In mid-August, to much fanfare, sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg set sail from England on the Malizia II, a solar-powered yacht. With a small crew, she embarked on a journey across the Atlantic in order to attend the UN Climate Action summit in New York in September.

I am usually late to catch on to shifts in the zeitgeist; this one came to my attention just recently. While watching the HBO show High Maintenance, I noticed that Lee, the protagonist’s hip and beautiful love interest, was sporting hairy armpits.

On August 12, twenty-one young Americans, led by the organization Our Children’s Trust, filed a lawsuit against the federal government. By now, President Obama is used to getting sued, but these were not his usual adversaries.

Earlier this month, Gov. Jerry Brown’s announcement of California’s first-ever mandatory restrictions on water use drew attention to the state’s uneasy relationship with its natural resources.

In the United States, there is famously little consensus on the topic of climate change. But among the community most concerned about it, certain convictions are widely shared: Fossil fuel emissions deserve nearly all the blame for warming our planet.