Like many in her generation, fourth-year Faculty of Arts & Science economics and public policy student Alienor Rougeot-Maroniez has spent most of her life painfully aware of the looming climate catastrophe on the horizon.
A 2019 United Nations (UN) report projecting the world only has until 2030 to avert irreversible damage from climate change put an exclamation mark on the sense of doom many young people feel, says Rougeot-Maroniez, a member of Victoria College who will graduate this year.
“Normally, you’d be going to school to focus on securing a future, and you'd be allowed to make mistakes and have fun while you learn,” she says.
“We’re essentially being told we can't make mistakes about the planet. We have to actually get it right by 2030, by the time I'm 30. So, it's this idea that these supposedly formative years for us are really transformative years for the planet.”
Not surprisingly, the weight of those feelings can be overwhelming.
“I see a lot of young people essentially give up and say, ‘Why does it matter? Nobody is going to listen.’ So honestly, there’s quite a bit of apathy,” says Rougeot-Maroniez.
“But some of us are lucky enough to have those feelings fuel us instead.”
Her motivation has propelled her into myriad climate projects and elevated her to national prominence in the environmental movement.
We’re essentially being told we can't make mistakes about the planet. We have to actually get it right by 2030, by the time I'm 30. So, it's this idea that these supposedly formative years for us are really transformative years for the planet.
She is the organizer of the Fridays for Future movement in Toronto and helped lead a September 2019 rally which drew more than 50,000 people. Rougeot-Maroniez also participated in a climate action tour in 2019 with environmental icons David Suzuki and Stephen Lewis, ran a 2020 UN World Environment Day virtual event and spoke at the launch of the Africa Climate Action Initiative last summer.
Her list of accolades includes a 2021 University of Toronto Student Leadership Award, being named one of the top 25 environmental leaders under 25 by The Starfish Canada in 2019 and being named to the top 30 under 30 sustainability leaders list for 2019 by Corporate Knights.
The pandemic put a damper on many activities, but she has been mentoring other youth as they develop into climate justice activists and offering her services to teachers as a speaker for classroom talks with their students.
While she eventually plans to do a post-graduate degree, she’s also looking forward to applying her economics and public policy education as she launches her career after graduation this summer.
She says she will look back at U of T as the place where her attraction to the environmental movement found an early focus in modest actions that led to bigger things.
“I realized a lot of change is driven by what students demand, which inspired me,” says Rougeot-Maroniez, who credits campus student unions and faculty members for supporting the massive 2019 rally.
“I started out by doing a bit of advocacy on the U of T campus about sustainable practices in colleges and dining halls.”
Her passion for climate change dates to her childhood in Aix-en-Provence in southern France — the hometown and inspiration for painter Paul Cézanne — where her concern for migrants making perilous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea evolved into the realization many were climate refugees.
“I do care about animals and the ecosystem, but to be honest, climate change is a human rights crisis more than anything else,” says Rougeot-Maroniez, who chose U of T because she was inspired by her mother Caroline Isautier, who earned a bachelor of arts in economics in 1989 as a member of University College.
Rougeot-Maroniez says her advice to fellow students interested in the environment is to look around campus for opportunities at the grassroots level.
Getting involved in their college student union’s sustainability commission is a great place to start, she notes.
“Now is the time. Collectively mobilizing around these issues is much easier when we’re all together at university and it will get much harder to find the time and get together when we’re out in the world looking for jobs after we leave school.”