Emma Lim

What makes Emma Lim a Global Shaker?

18-year-old Canada-based activist, Emma Lim, has created a startlingly 21st Century environmental movement: #NoFutureNoChildren, a pledge for activists to refuse to have children until the climate crisis is brought under control. 5,000 people have signed up so far.

“I’ve always imagined I would be a mother,” she explains on the dedicated website, nofuturepledge.ca. “I know that for a lot of people, the decision to have children is something made later on in life, but for me it was never something I had to think about,” she writes.” I love children so much that I worked as a nanny over the summer between eleventh and twelfth grade.

“I read the IPCC report last September, and it terrified me. I’m only a teenager, so I’ve learned about climate change for as long as I can remember. I’ve seen it all around me too. In my province once in a century floods have started to happen every year. There are heatwaves in the summer, and in the winter we’re not able to skate on the pond anymore. But the truth is that we are in so much more danger than I could have imagined. We are facing changes that will be irreversible: the loss of ecosystems, the loss of fresh water, the loss of clean air.”

She writes that she is giving up her chance of having a family because she doesn’t want to have them if she cannot keep them safe. “It breaks my heart, but I created this pledge because I know I am not alone. I am not the only young person giving up lifelong dreams because they are unsure of what the future will hold. We’ve read the science, and now we’re pleading with our government.
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“​Please, keep us safe. Please act while there is still time.”

By 2030, a date experts stress is a crunch point for environmental action if we are to prevent the earth from warming by two degrees, Lim would still be under 30 years old.

She is closely allied to Climate Strike Canada, which pulled together a crowd of almost 15,000 people in October when Greta Thunberg came to visit — up from 500 in March.

Canada is also home to other activists including Lilah Willaimson and the team behind Sustainabiliteens in Vancouver , which has been working to make climate action the number priority to particular candidates if elected — and to advocate for 40% emissions reduction by 2023.

Last updated: November 7, 2019

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