I often think of how my great-great-grandmother Maria must have felt trying on shoes for the first time at age eleven. I think of how her daughter Rina must have felt when her husband abandoned her shortly after the birth of my grandmother, leaving her with two kids and no clear way forward in Italy during the aftermath of World War II. I think of the struggle my whole family went through to raise my grandmother Graziella and my great-aunt Carla. I think of Graziella’s husband of fifty years—my grandfather Romano—who vividly remembered his older sister grabbing his hand and begging him to run faster, bomb sirens wailing overhead, until the day he died.

These stories scare the deepest parts of my soul. I don’t want to live like my Graziella’s grandfather, Tommaso, who owned a small charcoal shop in a village in Italy, doing

back-breaking work from morning to night. My family has persevered through great difficulties for hundreds of years under Italy’s sharecropping system, called “mezzadria.” Even after being freed from the shackles of this archaic feudal system, they were thrown into the woes of World War II. In 80 short years, my family came to the U.S. and turned their life around. Most families change and forget, but my family chose to change and remember, and this gives me something to fight for.

So, with the understanding that modernity brings opportunity comes the desire to ensure that this opportunity exists for those who will come after me, whether they are related to me or not. It would break my heart if my five-year-old cousin had to spend the final third of her life living in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. With this desire to fight comes an optimistic vision of the future revolving around innovation, adoption and social change. Innovation has repeatedly changed the way people live, and it will do so again. In the last 100 years, technology has developed to vastly improve people’s lives. Eighty years ago, U.S. scientists created the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction, paving the way for nuclear power, which today provides the world with cheap, safe and green electricity. Ninety years ago, polyethylene plastic was synthesized for industrial use, setting the stage for the modern plastic-based economy. Today’s scientific and engineering challenges such as genome editing, industrial-scale nanomaterials and fusion energy currently seem unsolvable but will be more realistic with every passing decade. By understanding that humanity does not need all the solutions right now, pessimism about the current state of things may be replaced with hope for the future. Technology adoption is crucial to a green transition. A lot of energy-hungry countries like the U.S., China, India and Indonesia all use significant amounts of coal despite the availability of greener options, such as nuclear, or cheaper options, such as geothermal. State-of-the-art technologies like biodegradable plastics, modern heat insulation and heat pumps promise to deliver results as soon as they are employed. These technologies could make an impact today but need to be deployed at a large scale to be able to do so. Social change is required to reach a future where people can emit zero net greenhouse gasses. Reduction in consumption will alleviate many pressing problems, from e-waste to plastics, but requires a fundamental change in the way societies across the globe view consumption. A change that will have a very strong impact, for example, is allowing more electronic devices to have replaceable batteries. Most cell phones and laptops have their battery as their first component of failure. Despite this, most people replace a phone when it gets old and stops working, instead of investigating the source of the issue and replacing the battery if needed. Therefore, the question is not why I’m fighting but why you’re pessimistic about the future. When people feel powerless and don’t take action, they give up all their agency and let bad actors have their way. By understanding that the future need not be gloomy, we can shape the future to best fit our idyllic vision. To reach the point of net zero, it is important that environmentalists understand that giving up is the single most selfish thing they could do. Had any of my family members thrown their arms in the air and given up, then I would not have been here today, and if I give up, I am effectively reducing the quality of life of the people after me, like my baby cousin. Climate change is an ever-more pressing issue, and it therefore demands more people to care, not fewer. We need to fight to preserve the quality of life we’ve gained over the past 100 years and must strive to do so in the most environmentally-friendly manner possible.