Delaney Reynolds | The Sink or Swim Project

Category Archives: Delaney Reynolds

A Day in the Life at COP30

November 17, 2025 DReynolds

If you’ve been following my work for a while, you know that the annual UN Climate Conferences (COPs) aren’t exactly glamorous. They’re inspiring, stressful, frustrating, hopeful, exhausting, and energizing all at once.

Here at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, I’ve been working for the small island state of Palau, and the conference has, true to form, been all of these things rolled into one, and I thought you might find the daily details of what happens at these unique meetings interesting.

My work this year has had me deep in the weeds of climate finance negotiations, the alphabet soup of COP, where terms like NCQG (New Collective Quantified Goal), SCF (Standing Committee on Finance), GEF (Global Environment Facility), GCF (Green Climate Fund), AFB (Adaptation Fund Board), FRLD (Fund for responding to Loss and Damage), and Article 2.1(c) (all finance acronyms/terms) get tossed around like everyone was born speaking the unique United Nations language that intends to save Earth from burning. These discussions ultimately decide whether frontline communities, including small island states like Palau, will actually receive the financial support they need to survive a warming planet. Palau and developing nations like it around the world contribute nearly nothing to the cause of our climate crisis, yet are subject to its warming oceans, elevated temperatures, and rising sea levels in alarming, disproportionate ways that place their nations and the people who live there at dire risk. So yes, the stakes are high… and the hours are long.

Daily Schedule: 8 AM – 9 PM (or Later)

Most mornings start with a quick breakfast eaten while scrolling through overnight draft negotiation texts and tracking which paragraphs have magically appeared, disappeared, or multiplied. By 8:00 AM, I’m heading through security on my way to the Alliance of Small Island States’ (AOSIS) morning coordination, where small island nations coordinate their positions on different agenda topics to align as a larger group of 39 countries.

After that, and maybe grabbing another cup of coffee, it’s time to sit through, some days, four or five negotiations in a row (Article 9.5 transparency, the Standing Committee on Finance (SCF), Global Environment Facility (GEF) replenishment guidance, Adaptation Fund negotiations), and so forth. Each one with its own tone, tensions, and tiny battles hiding in the footnotes.

It is during these meetings that you hear nations argue over whether the COP will “invite,” “request,” or “urge” countries to contribute to a fund (yes, this matters). Developing countries will fight to keep language, ensuring that all developing nations, not just a select few, have access to the funds they need to protect themselves. Developed countries will insist on deleting paragraphs that micromanage the fund’s Board. Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) will try to hold the line on adaptation finance and the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG) target. Everyone will bracket everything (bracketed text is not agreed upon or official until the brackets are removed).

By late afternoon or, on many days, evening, the room temperature is usually warm (or unusually cold this year, especially for Brazil), the coffee is flowing, and the interventions start getting pointed. Sometimes even loud. In the hallways, leaders, negotiators, diplomats, and civil society huddle to strategize and support one another in a battle whose stakes are, in many cases, survival. These are the moments you realize international climate diplomacy is equal parts politics, persistence, and people.

This is the COP rhythm: intense, purposeful, and powered by caffeine, urgency, and a belief that we must do better.

A Rare Day Off: Breathing in Belém

The annual COP meetings take place over about two weeks, and participants work six days straight, taking off Sunday. Amid the choreographed chaos of COP, on my one day off, I wanted to step into a different world and spent the day at Parque do Utinga, just outside Belém, wandering along leafy trails surrounded by the symphony of the Amazon Rainforest. And honestly, it was magical.

Amazonia, long a symbolic, hopeful location for this COP meeting, is stunningly beautiful. As I strolled through Parque do Utinga, monkeys were swinging overhead from tree to tree, butterflies the size of my hand drifted by like living confetti, and birds of every color imaginable were saying hello in, I assumed, Portuguese from the canopies or while wading in tall grass. As far as you can see, there is an endless array of plant life, vines, flowers, and towering trees so tall that they reminded me exactly what we’re fighting for inside those windowless negotiation rooms back at the conference center.

For a few hours, I wasn’t thinking about brackets or paragraphs or whether “mobilize” should be replaced with “channel.” I was thinking about the Amazon, about places like Miami and Palau, about our ocean, about the ecosystems and people whose lives depend on these negotiations landing in the right place.

Why I Keep Coming Back

The work is long, and the days are longer at these conferences. And yet, moments in Parque do Utinga and in the plenary when countries stand up for justice, equity, and survival in the only international climate forum we have on earth remind me why I do this and why I love doing it.

Communities like mine in South Florida don’t have the luxury of waiting for perfect politics. Neither do SIDS, LDCs, or anyone living on the frontlines of rising seas, intensifying storms, and unbearable heat. No matter the hours or the imperfections in the process, we have no choice but to continue fighting until we solve this ever-so complex global problem.

And so, it is. Aside from the travel, long hours, and nonstop challenges of trying to get nearly 200 nations to agree on how to fix and finance the solutions needed, I plan to keep showing up. Whether tracking paragraphs, translating jargon, endlessly negotiating, or pushing for real financial answers to protect those most vulnerable, and all the rest that happens in a blur at a COP. The work is worth it for places like Miami, small island states like Palau, and, most certainly, the “lungs of the Earth,” as the Amazon has been called, to thrive, let alone survive.

#AlwaysBelieve, #BeInconvenient, #MyOceanPledge, #RatherBeInCourt, #SaveMiami, 1.5 degrees, Climate Change, Delaney Reynolds, Eco Warrior, Global Warming, Miami, Miamisearise.com, Palau, Politics, Sea Level Rise, Sea Rise, The Sink or Swim Project

Youth vs. Trump: Our Day in Court for the Climate

September 16, 2025 DReynolds

Today is a day I will never forget. Alongside 21 of my friends and fellow plaintiffs from all across these United States of America, I will walk into a federal courtroom in Missoula, Montana, to participate in a historic hearing in our case, Lighthiser v. Trump. You see, this will be the very first time in the history of our country that a federal court and judge will hear live testimony in a youth-led constitutional climate lawsuit.

For many years, young Americans like me have spoken out about the climate crisis in classrooms, at rallies small and large, in city halls, and even on the global stage about our concerns related to our warming world.

But today, September 16th, 2025, is dramatically different.

Today, we are standing in court to demand that the U.S. Constitution protect our most basic rights to life, liberty, and security.

On his first day back in office, President Trump signed a series of Executive Orders that declared a fabricated, fake “National Energy Emergency” and directed the federal government to:

• Unleash more oil, gas, and coal on public lands;

• Block clean energy programs and infrastructure; and

• Suppress climate science and the public’s access to critical data.

Those Executive Orders are already being implemented – keeping coal plants open, shutting down renewable energy projects, and cutting off the science and tools we rely on to understand and prepare for the impacts of climate change.

Our case argues that these orders are unconstitutional because they violate our rights under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The government cannot knowingly endanger young people’s lives and futures by expanding fossil fuels, blocking solutions, and silencing science. Over the next two days, the judge in our case will hear arguments on two major motions:

1. Our motion for a preliminary injunction, which asks the court to block President Trump’s Executive Orders before they cause further and irreparable harm.

2. The government’s motions to dismiss our case, which have been supported by federal agencies, 19 states, and Guam, each sympathetic to the President’s desire to embrace fossil fuel pollution rather than the health of our citizens and environment, and who have joined the case in an attempt to stop us.

Our legal team will present undeniable climate science along with the testimony from my fellow youth plaintiffs that will vividly explain how the President’s Executive Orders put us in danger. Testimony will come from a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, a Stanford energy expert, a renowned energy economist, an eminent pediatrician, a distinguished renewable energy leader, and several of us youth plaintiffs.

Our government, the defendants, has chosen not to present any witnesses. Not a single one.

To be clear, our case is not just about protecting the environment; it’s about protecting our democracy. Presidents are not supposed to be above the law. We do not have kings rule the United States. And even if there were a real “emergency,” Presidents are not supposed to trample the Constitution, override Congress, or sacrifice our lives for political purposes.

As someone who has spent most of my young life fighting for climate action in Florida, from the rising seas that flood our streets to the ever-increasing extreme heat that bakes our souls and the monster storms that batter our coasts, I know firsthand how high the stakes are this week. These short-sighted Executive Orders don’t just threaten some distant, far-away future; they make our lives and democracy more dangerous right now.

And while I never, ever imagined that at the age of 26 I’d be involved in my third lawsuit against our government, much less feel the need to sue the President, I also never imagined that I would watch our government knowingly work to unleash fossil fuel pollution while simultaneously silencing science and scientists and eliminating the sustainable energy solutions we so desperately need and, frankly, deserve. Simply stated, I’m not suing because I want to, but because I must.

Like I said, the stakes here are extraordinarily high—life and death high. If we win, the court will dismiss the President’s unconstitutional orders, protecting not only the 22 of us who are suing the President but tens of millions of others across the United States while also sending our country a clear message: the U.S. Constitution protects young people’s right to a safe climate future.

Of course, I can’t predict the outcome of our case, but I do know that this week’s hearing proves that our judicial system continues to perform an essential function as a check on abusive power in America and that young people play a truly vital role in defending our democracy and its Constitution.

Here’s to hoping that our democracy wins this historic case.

#AlwaysBelieve, #BeInconvenient, #MyOceanPledge, #RatherBeInCourt, #SaveMiami, Climate Change, Delaney Reynolds, Eco Warrior, Global Warming, Miami, Miamisearise.com, Politics, Sea Level Rise, Sea Rise, The Sink or Swim Project

Goodbye Summer, Hello Extreme Heat Season

July 22, 2025 DReynolds

It used to be that we enjoyed four seasons: winter, spring, summer, and fall. I think it’s fair to say that due to Earth’s warming temperatures from our fossil-fueled climate crisis, summer has been officially replaced (or should be) with what I’ll call Extreme Heat Season. I’d like to share two things that I found in my email inbox yesterday morning.

The first item was a “Breaking News” notification from the Miami Herald announcing something that’s, unfortunately, becoming all too common: a heat advisory being published by the National Weather Service. The article announced that our temperatures would feel (that feeling is calculated by a combination of temperature and relative humidity) as if it were 105 degrees Fahrenheit. While it comes as no surprise that it’s hot during South Florida summers, I’d like to tell you that a heat advisory is an unusual event for our region, state, or country, but that would no longer be the truth. Just last Friday, all of South Florida was treated to the first “heat advisory” of the year from the National Weather Service.

In 2023, South Florida endured 43 heat advisories. Here’s what America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had to say about 2023’s heat and extreme heat advisories:

“The record heat of 2023 was unprecedented in modern history in the number of days and hours of high heat index values. There was a total of 43 days with heat advisories across South Florida, as well as 7 days with excessive heat warnings. Naples had 53 days with at least 2 hours of heat index of 105F or higher, with most other South Florida locations between 30 and 50 days. Miami Executive Airport even had 7 days with heat index values of 113F or higher!”

In 2024, heat advisories were issued for the following number of days per county from June through August: Miami-Dade, 40; Broward, 39; Palm Beach, 29; Collier, 29; Hendry, 19; and Glades, 19. None of these totals include the three issued in May. Who knows what the total will be in 2025, but with Friday and yesterday’s news, we are off and running in our new season of extreme heat.

Today also happens to be the one-year anniversary of the hottest day ever recorded on Earth. July 22, 2024, saw global surface air temperatures hit 62.87 degrees Fahrenheit and in doing so replaced the “old” record set, you guessed it, a year earlier on July 6, 2023, when the then record of 62.76 degrees Fahrenheit was established. While 62.87 degrees sounds downright cold to us in South Florida, with an index forecast of 105 degrees, remember that these records include our entire planet, North Pole to the South Pole and all points in between.

To further “celebrate” these extreme temperatures, heat index advisories have been issued for the entire State of Florida, not just here in South Florida. For example, temperatures in central and north Florida are forecasted to feel 110 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit.

Extreme heat is known to kill more people in the U.S. than hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods combined, and they are growing at alarming rates due to the pollution being pumped into our atmosphere from fossil fuel use. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the average number of heat-related deaths per year in the U.S. rose a remarkable 95% between 2010 and 2022. And here in the Sunshine State, Florida has experienced an 88% increase in heat-related deaths from 2020 to 2023, according to the CDC.

According to Florida State University’s Florida Climate Center, Florida’s average temperature has increased 3.5 degrees since 1950, well above the worldwide increase of 2.7 degrees over that same time period. And it’s not just our temperatures here on land; our ocean temperatures are increasing at alarming rates which, in turn, melt ice around the world that increases sea levels; create a blazing hot marine oven that cooks up tropical weather in ways that produce more frequent and powerful summer storms, including monster hurricanes; and boils coastal tropical environments such as coral reefs to the point that they face extinction.

And that’s not an opinion, it’s science. Here’s a table from the National Hurricane Center, part of NOAA, that illustrates the growth of storms over the decades since 1851, when mankind’s use of fossil fuels that pollute and warm our atmosphere and oceans came into vogue:

Simply stated, if you’ve lived in South Florida for any length of time like I have and think it “feels” warmer in recent years than it used to be, you’re correct. Not only does common sense allow us to conclude that it’s warmer, but so does science. Here’s an illustration from the University of Miami’s Climate Resilience Institute based on data from NOAA and its National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI) that produces a weighted average of current and historic temperatures for Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe Counties.

So, aside from your sweating pores, this chart is further evidence that your eyes don’t deceive you. Our warming planet, fueled by fossil fuel use, and temperatures right here in South Florida are inching upwards to ever-dangerous levels, while our beloved summer, filled with beach balls, boat drinks, and white sandy shorelines, is increasingly being replaced by Extreme Heat Season.

Speaking of extreme heat and my inbox, allow me to end by sharing the opinion piece by the ever-witty Diane Roberts from yesterday’s edition of the fantastic nonprofit-independent news site Florida Phoenix:

You can’t ride out climate change in your air-conditioned cave
Science doesn’t care what Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, or Ron DeSantis believe.
Diane Roberts
July 21, 2025 7:00 am

Art work from young Floridians concerned about climate change. (Photo by Danielle J. Brown/Florida Phoenix)

If you wake up every morning worrying you’ve landed in hell, you pretty much have.

It’s hotter than Satan’s house cat.

Venture outside and it feels like you’re walking through a sauna wearing a suit made of polar bear fur while carrying a five-gallon pot of live coals.

Like so much in Florida, summer gets worse every year.

The heat is immoral; unconscionable; unendurable.

It should be illegal.

Surely Florida’s governor could figure out how to outlaw this heat.

He solved that pesky climate change business by simply erasing any mention of it in state statutes.

Maybe he could proclaim 100 degrees is really only 80, 80 is 50, and 50 is below freezing.

Kind of like what they call “vanity sizing:” A size 14 dress is now labeled a 10.

Or maybe we could use Celsius: 37 degrees sounds a lot better than 100.

See? You feel cooler already, don’t you?

Or not.

Those of us living in the reality-based culture know you cannot beat the Florida heat.

The best you can hope for is to reach some kind of accommodation with it, appease it the way the ancients would sacrifice a goat or a chicken to butter up a surly god given to smiting people for fun, or figure out ways to avoid the worst of it.

To Do List

I’m a native Floridian; I have suggestions:

1. Find a swimming pool. Lie in the water. Do not get out unless you are joined by an alligator — which happens quite often — and then extricate yourself slowly. No sudden movements. (Gators do not follow homeowners’ association rules.)

2. If reptiles run you out of the pool, try a bathtub. Yes, your skin will become quite wrinkly, but it’s better than heat rash.

3. Go shopping. You’re risking heatstroke getting from the parking lot to the door, but once you get inside your favorite big box store, the air-conditioning will be delightfully frosty.

You can spend hours and hours in Walmart, looking at “school clothes” even if you don’t go to school. Florida’s Back to School sales tax holiday runs throughout August. Unfortunately, the guns and ammo sales tax holiday doesn’t begin until Sept. 8. But it’ll still be hot enough to scald a scorpion and still be hurricane season.

You can get yourself a bargain firearm suitable for firing into the storm!

4. Bribe a grocery store or restaurant to let you sit in their walk-in freezer. Make sure you’ve got a cell signal in there: We don’t want any tragedies.

5. Speaking of ice, here’s something you can do using your home freezer. Stick a pair of jeans and a t-shirt in there, wait three hours, then put them on.
They’ll be stiff for 20 minutes or so, but you’ll enjoy the personal air-conditioning.

6. Leave. Go to Greenland.

Forget Canada (they’re certainly trying to forget us). Greenland will be the 51st state. The only reason it hasn’t happened already is that Donald Trump has been too busy blowing up the National Weather Service, NASA, and NOAA.

But you don’t want to wait till half of Florida flees our polluted aquifers, flooded suburbs, hurricane-ravaged condos and malarial sinks.

Get ahead of the crowd and scope out Nuuk’s best spots for Musk Ox steak and Eric the Red beer.

You’ll never run out of ice in Greenland.

Not for five or six years, at least.

Rising tide

This dang Chinese hoax is warming up everything from the Antarctic to the Indian Ocean to the Pacific to the north Atlantic.

Greenland’s ice sheet is melting, faster and faster every year. So are the glaciers and the icebergs.

How do I know this? Because some of NASA’s global climate change research websites are still up (see link above), but
who knows for how long.

Now where do you think that all that water from the ice sheets will go?

If you answered “everywhere,” you’re correct.

Sea-level rise is evident in this photo of a flooded palm tree taken on the Florida Panhandle’s St. Vincent Island. (Photo by Susan Cerulean)

If you said, “Especially Florida,” you get bonus points.

One of the annoying little quirks of vast quantities of melting ice is rising sea levels.

We live in the southernmost state, the most watery state, the one that floods if you stare at it hard.

A lot of us live just a few feet above sea level.

Since 1970, the sea level has risen seven inches, which might not sound too bad, except even a Category 1 hurricane — Debby in 2024, say — can produce a storm surge of 2-5 feet.

With a whopper like Helene, it’s more like 15 feet.

You see the problem.

Seas aren’t only rising, they’re getting hotter. Hotter seas breed bigger storms.

Over the past few weeks, the temperature of the Gulf of Mexico (no, I’m not calling it by that fake Trump name) has ranged from 80 to 92 degrees.

The warmer the water, the faster it evaporates, the faster it evaporates, the heavier the rainfall.

Add to that temperatures in the high 90s and you get a heat-plus-humidity situation which almost certainly violates the Geneva Conventions on torture.

Compared to the poor souls along the Guadalupe River in Texas, we’ve been lucky.

Our luck is unlikely to hold. Every part of Florida is susceptible to flash floods.

Deflection, denial

This is, of course, a global problem.

China is now the worst greenhouse gas offender, but the U.S. is right behind and, given how the regime hates being Number Two, I’m sure we will soon regain the title of Biggest Threat to Human Life on Earth.

New research by the nonprofit Climate and Community Institute shows the 17% increase in the Pentagon’s budget translates into an enormous increase in carbon emissions: 178 tons in 2026.

That’s half of what the entire United Kingdom emits.

We’re not stopping there, either. Trump is enabling extractive industries to pillage the land from sea to shining sea, making swinging cuts to wind and solar energy programs, and ordering an ancient, costly, and dirty Michigan coal plant to stay open.

What, you ask, is Florida doing about this?

(Can you hear me laughing bitterly?)

To be fair, the governor did sign a ban on drilling along the Apalachicola River.

But when it comes to the climate crisis, he deflects and denies.

In addition to trying to deep-six the whole issue by refusing to name it and calling attempts to address the causes of the precipitous rise in temperatures “left-wing stuff,” he wants you to believe monster storms have always happened in

Florida and always will.

It’s just “tropical weather.”

And despite what Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia U.S. representative and weekend scientist, says, weather is not controlled by the government.

But just to be sure, she says she’ll sponsor legislation prohibiting “the injection, release or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate or sunlight intensity.”

Photo courtesy of Florida Skywatchers Facebook page.

Ahead of the curve

Florida, always ahead of the crazy curve, has already passed such a bill, and the governor has signed it.

He cites dark fears of “chemtrails” deployed by shadowy green activists trying to fight climate change by “injecting different things in the atmosphere, blocking the sun and doing all this stuff.”

He added, “We’re the Sunshine State. We want to have the nice sunshine.”

First of all, “chemtrails” are not a thing. Those white lines swooshing behind aircraft are condensation trails, i.e. little bitty ice crystals formed when the exhaust from the plane hits the cold high-altitude air.

Second, while there’s some preliminary research on using geoengineering to reflect sunshine back into space, we don’t know how this might affect rainfall or food production and many scientists don’t think it’s feasible or desirable.

Moreover, why spend billions fooling with the sun when we could develop sustainable power, stop burning fossil fuels, encourage clean energy, and hold polluters accountable for destroying the environment.

Despite most Floridians figuring they can ride this thing out in their air-conditioned caves; the reckoning will soon come.

The hotter it gets, the more air-conditioning we’ll use; the more we crank up the AC, the hotter it gets.

No matter what nonsense the MAGA brain trust comes up with, data are still data.

Storms are stronger. The seas are invading. The heat is becoming increasingly deadly: Florida leads the nation in heat-related illnesses.

Science doesn’t care what Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, or Ron DeSantis believe.

As I said, you can’t beat the heat. But the heat can — and will — beat you.