John -
This is a jarring time for our country. A far-right autocrat became president on Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day as whole neighborhoods of Black and Brown people in Los Angeles lay in ashes.
Instead of talking about climate action, the new administration is intent on spreading disinformation. Instead of honoring or supporting those who have lost everything, they are threatening to undo decades of hard-fought climate progress with lies and deregulation.
Yet it’s often when things seem bleakest that we re-evaluate 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 1.5 degrees Celsius. We continue to see an increasing number of catastrophic weather events, as witnessed this month in southern California. And despite massive advances in renewable energy, fossil fuel use also continues to increase — this was true even under Biden’s presidency.
We urgently need to change our orientation to how we affect change — and we have to be clear-eyed that we will not succeed by lobbying Trump or his administration, or finding the right words to plead with them.
There’s hopeful news: We know we have the power to meet this moment. Together, we can be the sparks that light the way forward.
First, we’re already seeing an increase in inspiring local organizing efforts, from groups holding utility companies accountable for their climate-harming practices to states passing Make Polluters Pay legislation to force the corporations responsible for the climate crisis to pay for its cleanup.
Second, once we accept we cannot change the initial moves Trump will make to gut climate progress, we can move into action to disrupt business as usual. We’ve seen this work: When Trump issued his infamous “Muslim ban,” tens of thousands of people rushed to airports, creating a wave of popular dissent that threw his first big policy move into chaos.
And third, the key to a broad-based movement is a broad base of people. As people think about the climate conditions in LA that caused fires and displacement, we will help connect the dots to similar conditions people face around the world that cause them to migrate. We will continue to build support for the immigrant struggle from the climate movement, as well as support for labor rights and government workers for all sectors.
In short, rather than a patchwork of different issue-based fights where each issue area elbows the other out of the way to be heard, we will see the power that is possible through a coordinated movement protecting each other.
None of this will be easy. But we know this level of organizing and intensification of our struggle is necessary.
Conditions change and we change, and so, we are assured that out of what is hard right now, we have the fortitude to build something beautiful.
Onward,
Jeff Ordower
North America Director
350.org
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PO Box 843004, Boston, MA 02284-3004
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