As the Trump administration slashes climate funding and companies miss emissions targets, there’s a growing need for innovative ways to cut carbon and adapt to a hotter world. These leaders are shielding residents from extreme heat (Yassamin Ansari), demanding richer nations spend more to protect the Global South (Chandni Raina) and deploying artificial intelligence to speed the energy transition (Jon Hennek).
Yassamin Ansari | US Representative, Arizona
Yassamin Ansari’s tentative plan after graduating college was to work with refugees in Turkey. But a brief phone call with Bob Orr, then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s climate adviser at the United Nations, changed her mind. He explained how global warming exacerbates existing problems, including refugee crises. “I was 100% convinced that I needed to go work for him at the UN and on climate,” she says. So she did.
After helping work on the Paris Agreement at the UN and organizing some climate conferences, she moved back to her home state of Arizona. There, the Iranian-American tackled climate issues as a member of the Phoenix City Council, helping establish the city’s heat office and pushing through a plan to electrify city buses by 2040.
Now in federal office, she’s calling out the fossil fuel industry’s influence in Washington and introducing legislation on extreme heat “so that Arizonans can afford to keep their air conditioning on in the summer,” she says.
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