May Boeve

May Boeve is an American environmental activist. She is a founder and executive director of 350.org, a climate NGO.

"May Boeve: the new face of the climate change movement" (2015)

 * "May Boeve: the new face of the climate change movement", The Guardian (8 April 2015)


 * There’s a structural sexism problem, full stop. If you look at the numbers, they don’t lie. There’s just not as many women leading, in that sense – running the organisation, being the figurehead.
 * So many people feel connected to the climate change movement and it’s important for everyone who’s involved, whether they’re a school teacher in the UK or a farmer in Burundi, to see themselves in this movement. So the more leaders who reflect the diversity of the movement, the broader, the bigger, the stronger the movement will be.


 * All of our stories are important.


 * I was one of those kids who ran lemonade stands to raise money for [animal rights group] Peta on the weekends. I was really into activism, I still am. To be part of a community who share this passion, this set of values, is what I want for my life.


 * The idea was ‘we’ll run this campaign and we’ll see what happens’. It’s only been recently that the idea that this is actually a long-term thing has become real.


 * Mere months after the fossil fuel divestment campaign really took off, MSCI, which is one of Morgan Stanley’s offshoots, ranked divestment as the number one trend for investors to watch.


 * The fossil fuel industry’s political power warps the entire debate, so it would be one thing if politicians were discussing climate policy in good faith, absent fossil fuel lobbying money. If that were the case, we’d have solved this problem by now. But divestment gives us a very direct way of calling into question the social license of the fossil fuel industry and that is in fact a tool to see the kind of policy change we need.