by Lizzy Hermosilla ‘23

The name Greta Thunberg is familiar to almost everyone nationwide, but she was not the first young climate activist. Delaney Reynolds was 14 years old when she began advocating for the environment in 2014, and her Florida roots gave her the passion to start advocating for climate reform.

Reynolds splits her time between very small No Name Key, Florida, and Miami where she is currently a student at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science, studying Marine Science. 

Reynolds started her climate advocacy with her non-profit organization, The Sink or Swim Project, that has a mission to “educate, inform and engage the generations, young people alive today and those who are about to be born, who will inherit sea level rise and that must work together to solve it,” according to the non-profit’s website. As a part of the mission, Reynolds visits many elementary, middle, and high schools in South Florida to talk about the severities of rising sea levels.

Reynolds also has a very successful website that informs people about topics like coral bleaching, South Florida sea-level rising, and the effects of global warming on the insurance industry. Not only has Reynolds found success online with her blog located on her website, but she has also written three children’s books about ecology. Most recently Reynolds wrote the book, “Where did all the Polar Bears go?” in 2015 to illustrate the importance of addressing the current climate crises. 

Among the rest of Reynolds’s big strides of activism she successfully co-authored in 2017  “The Solar Mandate”  with Mayor Phil Stoddard of the City of South Miami. This law mandates any new construction of a house or material renovation of an existing home to install the maximum amount of solar panels on its roof. The Solar Mandate makes the City of South Miami the first in the state of Florida and the second in the country to have such a law.

Reynolds’s activism does not stop within the borders of Dade County, Florida but reaches the entire state. Currently, Reynolds is one of eight co-plaintiffs in the case Reynolds v. The State of Florida. In this case, the plaintiffs are suing Governor Ron DeSantis and other state agencies in Leon County Court on the grounds of the public trust doctrine outlined in the Florida Constitution. With this lawsuit, Reynolds and the other plaintiffs hope to force Florida government officials to create regulations and plans to cut carbon emissions. 

Currently 21 years old, Reynolds has been given countless awards such as the National Geographic Teen Service Award, the Miami Herald’s Silver Knight Award for Social Science, the University of Rochester George Eastman Young Leaders Award, and many others. She was also invited to speak at the United Nations and delivered a popular TEDx Talk in 2017. 

Click here, for more information on Delaney’s achievements, and here to watch her TEDx Talk.