Five young activists have fasted for more than a week outside the White House, demanding President Biden keep his promises to take action on climate change. The hunger strikers have sat in wheelchairs outside the White House since Oct. 20, getting health checks five times a day (one was hospitalized Saturday but has returned to the strike). “Millions of people are going to die if they don’t do this — people our age, in our lifetimes, in climate disasters, in floods, fires and hurricanes, of starvation,” Abby Leedy, 20, told HuffPost Wednesday.

“The climate crisis impacts communities of color way worse,” Ema Govea, 18, told Business Insider India. “When disaster strikes we’ve seen that communities of color are left behind and left to fend for themselves.”

Leedy also confronted Sen. Joe Manchin as he left the White House Tuesday over his opposition to the Clean Electricity Performance Program, who said it was “not fair” to criticize the U.S. for not doing more to combat the climate crisis because “90 percent of all pollution comes from one continent- Asia.” The youth have inspired solidarity across the country. Kalamazoo physics teacher, Josh Gottlieb, 46, is fasting from Monday through Sunday, sitting outside his high school, in the rain, on unpaid leave, holding a sign calling for action on the climate emergency. (HuffPost, Business Insider India, People, National Catholic Reporter; Manchin: CNN, Democracy Now; Physics teacher: WBCK)