(Picture credit City of Lincoln)
Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird announced she was launching a new Youth Climate Action Fund that will provide microgrants of $1000-5000 for young people between the ages of 15 and 24.
“One of my top priorities after taking office was to ensure that our community would be well-informed of the climate risks we face and be prepared to mitigate them and adapt,” Gaylor Baird said during a Thursday press conference announcing the new initiative.
“From the outset, we knew that engaging our community and the next generation would be fundamental to our success,” she added. “The city of Lincoln applied for and received a $50,000 grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to launch our Youth Climate Action Fund.”
Gaylor Baird said Lincoln is one of only 300 cities worldwide to receive grant money as part of the initiative. Omaha announced last month that it was also joining the program.
The projects are being fully funded by left-wing billionaire Michael Bloomberg through his foundation. The foundation launched the initiative in cities nationwide in 2024 with the goal of “meeting decarbonization commitments or reducing consumption-based emissions.”
“Climate change is an all-hands-on-deck challenge, and it’s critical that young people – who have the most at stake – help lead the way,” Bloomberg said in a statement during the initial launch of the initiative.
Program Part of Larger Climate Plan
According to the city, the Youth Climate Action Fund will be integrated as part of Lincoln’s current Climate Action Plan (CAP), which runs through 2027, and includes the goal of decarbonization and inclusivity.
The city of Lincoln has eight “action areas” as part of its CAP — young adults who submit plans under YCAF will focus on four areas: climate resilience, local food, waste reduction, and transportation.
The city of Lincoln’s chief sustainability officer Kim Morrow gave several examples of what the city was looking for in project proposals, including: fashion shows with upcycled clothing, food drives, and organizing a contest to encourage people to stop driving cars.
“The Youth Climate Action Fund gives us a clear path to engage our young people – to meet them where they are, to invest in their ideas, and to harness their energy and ingenuity into the work of building a more sustainable Lincoln. In this way, our youth can directly shape the future of their own community,” Morrow said.
Bloomberg Funds Far-Left Ideas
Bloomberg Philanthropies has used the YCAF funding to seed projects run by far-left groups in cities across the world. Grants in other cities have been used to fund anti-capitalist and socialist organizations with goals broader than just environmental work.
In Melbourne, Australia, the city used Bloomberg’s money to help fund youth activists who championed “climate justice” with the goal of keeping “fossil fuels in the ground.”
“At the root cause is a colonial system that puts the profits of big polluters over Aboriginal land rights, the wellbeing of our communities and the environment,” the group said, adding it had a “vision for the future where systems of injustice are torn down.”
In California, the city of Long Beach awarded grant money to organizations that aligned itself with the city’s “Racial Equity and Reconciliation Plan,” with grants going to anti-capitalist groups.
The local grants are not one-off initiatives either. Bloomberg Philanthropies has larger climate goals that seek to reshape the country.
In 2019, the organization launched an initiative called “Beyond Carbon” in which the group committed $500 million to an effort to close every single U.S. coal plant by 2030 while stopping any new building of natural gas infrastructure.
The foundation has since committed another $500 million towards the effort.
Bloomberg said he has organized his climate initiatives because he believes the government has failed to act on climate change. The YCAF seeks to have a part in “helping a new generation believe in government again.”
The application window for the YCAF program in Lincoln opens August 26 and closes October 7.
— John Gage is the executive editor of The Plains Sentinel.
And they would all fail to pass this quiz. https://co2coalition.org/climate-quiz/
Is it my imagination, or is Gaylor Baird moving more and more to the left?