Salt Lake City, Utah

This article is published in number 13 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until March 30, 2021

“In the newspapers we read expressions such as” melting of glaciers “,” record temperatures “,” acidification of the oceans “,” increase in emissions “and we think we understand them”, writes Andri Snær Magnason, Icelandic, in a beautiful book entitled Time and water (Hyperborea). If we really understood them, we would have to make radical choices right away. Natalie and Melanie, eighth year students of the Salt Lake Performing Arts, are convinced of this.

Every week, skipping a day of school, they wander the streets of the Utah capital to try to raise awareness among their fellow citizens on the issue of climate change, in the wake of the most prominent young girls such as Greta Thunberg, Alexandra Villasenor and Nalleli Cobo. Right now, the goal is to get the University of Utah to sell off all fossil fuel investments, shifting them to sustainable energy. The climate crisis is an existential crisis, wrote an Italian spokesperson for the movement Fridays for Future, returned to the square last Friday. And Natalie confesses that she has often thought with fear about the idea of ​​having children. She too was in the square on Friday, armed with a mask, signs, banners. Someone yelled at her that nothing is true, that it’s just nonsense. But she says that when they can understand, people wake up. And then they don’t stay seated. Therefore he insists; and to power the audio system and microphones, she too rode on an exercise bike equipped with a generator. Magnason writes again: «Your time span is the time of someone you know and love and who leaves a mark on you, and the time of someone you know and love, the time on which you will leave your mark. Whatever you do has its own importance. You create the future every day that passes ».

To subscribe to Vanity Fair, click here.