When Alexia Lecleroq was little, she remembered being yelled at for playing outside in the acid rain. she remembered the city was shutting down because of poor air quality. At an early age, she saw the pollution and health consequences and realized they were having a big effect on her health and growth, and this set of her interest in becoming a social environmental activist. She says, “Climate and environmental justice have become a personal and pressing issue.” It also made clear something that has since been the foundation for all her activism: connection matters,

It’s why she co-founded two nonprofits - Start: Empowerment and the Colorado River Conservancy, engaging student volunteers to make climate education public. It’s why she pushed to bring clean water to East Austin, Texas, where her family lived at that time, and had poisonous tank farms (油罐区) relocated away from residential neighborhoods

Last year, the WWF awarded her the 2022 Conservation Leadership Award that honors the people who push the envelope in environmental conservation. Alexia made herself worthy of the award by demonstrating what a youngster could create with new ideas and her ongoing efforts in the field. That same year, she co-authored a piece in Teen Vugue about why we can’t “influence” our way out of the climate crisis and we need more grassroots organizations.

She shared in an interview, “I grew up with a very collectivist belief and this is what I have been impressing on the community because we aren’t separate.” As a longtime social- environmental justice organizer, she has gained a lot. A key concept underpins all of Alexia’s effort: We’re connected to the land and to each other. “I seek to develop my educational leadership skills. Youth in community should be empowered to make a difference,” she added, explaining her reasons for coming to Harvard.

London Fashion Week will not feature any animal fur clothes or accessories(配饰) on the runway this year, making it the first fur-free major fashion week.

In a statement, the BFC said: "The BFC survey results reflect a cultural change not only based on ideals and choices made by designer businesses, international brands as well as consumer feeling but also encouraged by the attitude of multi-brand stores who are moving away from selling fur.”

There is increasing pressure from anti-fur protesters(抗议者) to ban fur or boycott designers that use the material. During last year's London Fashion Week, there were 250 anti-fur protesters, The Guardian reported, and a show in February saw an activist storm the stage at a Mary Katrantzou show. Following the incident, Mary Katrantzou's team made a statement insisting that the collection was animal fur-free and “only man-made fur was used.”

Ahead of this year's fashion week, set to take place from September 14 to 18, an open letter written by singer Paloma Faith and published by Peta also called for a ban of animal fur.

The letter read: “The BFC shouldn't be approving a material whose production is considered so cruel that it is outlawed in the UK. With the vast number of cutting- edge, eco-friendly man-made furs available on the market today, I'm sure you'll agree that there's no longer any excuse for killing animals for their fur.”

London Fashion Week's fur-free runway follows a similar policy recently adopted by Burberry Design to end the use of fur including rabbit, fox, mink, racoon, and angora wool, as is confirmed by Burberry CEO Marco Gobbetti in an interview with Business of Fashion.

The BFC's news has been met with support from people on social media, who have applauded the designers choosing to give up the use of animal fur.

“I am so excited that fur has been banned from London Fashion Week! Progress!” Faith wrote on Twitter.

Another said: “London Fashion Week is ditching fur and leading the way towards a fur-free future in fashion.”

A description of the threat hanging over the world’s mammals, reptiles, amphibians and other life forms has been published by the well-known scientific journal, Nature. A special analysis carried out by the journal indicates that an astonishing 41% of all amphibians on the planet now face extinction while 26% of mammal species and 13% of birds are similarly threatened.

In each case, the finger of blame points directly at human activities The continuing spread of agriculture is destroying millions of hectares of wild habitats every year, leaving animals without homes, while the introduction of newly-come species, often helped by humans, is also damaging native populations. At the same time, pollution and overfishing are destroying ocean ecosystems.

“Habitat destruction, pollution or overfishing either kill off wild creatures and plants or leave them badly weakened,” said Derek Tittensor, an ocean ecologist at the World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge. “The trouble is that in coming decades, the additional threat of worsening climate change will become more and more common and will then kill off these survivors.”

The problem, according to Nature, is worsened because of the huge gaps in scientists’ knowledge about the planet’s biodiversity. Evaluations of the total number of species of animals and plants alive vary from 2 million to 50 million. In addition, evaluations of current rates of species’ disappearances vary from 500 to 36,000 a year. “That is the real problem we face,” added Tittensor. “The scale of uncertainty is huge.”

In the end, however, the data indicate that the world is heading cruelly towards a mass extinction — which is defined as one involving a loss of 75% of species or more. This could arrive in less than a hundred years or could take a thousand, depending on extinction rates.