Hear Me Out: In 2025, Climate Activists Should Spend Less Time on Climate

Ever since my first foray into climate activism in 2019, I have dreaded the year 2025. In my mind, it’s always been the Big Deadline.

The 2015 Paris agreement concluded that greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 if we have any chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.

And yet, now that we’re standing at the precipice of this once-far off deadline, we are still so far from the meaningful climate action necessary to fend off unstoppable climate catastrophe. Indeed, we’ve just worsened our chances at a survivable future.

We need to build a strong left to fight fascism during Trump’s presidency and to build a just green future in its aftermath.

The U.S. became the largest oil producer in 2018 and continues to expand domestic fossil fuel production. American citizens just elected a fascist president who has promised to gut the EPA and establish U.S. “energy dominance,” but the Democrat who supposedly could have saved us from Donald Trump refused to ban fracking and praised U.S. oil production.

Technically, I should be panicking. I certainly was when my college graduation last May was preceded by some headlines announcing the 1.5°C limit had already been reached. But now, as a climate activist in New York City, I find myself surprisingly calm.

This calm isn’t simply due to local climate wins, though I have celebrated those. Gov. Kathy Hochul just signed the Climate Change Superfund Act into law, which will require fossil fuel companies to pay billions into a fund to help New Yorkers recover from climate disasters. In other words, New York will force polluters to pay to clean up their own messes. This is a huge step in holding fossil fuel companies accountable.

Yet my optimism arises out of a different trend in the climate movement: Climate activists are (finally) showing up for other movements.

Historically, the climate movement has attempted to isolate itself from other political and social issues, arguing that climate policy is “just science.” This majority-white movement has failed to see that fossil fuel emissions are part of a larger history of the Global North colonizing and exploiting both people and the planet for decades. The climate crisis is a symptom of a broader exploitative system. To change that system, we need a united left that will fight for all people—not just those who identify as environmentalists.

In 2020, climate activists were rightfully berated for not showing up enough for the Black Lives Matter movement. Thankfully, I think many climate activists heard that message because today, they have come out in droves for Palestine.

Many of the college students who organized campus encampments last spring to urge their school administrators to divest from Israel and the U.S. imperial war machine were students who had previously organized for climate justice. I witnessed this firsthand at the Claremont Colleges when I was a senior: The student organizations demanding fossil fuel divestment fell to the wayside as the crisis in Gaza intensified. Globally, many climate organizations chose to speak out and take direct action to call for a cease-fire in Gaza.

But none of these climate activists had stopped caring about the climate. In fact, they often pointed out that Israel’s actions were not just genocide, but ecocide as well. The onslaught of bombs dropped on Gaza will contaminate the soil and groundwater in the region for decades. And the destruction has produced at least 54.5 million tons of carbon dioxide, equal to the annual emissions of 16 coal-fired power plants.

Climate activists cannot claim to fight for a just future and stay silent about genocide. “If we, as climate activists, aren’t able to see and speak up against the current marginalization and oppression and killing of people today, then I don’t think we should be able to call ourselves climate justice [activists],” climate champion Greta Thunberg told Al Jazeera in early December 2024.

As Trump prepares to enter the White House, we will undoubtedly see more people oppressed and killed. Among the many groups who are vulnerable under his administration are undocumented immigrants, whom Trump has vowed to round up and deport.

Migrant justice has long been intertwined with climate justice. As climate change makes many areas around the world uninhabitable, climate refugees have no choice but to leave their home.

In response to Trump’s election, climate organizers Jeff Ordower and Ahmed Gaya called on their fellow activists to bring their experiences of shutting down pipelines and coal plants to fight the incarceration and deportation we can expect under Trump. Climate activists should answer this call: The struggles for migrant justice and climate justice are intertwined, and we must meet the needs of the current moment.

“[Climate is] not more urgent than kids being ripped away from their families and dying in the desert—anyone who tries to win that argument is monstrous themselves. We either merge, join forces, or we lose,” writer and activist Naomi Klein said in 2019.

With Trump as president, things will undoubtedly get worse before they get better. We need to build a strong left to fight fascism during Trump’s presidency and to build a just green future in its aftermath. To do so, climate activists must put their words into action when they say they fight for every living being.