make polluters pay

This is a jarring time for our country: A far-right autocrat is taking office on a holiday many misrepresent and trivialize as vacation day, obscuring the revolutionary actions of one of the historical greats of the civil rights movement, while whole communities of Black and Brown people in Los Angeles are burning to the ground. Instead of talking about the lives lost and how to support those who will have the most trouble rebuilding, and instead of connecting the dots of these fires to climate change, the incoming administration is intent on spreading disinformation. They are threatening to undo decades of hard-fought progress with lies and deregulation.

Yet, it is often when things seem most bleak, amid grief and heartache, that we reevaluate on the scale the moment demands. That is where the climate movement is right now: The status quo is not working. We are rapidly surpassing many of the planetary thresholds, including the threshold of 1.5°C. As our climate changes, we continue to see an increasing number of catastrophic weather events, as witnessed over the last week in Los Angeles. And despite these climate disasters and massive advances in renewable energy, fossil fuel use also continues to increase; this was true even under former President Joe Biden’s more progressive presidency. Data centers for artificial intelligence and logistics have only added to this increased demand.