Violet Affleck is sounding the alarm about climate change following the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles earlier this year, even if it means arguing with her mom Jennifer Garner.

Garner and Ben Affleck's oldest daughter, a 19-year-old freshman at Yale University, recently published an academic research paper for the Ivy League college's Global Health Review where she recounted an emotional conversation she had with the 13 Going on 30 actress after fleeing they fled the fires ravaging the Pacific Palisades with her siblings Seraphina, 16, and Samuel, 13, per People.

"I spent the January fires in Los Angeles arguing with my mother in a hotel room," she wrote, adding how her mom was "shell-shocked [and] astonished] at the scale of destruction." Violet couldn't understand why Garner was shocked because "as a lifelong Angelena and climate-literate member of generation Z, my question had not been whether the Palisades would burn but when."

She recalled hearing conversations at the hotel from others who had escaped the fires and realizing that her opinions were "uncommon" as people spoke about "how tragically odd the whole situation had been," calling it a "burst of bad luck" due to "high winds and low rains," Page Six reports.

Her younger brother even voiced his own skepticism, asking his sister, "What did global warming have to do with the speed of the wind?" She rebuked the comment in her paper, writing, "Hopefully, most of us understand the climate crisis better than my little brother."

She went on to describe climate change as a result of human influence, calling it both "existential and accelerating" that is "driven by unsustainable consumption patterns concentrated among the wealthiest citizens of the wealthiest countries, all of which have already subjected most of this country and the world to deadly temperatures, fire-flood cycles, rising seas, and dying crops."

This isn't the first time Violet has spoken out about issues that not just concern her personally but impact society as a whole. In July 2024, she delivered a message to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors stressing the importance of continuing precautionary measures against COVID-19.

Mike Miller