Jerome Foster II is the White House’s youngest-ever advisor and he’s got a message for politicians who fail to tackle climate change: “We are going to vote them out. Either they stand up or they step down.” 

Tough talk from a teenager barely out of high school but Jerome, born in 2002, has the ear of Joe Biden. He sits on the US Environmental Justice Advisory Council and earned his place at the table. For 58 straight weeks, Jerome stood outside the White House every Friday during Donald Trump’s presidency and held a cardboard sign - ‘School strike for climate’.

“Sometimes, just holding it makes me feel better,” Jerome told The Washington Post in 2020. “It’s an opportunity to shift that anxiety into a symbol of resistance, however small.”

In March 2021, Biden’s administration brought Jerome in from the cold and put him to work. They saw the potential in a teenager who’d already worked as a White House intern and founded an advocacy organization, OneMillionOfUs, to lobby young Americans to make their vote count. Young people made up one in every five votes in 2020, Jerome notes. (Up significantly from 2016.)
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The making of an environmental superhero

Jerome grew up in Washington, D.C. His father, an engineer, and mother, a nurse, were civil rights organizers who helped with the Million Man March on Washington to promote African American unity in 1995. Jerome was watching environmental documentaries from the age of five and started asking questions like: “Hey, are you guys hearing this? Shouldn’t we be doing something?”

Jerome’s parents were soon bringing him along to Earth Day workshops. He wasn’t overly concerned about politics until Donald Trump’s election in 2016.

“I wasn’t political at all,” Jerome told The Guardian. “And then after the election I understood the power and impact in electing one incredibly bad person to office. I was like, ‘Wow, this is really setting us back.’”
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The slow grind of politics

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Foster started working as an intern for the late Congressman John Lewis and with the non-profit Citizens Climate Lobby. He was frustrated by the slow pace of politics - Democrats who didn’t want to push change and some Republicans who didn’t accept environmental science. He still gets frustrated, particularly after the UN conference in 2021 didn’t resolve how to limit global warming to well below 2 - and ideally 1.5 Celsius - above pre-industrial levels, a target set in Paris in 2015.

“I think, right now, the word isn’t ‘optimism’. It’s ‘frustration’ because if we continue to have hopeless optimism then what’s the goal in that? What’s the productivity in that?” he told PBS after the COP26 conference.

Activism as a tool to fight climate change

Robert Bullard, a fellow White House advisor, told journalists that he’s known Foster since 2019 and was ‘super impressed’: The White House “needs this intergenerational voice and energy pushing for transformative change.”

Jerome is keenly aware of the detrimental impact climate change and pollution have on low-income communities and people of color both inside and outside of the US.

“The vast majority of those suffering the consequences of the climate crisis are indigenous women of color trying to feed their children. They are confronted with food shortages, famine, and death. Nearly 1,000 children a day are dying because of this crisis,” he said in a speech to the League of Conservation Voters (LCV).
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His oratory skills have struck a chord with environmentalists, voters, and celebrity campaigners. Jane Fonda tweeted a photo with Jerome after his LCV speech. Foster helped inspire the actress and her Fire Drill Fridays movement.
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Steering the future‍

Jerome has also taken matters into his own hands rather than wait for politicians who’ve already had 50 years to understand the crisis and failed to solve it: “We’re done spoon-feeding you. We’re moving on, next step, next phase.”

In addition to founding the youth advocacy organization OneMillionOfUs, he founded The Climate Reporter website that lets climate activists share stories internationally. He has marched, campaigned, and addressed the UN.
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Foster graduated from Washington Leadership Academy in June 2020 and studies computer science at New York’s private Pace University. Somewhere along the line, he found time to take a Harvard course in International Environmental Governance, Policy, and Social Justice.

And, of course, he’s been busy advising Joe Biden’s government on what young environmentalists expect of politicians and how best to enact change. During White House meetings, Jerome is usually the only person in the room under the age of 40. “I didn’t expect this to happen so soon, it was like, ‘Wow, this is crazy,’” he said.

“When I got there I was like, ‘Am I supposed to be here?’ But it was their intention to bring in the youth perspective on climate change. I was a bit startled at first but now I’m getting used to it.”

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The next chapter

In 2022, Jerome was working on the language of a White House executive order involving environmental justice, finding a way to ensure fair treatment and involvement of Americans regardless of race, color, national origin, or income.

A huge challenge still lies ahead if the world is to avoid heat waves, flooding, and climate-driven disasters while giving a voice to the disadvantaged - but that’s what Jerome signed up to do. “I need to organize and make sure their voices are heard as well.”

Jerome has banded together with other young people concerned about the environment and climate change but said he doesn’t want to devote his life to activism and neither do they. That’s why they’re putting political leaders on notice: Stand up or find another job. 

“No one wants to sit here and beg politicians to do the things that they were hired to do. In 10 years’ time, I don’t want to still be fighting about clean air and clean water.”