NEW YORK — Benji Backer grew up in northeast Wisconsin in a family of conservative vegans who wore cheese hats to football games.
He’s used to not fitting into cultural or political boxes, he recently told a room full of environmental policy wonks gathered in a midtown Manhattan conference room.
The mood there was generally pretty gloomy. Hours before Backer spoke to the Climate Week crowd, President Donald Trump had appeared before the United Nations on the other side of Manhattan and called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
But the political climate that’s caused some environmentalists to despair hasn’t robbed Backer of his youthful exuberance. And Backer, 27, a longtime conservative looking to shed party labels, sees this moment of deep divisions on climate as one of opportunity, he said in Manhattan.
