The inability to willfully move muscles in one or more parts of the body. In some cases, nerves that carry the signal to move may have been severed or damaged. In other cases, the brain may be the source of the problem: It may fail to understand or act on a nerve's signal to move.

phosphorus A highly reactive, nonmetallic element occurring naturally in phosphates. Its scientific symbol is P. It is an important part of many chemicals and structures that are found in cells, such as membranes, and DNA.

risk The chance or mathematical likelihood that some bad thing might happen. For instance, exposure to radiation poses a risk of cancer. Or the hazard - or peril - itself. (For instance: Among cancer risks that the people faced were radiation and drinking water tainted with arsenic.)

satellite A moon orbiting a planet or a vehicle or other manufactured object that orbits some celestial body in space.

sea An ocean (or region that is part of an ocean). Unlike lakes and streams, seawater - or ocean water - is salty.

seawater The salty water found in oceans.

secrete (noun: secretion) The natural release of some liquid substance - such as hormones, an oil or saliva - often by an organ of the body.

short-term memory (also known as primary memory) The small amount of memory held actively in the mind for a short period of time, such as the series of digits in a telephone number.

species A group of similar organisms capable of producing offspring that can survive and reproduce.

toxic Poisonous or able to harm or kill cells, tissues or whole organisms. The measure of risk posed by such a poison is its toxicity.

toxin A poison produced by living organisms, such as germs, bees, spiders, poison ivy and snakes.

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New tools aim to better predict blooms of toxic algae

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Scientists across the United States are developing programs that can predict when blooms of toxic algal may occur.

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Tiny plastic, big problem from Science News for Students

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Tiny plastic, big problem from Science News for Students

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Unsightly plastic bottles, bags and other trash give just a hint of the largely unseen problem of plastic pollution. Scientists have found tiny bits of it throughout the ocean. The bad news: Sea life can’t tell the difference between plastic and food.

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Pollution at the ends of the Earth from Science News for Students

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Pollution at the ends of the Earth from Science News for Students

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No roads lead to Kuujjuaq. You can only get to this village, high in the Canadian Arctic, by boat or plane. The trees here are stunted and small, but the bears grow big. The 500 kids who live in Kuujjuaq (pronounced KOO-joo-ak) have unusual chores: they help their parents catch fish and hunt caribou to eat. This place might seem far away from the big problems of big cities, like water pollution and air pollution. But even here, people can't escape those problems. Pretty little Kuujjuaq, with its blue skies and crystal clear waters, also has an invisible pollution problem that rivals any city.

Toxic chemicals have a surprising way of finding their way up here to the Arctic. They are gushed out of factories and cities thousands of miles away, and they travel to the Arctic like birds flying north for the summer. The birds go back home, but the chemicals stay.

Everyone in Kuujjuaq has the chemicals in their bodies. No one knows their full effects, but they may hurt children in a slow and silent way. They could cause babies to get sick a little more often. And they might even cause kids to do worse in school.

No one would have dreamed that people in such a clean and beautiful place could be hurt by pollution from thousands of miles away. Then, in 1989, some scientists made a discovery.
POPs around the world
Eric Dewailly, a doctor at Laval University in Québec, Canada, was studying chemicals called persistent organic pollutants, or POPs. These are chemicals that can hang around for a long time in people's bodies or in the environment.

Dewailly and his team tested people in the cities of southern Québec (near the border with the United States) to see how much of these chemicals were in their bodies. Dewailly's team wanted to compare this group with people in the Arctic. They reasoned that people in the Arctic lived far from pollution, and so would probably have lower levels of POPs in their bodies.

So the scientists went up to Nunavik, the remote, northern part of Québec which includes Kuujjuaq and 13 other native Inuit villages. When they tested people in Nunavik they were surprised. People there had five to ten times as much of these chemicals in their bodies as people living in polluted cities. Some of the chemicals came from as far away as Russia!

Scientists now understand why this happens. The POPs include hundreds of different chemicals. Some are used in electronic gadgets like TVs, or in the lights and electrical wiring of buildings. Some are used in paints or for making windows waterproof. Others are sprayed onto crops as pesticides. But POPs have one thing in common: They like to evaporate. Just as a puddle of water dries on a hot summer sidewalk, POPs turn slowly into vapor and drift into the air. Winds can carry them thousands of miles.

POPs travel in the air until they reach a cold place. Have you noticed that on a hot day, a glass of lemonade with ice cubes in it collects little drops of water on the outside? This is because water vapor, which is a gas in the air, "condenses" onto the cold glass and forms those droplets-the opposite of evaporating or drying. The same thing happens with POPs, says Knut Breivik, an environmental chemist at the Norwegian Institute of Air Research in the city of Kjeller.

"Things tend to evaporate in warmer regions and condense when it gets colder," says Breivik. So when winds carry POPs into the Arctic or Antarctic parts of the world, cold temperatures cause them to condense onto plants or rocks or snow or oceans. And then they stay where they landed and build up over time.
10 million tons
Over the years, more than 10 million tons of POPs have probably floated through the skies to the Arctic. If those chemicals were piled on an area the size of a football field, the pile would rise 700 meters in the air-higher than the tallest building on Earth.

Since the chemicals are spread over the entire Arctic instead of a football field, there's actually only a small amount in any one place. A swimming pool filled with Arctic Ocean water might contain only a single tiny raindrop of POPs. But these chemicals have a nasty habit of collecting inside animals and people, so even a little bit in the environment can end up causing problems.

POPs tend to stick to the oils and fats in living things, so tiny ocean animals like plankton soak them up, just like a shirt soaks up a drop of spaghetti sauce. Those plankton are eaten by larger animals, which in turn are eaten by even larger animals.

Every time one animal eats another, more POPs enter the larger animal's body. Animals can't digest POPs. They take them in the front, but never poop or pee them out the back end. So the POPs collect and collect. The biggest animals, like sea birds, seals, and whales, have the most POPs in their bodies. And these animals are eaten by native Inuit people, who have lived and hunted in Nunavik and other parts of the Arctic for thousands of years.
Two teaspoons
By the time a boy growing up in Kuujjuaq turns five years old, he may have collected one or two little rain drops' worth of POP chemicals in his body. That doesn't sound like much-but it's thousands of times more concentrated than these chemicals are in sea water. In fact, that little boy has as much of these chemicals in his 20-kilogram body as there would be in two and a half million kilograms of sea water-in other words, enough sea water to fill an Olympic swimming pool! Scientists are trying to understand how the chemicals affect kids.

Kids in Kuujjuaq play and joke around.

André Perron/Wikimedia Commons

Dewailly's team has made many trips back to Nunavik to study the problem of POPs. In 1992 and 2004, they sailed in a ship to all 14 villages along the coast of Nunavik, including Kuujjuaq. The ship stopped at each village, and doctors took blood samples and examined people. They measured POPs in hundreds of newborn babies. Blood samples were taken again when the babies turned one year old. And these babies were studied for years as they grew, to find out how the POPs in their bodies affected them over time.

These studies have shown that POP chemicals affect the health of children in small but worrying ways. For one thing, these chemicals can weaken children's immune systems, says Pierre Ayotte, a toxicologist who works with Dewailly at Laval University. "Then you're less able to fight disease," he says. Babies with the most POPs in their bodies had more ear infections and more infections in their lungs-not minor infections like colds or flu, but serious ones that affect breathing and can sometimes send you to the hospital.
Long division
These chemicals might even affect how well kids do in school. When the babies were 1 year old, the Laval University scientists gave them some tests. They tested how well the babies used their hands. They also tested how well the babies paid attention and learned when they were shown new toys. All of these tests were videotaped, and scientists carefully studied the videos afterward. What they saw surprised them.

Babies with high POPs levels weren't quite as coordinated with their hands as other babies. They also didn't pay attention quite as well when they were being shown new toys-they often stared away at other things. And during several hours of tests, these babies became upset and cried more often.

These were small differences. You wouldn't notice them unless you watched the babies closely. But when the same babies were tested again at the age of 5, the ones with high POPs still did a little worse.

"At later ages you're still at a disadvantage," says Gina Muckle, a psychologist on the Laval University team that traveled to Nunavik to test the children. Muckle thinks that even small changes can affect how children do in school as they get older. They could affect how a child responds when taught something hard, like long division-whether they meet the challenge with a positive attitude, or get upset and discouraged. Or they could affect how a child responds to the stress of going to a new school-how well they make new friends, and whether they still do well in class during those awkward times. Little differences, over the years, could add up. "Those effects," says Muckle, "are likely to be a real disadvantage overall during the life of the person."
Still trickling
No one was happy to learn that POP chemicals were hurting people in the Arctic. But finding out about the problem gave the Inuit a chance to do something about it. In the 1990s, the United Nations held a meeting, called the Stockholm Convention, to discuss banning many POP chemicals. The Inuit sent people to the United Nations to tell how POPs had affected them. Since 1998, 140 countries have agreed to stop making many POP chemicals. As a result, levels of POPs in the Arctic are falling.

But it will take a long time for the problem to go away. For one thing, buildings around the world still contain many tons of POPs in their paint and wiring. Every day, a little bit of those chemicals turns into vapor and drifts outside. Eventually, it reaches the Arctic.

Researcher Sébastien Roy tests the quality of a lake's water during the 2004 Nunavik Health Survey.

Isabelle Dubois/NRBHSS

Soil also contains huge amounts of POP chemicals-and the hot blast of a forest fire can send them into the air, just as a hot blow drier causes water to evaporate from your hair. Breivik found that major fires in 2004 and 2006 caused large amounts of POPs to go into the air and reach the Arctic. Many of these chemicals last for 100 years or longer.
Likely suspects
The other problem is that while hundreds of POP chemicals are known, there are probably others that scientists still don't know about. "There are new compounds that are ending up in remote areas," says Frank Wania, an environmental chemist at the University of Toronto in Scarborough.

Many POPs contain the element chlorine. But in the last few years, scientists like Wania have been surprised to find that two families of manmade chemicals, which contain the elements fluorine or bromine, have found their way into the Arctic. "We failed to recognize [them] until they were already accumulating in the Arctic," says Wania-meaning that large amounts of them were turning up in seals, birds and people. By the time the chemicals were discovered and banned, the damage was done.

Scientists want to get ahead of the problem. Wania has surveyed 100,000 industrial chemicals. He was looking for chemicals-you could call them "hoppers," "fliers" and "swimmers"-which might reach the Arctic. Out of those chemicals, he found 120 likely suspects that he plans to look at more closely.

All of this might seem like a lot of effort. But many scientists think it's the right thing to do. It comes down to one question, says Muckle-whether we want children to be able to grow and learn to their full potential. "The environmental contaminants are certainly an issue," she says. "As a society we need to take that into account."

Douglas Fox is a freelance journalist who writes about life, earth and Antarctic sciences.

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No roads lead to Kuujjuaq. You can only get to this village, high in the Canadian Arctic, by boat or plane. The trees here are stunted and small, but the

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Kids versus Fossil Fuels: A Chat with a Teenage Activist from Scientific American

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Kids versus Fossil Fuels: A Chat with a Teenage Activist from Scientific American

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Kids versus Fossil Fuels: A Chat with a Teenage Activist

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Scientific American spoke with Kelsey Juliana, one of the 21 kids who are suing the U.S. government over climate change

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A History of the Voting Rights Act from ACLU

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A History of the Voting Rights Act from ACLU

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The Voting Rights Act is a historic civil rights law that is meant to ensure that the right to vote is not denied on account of race or color.This will be the first election in 50 years without full protection of the right to vote for minority voters.

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The evolution of American voting rights in 242 years shows how far we've come — and how far we still have to go. Business Insider

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The evolution of American voting rights in 242 years shows how far we've come — and how far we still have to go. Business Insider

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The 19th Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920, granting women the right to vote.

The founding fathers saw voting as a fundamental component of the democracy and perfect union they sought to create.

But women, African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans were systematically denied the right to vote for centuries.

Here's a look at how voting rights in America have evolved over the centuries, and what issues remain today.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Women won the right to vote when the 19th Amendment was ratified 100 years ago on August 18, 1920.

Voting is one of America's most cherished democratic liberties, and it has a long and storied history. While the founding fathers saw voting as a fundamental component of the democracy and perfect union they sought to create, the right to vote was denied for many populations for centuries of US history.

In the beginning of the republic, voting was mainly restricted to property-owning white men, which would later be extended to all men. While the right to vote was eventually granted to women with the 19th Amendment in 1920, white women were the main beneficiaries.

Men and women of color would continue to fight to battle discriminatory voting practices for decades even after technically receiving the right to vote, culminating in the historic civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which led to landmark legislation that transformed American voting rights.

But even today, activists and civil rights groups are continuing to fight voting laws they argue are discriminatory.

Here's a look at how voting rights in America have evolved over the centuries, and what issues remain today:

In 1856, North Carolina became the last state to remove property ownership as a requirement for voting, meaning all white men could vote by this time.
Source: Constitutional Rights Foundation

After the Civil War and the end of slavery, Congress passed the 14th Amendment to extend citizenship to freed slaves. The amendment directs that "no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

This amendment gave freed African Americans citizenship, but they wouldn't get the right to vote for two more years. And even then, Southern states used a variety of tactics to suppress African American turnout for nearly a century afterwards.
Source: Library of Congress

Women's suffrage activist Susan B. Anthony was famously arrested along with 15 other women, and prosecuted for attempting to vote in the presidential election of 1872 in Rochester, New York. President Trump pardoned Susan B. Anthony on August 18, 2020.

In Detroit, former slave and fellow activist Sojourner Truth was similarly turned away when she demanded a ballot at her polling place.

The next several decades would see a surge in women's suffrage activism, including marches, lobbying, and more militant methods such as breaking windows of buildings during marches, and going on hunger strikes.
Source: History Channel

The United States has a long, painful, and complicated history with its treatment of Native Americans, and voting rights is no exception.

In 1876, a federal court ruled that Native Americans could not vote because they were not properly citizens under the 14th Amendment.

Ten years later, Congress passed the Dawes Act, which allowed Native Americans to gain citizenship if they renounced their tribal citizenship, and created a process for Native Americans to apply for naturalization in 1890.

Native Americans and other racial minority groups who had served in World War I were also granted citizenship and the right to vote in the late 1910s.

While Congress granted citizenship to all Native Americans in 1924, many state-level discriminatory policies - such as banning people living on a reservation or enrolled in a tribe from voting, or instituting fees and "competency tests" - kept them from the polls for decades.
Source: Native American Voting Rights Fund

On many DC license plates you'll see the phrase "taxation without representation" - and it's because residents of the District of Columbia paid taxes, but couldn't vote in presidential elections until the early 1960s.

While DC is allotted three electoral votes in presidential election years, they have no representation in Congress. A 1978 amendment to give DC congressional representatives ultimately failed in Congress.
Source: Time

The NVRA streamlined the voter registration process by allowing people to register to vote while obtaining or renewing driver's licenses at Departments of Motor Vehicles or other public assistance centers instead of having to apply by mail.
Source: US Department of Justice

While voting rights in America have come a long way toward ensuring equal ballot access for all, many scholars and activists argue that the overtly racist Jim Crow laws of the past have given way to discriminatory policies, like voter ID laws, cuts to early voting, polling place closures, and limits to pre-registration.

Strict voter ID laws and other restrictions enacted by Texas and North Carolina in the wake of the Shelby County v. Holder were struck down in federal court, with one federal appeals court finding that North Carolina's law targeted "African Americans with almost surgical precision."

Among voting issues and controversies in recent years, in 2018, former Georgia Secretary of State and current Governor Brian Kemp was accused of putting 53,000 voter registration applications "on hold" for mismatched names, and incorrectly purging 340,000 voters from the rolls.

In North Dakota, where most Native Americans who reside on reservations only have a PO box, the US Supreme Court upheld a state law requiring voters to bring an ID to the polls with a residential address. The ruling left Native communities scrambling to obtain proper IDs just weeks before the election.

Along with the predominately non-white citizens of American territories like Guam and American Samoa, almost 6 million taxpaying Americans with felony convictions were barred from voting in the 2018 midterms due to state-level felon disenfranchisement laws.

In November 2018, voters in Florida approved a constitutional amendment overturning the state's disenfranchisement law for good, allowing around 1 million formerly disenfranchised residents to vote. The following year, the Florida Legislature passed a law that requires people with felony convictions to pay off any court fines and fees before they can register to vote, which critics say discriminates against poorer residents who cannot afford to do so. In July 2020, the Supreme Court allowed Florida to keep this law in place - it continues to be appealed.
Sources: Brennan Center for Justice, Business Insider, Brennan Center for Justice, Rolling Stone, Associated Press, The New York Times

Voting 2018 Midterm Elections

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The 19th Amendment passed 100 years ago today. The evolution of American voting rights in 244 years shows how far we've come - and how far we still have to go

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While the founding fathers saw voting as a fundamental component of democracy, they only granted the right to vote to white, male property owners.

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Voting Rights | Articles and Essays | Civil Rights History Project | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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When Reconstruction ended in 1877, states across the South implemented new laws to restrict the voting rights of African Americans. These included onerous requirements of owning property, paying poll taxes, and passing literacy or civics exams. Many African Americans who attempted to vote were also threatened physically or feared losing their jobs. One of the major goals of the Civil Rights Movement was to register voters across the South in order for African Americans to gain political power. Most of the interviewees in the Civil Rights History Project were involved in voter registration drives, driving voters to the polls, teaching literacy classes for the purposes of voter registration, or encouraging local African Americans to run as candidates.

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The Voting Rights Act of 1965 from the United States Department of Justice

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The Voting Rights Act of 1965 from the United States Department of Justice

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The Voting Rights Act of 1965

The 1965 Enactment

By 1965 concerted efforts to break the grip of state disfranchisement had been under way for some time, but had achieved only modest success overall and in some areas had proved almost entirely ineffectual. The murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained national attention, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism. Finally, the unprovoked attack on March 7, 1965, by state troopers on peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, en route to the state capitol in Montgomery, persuaded the President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators' resistance to effective voting rights legislation. President Johnson issued a call for a strong voting rights law and hearings began soon thereafter on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act.

Congress determined that the existing federal anti-discrimination laws were not sufficient to overcome the resistance by state officials to enforcement of the 15th Amendment. The legislative hearings showed that the Department of Justice's efforts to eliminate discriminatory election practices by litigation on a case-by-case basis had been unsuccessful in opening up the registration process; as soon as one discriminatory practice or procedure was proven to be unconstitutional and enjoined, a new one would be substituted in its place and litigation would have to commence anew.

President Johnson signed the resulting legislation into law on August 6, 1965. Section 2 of the Act, which closely followed the language of the 15th amendment, applied a nationwide prohibition against the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the literacy tests on a nationwide basis. Among its other provisions, the Act contained special enforcement provisions targeted at those areas of the country where Congress believed the potential for discrimination to be the greatest. Under Section 5, jurisdictions covered by these special provisions could not implement any change affecting voting until the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia determined that the change did not have a discriminatory purpose and would not have a discriminatory effect. In addition, the Attorney General could designate a county covered by these special provisions for the appointment of a federal examiner to review the qualifications of persons who wanted to register to vote. Further, in those counties where a federal examiner was serving, the Attorney General could request that federal observers monitor activities within the county's polling place.

The Voting Rights Act had not included a provision prohibiting poll taxes, but had directed the Attorney General to challenge its use. In Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966), the Supreme Court held Virginia's poll tax to be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. Between 1965 and 1969 the Supreme Court also issued several key decisions upholding the constitutionality of Section 5 and affirming the broad range of voting practices that required Section 5 review. As the Supreme Court put it in its 1966 decision upholding the constitutionality of the Act:

Congress had found that case-by-case litigation was inadequate to combat wide-spread and persistent discrimination in voting, because of the inordinate amount of time and energy required to overcome the obstructionist tactics invariably encountered in these lawsuits. After enduring nearly a century of systematic resistance to the Fifteenth Amendment, Congress might well decide to shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victims.

South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 327-28 (1966).

The 1970 and 1975 Amendments

Congress extended Section 5 for five years in 1970 and for seven years in 1975. With these extensions Congress validated the Supreme Court's broad interpretation of the scope of Section 5. During the hearings on these extensions Congress heard extensive testimony concerning the ways in which voting electorates were manipulated through gerrymandering, annexations, adoption of at-large elections, and other structural changes to prevent newly-registered black voters from effectively using the ballot. Congress also heard extensive testimony about voting discrimination that had been suffered by Hispanic, Asian and Native American citizens, and the 1975 amendments added protections from voting discrimination for language minority citizens.

In 1973, the Supreme Court held certain legislative multi-member districts unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment on the ground that they systematically diluted the voting strength of minority citizens in Bexar County, Texas. This decision in White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755 (1973), strongly shaped litigation through the 1970s against at-large systems and gerrymandered redistricting plans. In Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980), however, the Supreme Court required that any constitutional claim of minority vote dilution must include proof of a racially discriminatory purpose, a requirement that was widely seen as making such claims far more difficult to prove.

The 1982 Amendments

Congress renewed in 1982 the special provisions of the Act, triggered by coverage under Section 4 for twenty-five years. Congress also adopted a new standard, which went into effect in 1985, providing how jurisdictions could terminate (or "bail out" from) coverage under the provisions of Section 4. Furthermore, after extensive hearings, Congress amended Section 2 to provide that a plaintiff could establish a violation of the Section without having to prove discriminatory purpose.

The 2006 Amendments

Congress renewed the special provisions of the Act in 2006 as part of the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Cesar E. Chavez, Barbara Jordan, William Velazquez and Dr. Hector Garcia Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act. The 2006 legislation eliminated the provision for voting examiners.

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By 1965 concerted efforts to break the grip of state disfranchisement had been under way for some time, but had achieved only modest success overall and in some areas had proved almost entirely ineffectual. The murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained national attention, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism.

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Nonvoters Have Valid Criticisms of the United States Government from Teen Vogue

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Nonvoters Have Valid Criticisms of the United States Government from Teen Vogue

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"The system isn't in place where we can vote for our liberation. It's in place to reform itself for the better domestically. We don't demand more from the system because the system was never designed to help everyone in the first place," Ebony Short, a black 22-year-old cofounder of Georgia State University Panthers for Black Feminism, tells Teen Vogue, speaking about how the U.S. electoral system, built in the 18th century, was created to protect the interests of states with large slave populations.

"Choosing not to vote, as I have done in the past and will do now, is the active decision to control - in some part - how I am engaging (or [not engaging]) a system I never opted to be a part of," explains Da'Shaun Harrison, a 22-year-old black organizer, writer, and former student at Morehouse College. "There are ways to be civically engaged without legitimizing this two-party system, so choosing to take ownership of my right to not legitimize this system via electoral politics is a moral and just - morally just - decision."

These young folks have valid reasons for deciding not to play further into U.S. capitalism, imperialism, and white supremacy. Many feel as if voting for legislation, initiatives, or policies that have proven to be inefficient for those on the margins is a vote for a continued system of disenfranchisement. These young black and brown folks are aware of the forces of white supremacy that they must experience, and have chosen the act of not voting as a means to make space to fight for a new and better world.

Some of those who abstain from voting donate their vote to incarcerated or undocumented folks, doing so with an understanding that the electoral system is one that is rooted in a need to protect state interests by keeping these vulnerable populations from having a voice. They find other ways to engage with their communities, outside of the voting booth.

"Nonvoters are behind the free-food drives, hurricane relief efforts, political education meetings, and more. Voting has an impact, but the people have the power," Gayla Tillman, a black 21-year-old organizer from Atlanta, and a student at Georgia State, tells Teen Vogue.

These decisions aren't made without an understanding of very real voter-suppression tactics at play throughout the country and the privilege that comes with being a U.S. citizen who can vote. These are black and brown young folks who have grown up in the Black Lives Matter era, who are looking to socialism and communism for answers about what a new social and economic reality could look like. They are people whose political identities and beliefs range outside the mainstream: Some are prison abolitionists, Marxist-Leninists, and anarchists. Many are young folks who have been on the front lines of social change and protests and refuse to compromise their politics for the sake of liberalism.

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"It's a System I Never Opted to Be a Part Of": Young People Tell Us Why They Didn't Vote

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In an op-ed for "Teen Vogue," Clarissa Brooks looks at how imperialism, white supremacy, and other issues factor into decisions not to vote in elections.

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Should 16-year-olds be allowed to vote? From PBS News Hour

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Should 16-year-olds be allowed to vote? From PBS News Hour

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Earlier this month, a Washington, D.C., city councilman proposed what hasn't been a widely embraced idea in recent years: lowering the voting age threshold in local and federal elections from 18 to 16.

Charles Allen had attempted to pass his bill once before, in 2015, but it died in committee. This time, he said, he thinks there's more support. Since the early 2010s, a handful of communities, mostly clustered in the suburbs of D.C., have already lowered the voting age to 16 for local elections, and other cities are considering similar legislation.

As young people across the country have staged protests and pressured their lawmakers for action on gun violence, largely in response to the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, the question of when teens ought to have an electoral voice has resurfaced.

Constitutional law expert Michael Morley said states, for the most part, are empowered to define their own electorates. States have broader power than Congress to set the voting age for state and local elections, though Congress regulates federal offices, he added.

Here's a look at the issue, and what it might mean for the 2018 and 2020 elections.
Why is the voting age 18?
In 1970, Congress passed a series of amendments to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of which lowered the national voting age from 21 to 18. After the amendments passed, states had one of three options, Morley said. They could comply, they could ignore the new law and wait until then-Attorney General John Mitchell enforced the rule by suing the states, or they could do what Oregon chose to do: preemptively sue Mitchell on the grounds that the amendments were unconstitutional.

Later that year, the Supreme Court heard arguments for Oregon v. Mitchell, and ultimately mostly ruled in favor of the state; the Court said Congress only had the authority to legislate voting over previously passed amendments which regulated voting rights (the 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments, for example), and over federal elections. State and local elections, the Supreme Court said, were regulated solely by the states.

But nationally, a movement was growing in favor of lowering the voting age, Morley said. The nation had been embroiled in the Vietnam War for years, and the sentiment that began to emerge was that if young men (and women) were old enough to fight in the U.S. military, they were old enough to vote. In 1971, Congress proposed the 26th amendment, and it was ratified by three quarters of the states in a matter of months - the fastest ratification of an amendment to date, Morley said.
Who has lowered the voting age since then?
According to Brandon Klugman, campaign coordinator at Vote16USA, an organization which lobbies for lowering the voting age, currently four other cities have laws allowing 16- or 17-year-olds to vote: three Maryland cities - Takoma Park, Greenbelt, and Hyattsville - allow 16-year-olds to vote in local elections; and Berkeley, California, allows 16-year-olds to vote in school board elections only.

Many states also allow 17-year-olds to vote in state and presidential primary elections if they turn 18 before the general election, according to FairVote.
Why the D.C. campaign is complicated
D.C. is a unique case. Though it operates as a city, it's also a district under federal control. So, while the 50 states can change their individual voting age requirements, only D.C. is also under the watchful eye of Congress, which can overturn legislation from the city if it wants to, Morley said.
What supporters say
Allen has a laundry list of reasons he believes the voting age is too high. Among them: 16-year-olds should have a stake in laws which affect them, such as education policy; research suggests that a strong predictor for voting habits is a record of previous voting; and as student activists around the country have demonstrated, many teenagers, "have very well thought out positions and frankly, in many cases, they're leading the adults," Allen said.

For Allen, however, perhaps his greatest motivation is that many 16-year-olds are taxpayers who cannot vote for their own elected representation. That issue speaks strongly to a councilmember in D.C., which does not have voting representation in Congress.

Allen has re-introduced his bill at a time when a youth movement is unfolding across the country, with students and teenagers are participating in advocacy, activism, and even government itself.

The national voting rights advocacy group FairVote supports Allen's bill. "Sixteen and 17-year-olds are affected by the same policies or even policies in a different way than older voters are," said Dave O'Brien, legal fellow at FairVote. "Sometimes, they'll be affected by those policies longer," like the environment, the national debt, and decisions about war. "It seems only right that they should have some sort of input into it," he added.
What critics say
Some critics say 16-year-olds aren't mature enough or don't have enough life experience.

"The arguments for lowering the voting age to 18 don't entirely translate to lowering it to 16," Morley said, referring to the 1970 campaign. "You had the notion that 18 was already adulthood in several other contexts," such as facing the draft, establishing households, and starting families. But Morley doesn't necessarily think those arguments apply to 16-year-olds, who in most cases are still legally required to attend school and generally depend on parental support.

Allen doesn't see legal adulthood as relevant.

"I think that young people have a stake in election outcomes. At age 16 your relationship with the law changes dramatically, from being able to drive on city streets to having a job and paying taxes," he said.

"There are a lot of 16- and 17-year-olds that also walk around everyday with adult responsibilities," Allen said. "Not only are they having jobs, they're a part of helping run a family. Some of them may even have kids of their own. When you think about what those responsibilities are, why shouldn't they have a voice in helping shape that?"
Why it matters
Historically, political parties have struggled to get 18- to 24-year-olds to show up on Election Day. According to census data, 50.9 percent of the 18- to 24-year-old population voted in the 1964 presidential election. While turnout was similar in the subsequent presidential election, the percentage of voters in that age bracket hasn't been as high since. The percentage didn't crack 40 percent in the 2016 election.

Despite that history, Allen thinks young people are demonstrating a willingness to get engaged. He pointed to Takoma Park, Maryland, as one example. A FairVote analysis of the 2013 election in Takoma Park showed that about 17 percent of 16- and 17-year-old eligible voters cast a ballot in the local election. That's about double the 8.5 percent of eligible 18-year-olds.

"They've shown that they will vote, and they'll vote repeatedly which is good for civics. They're getting engaged now and becoming lifelong voters," Allen said.

At FairVote, O'Brien said that it's possible that allowing teens to vote could impact the voting decisions of the larger electorate. "There might be concerns that older voters might perceive younger voters, or at least that section of the electorate, as somehow less legitimate because they're too immature," O'Brien said. "But you have that same concern whenever a new group is a brought to the electorate, whether it's women or African-Americans."

Neither Allen nor O'Brien sees the issue as partisan - "there are young people who are going to be of all political persuasions," Allen said - but Morley isn't as convinced.

Given that data suggests today's youth tend to vote more Democratic, Morley says jurisdictions' efforts to lower the voting age "could be seen not so much as an attempt to rectify some injustice, but instead as a means of trying to stack the electoral deck" in favor of Democrats.
What's next?
Klugman at Vote16USA said many states are making a good effort to increase voter turnout among young people. Currently, 13 states and D.C. allow for voter pre-registration at age 16. In California, a new law will go into effect this month, in which 16 and 17-year-olds will be pre-registered to vote when they get a driver's license. They'll have to opt out if they don't want to register.

And Klugman said that state legislators in at least three other states - New York, Virginia and Minnesota - have introduced bills to lower the voting age in state and local elections, federal elections, or both.

The next step for the D.C. bill is a hearing at the Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, which Allen chairs. He said since four of the five committee members co-introduced the bill, he anticipates it will be voted on fairly quickly this summer. It will then move to a vote before the entire city council, and, if successful, to Mayor Muriel Bowser's desk (Bowser's press secretary, LaToya Foster, said the mayor will support the bill).

By 2020, Allen hopes 16- and 17-year-olds will be able to vote in both local and federal races.

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Earlier this month, a Washington, D.C., city councilman proposed what hasn't been a widely embraced idea in recent years: lowering the voting age threshold in local and federal elections from 18 to 16.

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Does your vote count? The Electoral College explained Christina Greer

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Does your vote count? The Electoral College explained Christina Greer

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Does your vote count? The Electoral College explained - Christina Greer

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The Twenty-Sixth Amendment – Right to Vote at Age Eighteen from National ConstitutionCenter

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The Twenty-Sixth Amendment – Right to Vote at Age Eighteen from National ConstitutionCenter

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National Constitution Center - The 26th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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The 26th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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SECTION. 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

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The Fifteenth Amendment – The Right to Vote Not Denied by Race from National ConstitutionCenter

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The Fifteenth Amendment – The Right to Vote Not Denied by Race from National ConstitutionCenter

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National Constitution Center - The 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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The 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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SECTION. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

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The Nineteenth Amendment – Women’s Right to Vote from National Constitution Center

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The Nineteenth Amendment – Women’s Right to Vote from National Constitution Center

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National Constitution Center - The 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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The 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.