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As the climate scientist and brilliant writer Kate Marvel puts it, “Climate change isn’t a cliff we fall off but a slope we slide down.” The climate has already changed. If you’re reading this, for all intents and purposes, you are doing so on a planet that is fundamentally different from the one you were born on. And what’s been done, sadly, cannot be undone, at least not in the near future. But there’s real good to be done by not letting it get worse. Limiting the damage is good, noble—valorous even. Any suffering we can alleviate is a blessing.
That’s probably the simplest thing about climate change—the injustice. It’s apparent at the macro and micro scales. The parts of the world that contributed the least to the crisis will suffer first and worst. Mere children have been thrust into positions in which they have no choice but to fight for their lives, for their right to see the stable planet they were taught about in storybooks and science books but have never seen in real life.
The scientists and experts have studied the problem and the solutions and presented their findings ad nauseam. But it wasn’t enough. Because this isn’t just about science or facts. This is about power. And it’s going to take an army. That’s where you come in, new Climate Person.
We already have the technology we need to mitigate and adapt to climate change in a manner that brings about sustainable development. We have failed to act on it.
If the wealthiest 10 percent of the population continued to use energy the way it currently does, and the entire rest of the world went to net zero tomorrow, we would still not be able to reach our climate goals. The vast majority of the world is already consuming energy just fine, particularly in Indigenous communities and in communities outside of the US.
We know that fossil fuels are the central cause of this problem, and we know that we have solutions.
Consider the key clean technologies: solar, wind, batteries, and heat pumps. Over the past several decades, the cost of each of these technologies has fallen rapidly. By the time a statistic is written down, it’s already out of date. That’s how fast renewables and other clean technologies are becoming more affordable.
Truly, and for far too long the rhetoric in many climate spaces is we need less—“Drive less, eat less, turn off our lights.” It’s this language that implies to people that in order to care about the climate you must have a lower quality of life. When really, the calls to action need to be questions of connection: Are you getting to know your neighbor? If a flood came through tomorrow, would you be ready to assist each other? Are you holding politicians accountable for how their policies impact frontline communities? Are you getting to know the various names and patterns of the plants in your
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