Jerome Foster II, White House climate advisor; environmental-justice activist
Insider Events
Jerome Foster is protesting the UN climate conference in Egypt, citing LGBTQ abuses
The young climate activist also advises the White House on environmental justice issues.
Foster spoke to Insider as part of its Climate Heroes 2022 event.
Watch the full event here.
Jerome Foster is at the forefront of youth climate activism, but he won’t be attending the United Nations’ climate conference this year in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
Foster, who is gay, and his partner, Elijah Mckenzie-Jackson, in July asked the UN to move COP27 to another country in Africa, citing Egypt’s treatment of LGBTQ people and the government’s suppression of its critics. One of the co-signers of the letter was Ahmed Alaa, an Egyptian who was imprisoned for three months in 2018 after waving a rainbow flag at a concert.
“We are in a moment when we have to be intersectional in how we think,” said Foster, the youngest member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and among Insider’s Climate Action 30 leaders. Foster spoke as part of an Insider event moderated by Catherine Boudreau, senior sustainability reporter. The event was part of Insider’s series Climate Heroes 2022: Working Toward Solutions, which highlighted various leaders’ efforts to address the climate crisis.
“We shouldn’t be scared to go to a climate conference, where we’re trying to fight for the right for our planet, but putting our lives at risk just because we love someone,” Foster said. “If we have this dialogue with the absence of LGBTQ+ people, we won’t have our critical voices at the table.”
Watchdog groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch this year reported a pattern of abuse by the security forces of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, despite his launch of a national human rights strategy in 2021. The pattern includes jailing peaceful political activists and violating people’s rights on the basis of sex, gender identity, secual orientation, and religious beliefs.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told the Associated Press in July that there will be a “facility adjacent to the conference center” for activists.
Foster told Insider that isn’t enough.
“Their response is really inadequate, because it isn’t just about the people that are going to this conference,” he said. “It’s about the people that are in Egypt and that are suffering and that are in prison right now.”
Foster is advocating for an intersectional approach to climate action in the US, too. His White House advisory role involves implementing President Joe Biden’s Justice40 initiative, a promise to spend 40% of certain climate and clean energy funding in communities that are overburdened with pollution and historically underinvested in — typically Black and Brown communities.
This is a major lift following the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act, which authorizes nearly $370 billion in climate spending over a decade.
“A lot of what comes down to whether bills are good or bad is how they’re implemented and how communities actually benefit from them,” Foster said. “It’s often universities or white-led organizations that have had hundreds of years to operate that get this funding, even though it’s intended for marginalized communities.”
Ending fossil fuel subsidies would also go a long way, a policy Foster is pressing the Biden administration on. He warned that continuing to hand out tax breaks for fossil fuel expansion could wipe out a lot of the climate progress to date.
Ultimately, what drives Foster today is advocating for communities around the world that contributed the least to the climate crisis, yet are experiencing the most devastating impacts.
“Climate change often is only seen as a recent issue,” he said. “But actually, we have to think back to the roots of it, and it starts with that mindset of colonialism, that mindset of extraction. That has to be rethought.”