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Folks – It’s been a big month for climate news.
I’m going to get the bad news out of the way (and there’s a lot of it). Then we’ll talk about what we can do about it – because I’m not done fighting for our future and it’s important that you’re not either.
❌ WaPo report shows we’re headed for +2°C faster than expected. For years we’ve been told that +1.5°C warming was the point of no return that had to be avoided at all costs. It was the basis of the Paris Climate Accords; a matter of survival for low-lying nations in the Global South; and a matter of long-term survival of the human species. New research predicts that we will hit +1.5° in 2024, and we’re on a collision course with +2°.
❌ Live Science: Experts 99% certain Gulf Stream could collapse by 2025. The Gulf Stream is a belt of warm water that flows from the Florida Straits up the eastern seaboard of North America and on over to Europe. It regulates sea levels and weather patterns, as well ocean life we depend on for food and jobs.
❌ The Guardian: Rapid ice melt in west Antarctica now inevitable. New evidence shows the ice sheet of west Antarctica is melting faster than expected, and if it fully collapses will push up the oceans by 5 meters if lost completely. While scientists once thought we had centuries before that happened, the rate of the melt has far outpaced anyone’s prior calculations. |
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To put that map in perspective, the area you see in red is known as “the doomsday glacier”, and it is roughly the size of Florida.
I’ve always been an unapologetic truth-teller, even when it’s uncomfortable, and I know this is a lot of dire news to take in (and that’s not even all of it).
But right now we have to face a few uncomfortable truths:
What we’re doing is not working. We can’t continue on the same path with the same leaders and expect different results.
Scroll up and look at the time lapse of the ice melt once again. My opponent has served in Congress for every single year you see represented on that chart (and then some). And for every single one of those years, while our southern polar cap melted, he’s been cashing Big Oil’s checks.
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I won’t sugarcoat this, folks. The only way to ensure the continued survival of our species is to stop putting carbon in the atmosphere.
No carbon swaps.
No tax breaks for offsets.
No incremental reductions in emissions.
We have to get off fossil fuels. Period.
This is why, in addition to running for office, I routinely take part in protests, and actively support the direct action activism of groups like Climate Defiance and Just Say No to Oil.
We need to attack this problem from multiple angles. And while the direct actions are effective, we also have to demand better from our elected representatives.
Both Republicans and Democrats have accelerated global warming by EXPANDING fossil fuel extraction and pushing endless American militarism.
The Republicans are at least honest enough to tell us they want to “drill, baby, drill.” But Democrats like my opponent have been gaslighting us for decades, insisting that THEY can be trusted to fix this crisis with a handful of electric vehicles and billions of dollars in “carbon swap” tax breaks for corporations.
I organized for years within the Democratic Party pushing for serious climate action. I met dead ends at every turn precisely because of men like Rick Larsen and their corporate puppet-masters.
In solidarity,
Jason |
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