INSPIRING HOPE FOR A BETTER PLANET

MEET EIGHT INNOVATORS WHO ARE COMING UP WITH CREATIVE SOLUTIONS TO THE CLIMATE CHALLENGES FACING THE WORLD

THIS SUMMER, THE HOTTEST ON RECORD, may go down in the history books as the turning point when climate change became truly personal. Extreme weather has become our new normal, affecting a majority of Americans and many millions more around the world: deadly heat waves across the U.S., Mexico, southern Europe and China; torrential rain and flash flooding in Chicago and the Hudson Valley; intense wildfires, first in Canada, blanketing cities a thousand miles away with smoke, then in Hawaii, which quickly became the deadliest such blaze in a century.

It's not exactly surprising then that nearly half of Americans now feel that climate change poses a serious threat in their lifetimes, according to a recent Gallup poll-including about 60 percent of people ages 18 to 34. With the most at stake over the coming decades, it's also not surprising that young people are the ones leading the way to find solutions to our global environmental challenges, many of them rejecting prevailing climate gloom-and-doom to focus on ways to sustain hope for the future of the planet.

On the following pages, you will meet eight of these young climate pioneers, the first in a series of profiles of "Planet Heroes" on Newsweek's new content hub Better Planet (newsweek.com/ better-planet). This new section highlights the innovators and innovations leading the way to a healthier, safer world, and the actions we can take to help the environment. Because the first step in making a difference is recognizing that we can.

MAKING INDUSTRIAL CHEMICALS WITHOUT THE CARBON EMISSIONS

Gaurab Chakrabarti & Sean Hunt FOUNDERS, SOLUGEN

by DAVID H. FREEDMAN

A BIG, BUBBLING CAULDRON OF CORN SYRup sounds like an unlikely weapon against global warming. But Gaurab Chakrabarti and Sean Hunt think it holds the key to a new carbon-neutral way of making everyday chemicals for households and industries.