This Crisis is Real, Intersectional, and It’s Already Happening
This summer, the normally pleasant Pacific Northwest has seen three-digit temperatures while unprecedented heat advisories were in place for 80 million Americans across 20 states. As you’re reading this, 97 large wildfires are scorching over 2,000,000 acres in the United States — creating a cloud of smoke visible from space and affecting air quality as far east as New York City — to say nothing of the flames engulfing parts of Canada, Greece, and elsewhere.
Tornadoes have ravaged the Middle Atlantic. Weather has been so bad in the Midwest that Wisconsin declared a state of emergency. The United Kingdom recorded a hundred year storm, Afghanistan and Germany reported flash flooding, and it’s believed that the Amazon Rainforest is now emitting more carbon than it’s absorbing as a result of both wildfires and controlled burns to clear land for farming and grazing. Songbirds are dying on the east coast; the Gulf of Mexico was literally on fire; and in California — a place ingrained in our collective imagination for lovely weather and a summer state of mind — sewage contaminated beaches, historically snow-capped mountains went bare, and water levels plummeted.
Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),which is the United Nations’ climate science research group, released a new report ahead of the next global climate summit taking place in Glasgow in November. The authors found it “unequivocal” that humanity is behind these catastrophes; and that temperatures will likely rise by at least 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two or three decades — a goalpost that intended to limit (but does not avoid) climate catastrophe. Further, since 1970, global surface temperatures have risen faster than in any other 50-year period over the past 2,000 years.
It is worth noting that our climate is changing largely at the hands of just a few corporate conglomerates and world superpowers — the United States among them. But every individual everywhere in every region is affected — with Indigenous and low-income communities along with citizens of less industrialized nations poised to bear the brunt of these existential threats.
Climate change is real, it’s already happening, and it’s going to get worse. As we read these reports, see the images of devastation, we also reckon with how our lives — our summer vacations, our bird feeders, our favorite places — are already changing forever. We see how these crises are disproportionately affecting us. Not only displacement and relocation from long-standing communities due to fires, land erosion, and rising sea levels, but children attending schools inadequately equipped to handle rising temperatures.
As BIPOC, women, LGBTQIA+, and gender non-confirming leaders, we continue to fight for equal rights and economic justice for all, but we cannot turn a blind eye to the climate and the world. These issues are intersectional. As the environment becomes less hospitable, new challenges — rising sea levels and water and food shortages — will only exacerbate the social injustices we are working so hard to correct.
We may feel fearful but solutions exist. We just need to tap into them. Giving up is certainly not an option — there is too much at stake and doing so only supports the capitalist polluters invested in delayed action. Despite all we have lost, we have so much left to save. We can’t forget to heed the wisdom of our Indigenous brothers and sisters, the communal vision of our movement builders, and those fighting to protect land and promote permaculture and regenerative farming here and around the world.
Let us dare to believe a different way is possible — net-zero emissions, regenerative energy and agriculture, reforestation, and a rejection of constant, unchecked growth to embrace the concept of enough.
In the words of Taj James, one of MSC’s founders, “the only solutions are real solutions. The acceleration of the crisis must unlock our wisdom. No fear. No half measures. No more trying to use the way of thinking that created the crisis to try to solve it. The only way out is healing and reconnection at the root.”
There are solutions and everyone has something to contribute. Individuals can take small steps that lead to collective action. Greta Thunberg, who warns us that “our house is on fire,” was just one kid — she’s now a household name and has the ears of policymakers around the world.
With radical love we encourage you to join us and the MSC ecosystem in working towards a Just Transition — our futures depend on it. We have so much love and respect for our fiscally sponsored partners working in this space. To mention just two: Climate Innovation, an MSC anchor project, and Facilitating Power are working with the NACRP on a workshop series with a focus on building community power through a lens of climate resilience. In addition, we look to the amazing Pandora Thomas — a senior fellow at Climate Innovation and founder and land steward of EARTHseed Permaculture Center and Farm, the first Black-owned permaculture farm in Sonoma County.
As James says: “act boldly, creatively and collectively to defend and protect life. Every second wasted is life lost. Every act of courage is life saved. Be bold. Act now.”