In Magoffin County, eastern Kentucky, where Lily Gardner was born, people sometimes play a game when they’re driving on the highway: spot the coal seam. ‘If you’re looking for them, you can still spot a stripe of coal in the mountains there,’ Lily says. ‘People point to that and say, “Look, we still have coal. We could still be mining.”’ The last coalmine in Magoffin County closed in 2015.
Lily is a 15-year-old activist with Sunrise Movement, the prodigious youth climate organization which has, in a matter of months, managed to mainstream the idea that the climate crisis requires a radical transformation of the US economy.
