Teen urges others to embrace climate education

Written By Peter Allan

Lily YangLiu (third from the right) listens to a speaker at the Villars Symposium in Switzerland. Photo courtesy of Villars Institute

 

By Patricia Lane & Lily YangLiu

Lily YangLiu is a social media educator and advocate who ensures youth voices are represented at international climate talks. This 16-year-old also advises the BC government on climate curriculum and is designing a 135-hour climate education program for elementary school students. She was named a 2025 Top 25 Women of Influence Canada and is a Starfish Canada Top 25 Environmentalist Award winner.

Tell us about some of your work.

I have had more than 70 million views on my Mandarin WeChat channel, where I help audiences understand the connection between climate change and their lived experience of floods, heat and extreme weather. As the deputy executive director at the DMUN Foundation, I have helped to bring 700 young people from 30 different countries to multiple United Nations talks and conferences, raising funds to cover their transportation and accommodation and ensuring they have meaningful engagement when they are there. I work with For Our Kids Canada to develop a school-based curriculum — Young Environmental Leaders (YEL) — to persuade our British Columbia government to make climate education mandatory for all students.

I post on WeChat every day because I know it is impossible for many people in China to access reliable information about climate change. When I was a young girl in Beijing, I had terrible asthma, requiring multiple trips to the emergency room. In Wuhan, where we spent summers, my grandmother had to get up at 3 a.m. to tend her garden because it was too hot during the day. The levels of pollution from burning fossil fuels and the extreme weather were treated as normal, and we never mentioned climate change.

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Lily is a National Youth Climate Activism winner for 2025

 
Peter Allan
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