News about climate change has been so spooky for so long that it can feel like background noise. We find a way to carry on like normal, even when the news is disquieting.
Well, let me tell you I’m having a moment when it’s hard to do that.
For me the trigger was a recent report by Australia’s Breakthrough National Center for Climate Restoration, which warns of “a near- to mid-term existential threat to human civilization.”
How near-term? “The scale of destruction” by 2050, they wrote, “is beyond our capacity to model — with a high likelihood of human civilization coming to an end.”
In 30 short years, everything modern humans have built could be rent apart by an ecological catastrophe of our own making. Sorry, but that prediction’s too specific — and too near — to tune out.
Donald Trump and his science-denying cohort have the luxury of being dead by then. But I’m in my early 30s. In 2050 I won’t even be eligible to draw down the modest retirement savings I finally started setting aside (and am already wondering if it’s worth it).
Most terrifying of all, my two-year old will have barely reached the age I am now. That realization is taking a toll.
Every little moment with my toddler is now darkened by a fear about what his future holds. This morning I nearly shuddered with grief when he hugged me goodbye and asked me to finish the oatmeal he’d left sitting out.
The night before, even though he was tired, I found myself drawing out the songs and stories we do before bedtime, just to prolong the sweet moments before he learns what kind of world he lives in.
When I finally told my wife what was eating at me, she confessed the same. “When I give him a bath,” she said, “I wonder if I’ll look back someday and just not believe we had water to use.” (In fact, that’s a reality millions of Americans already live today.)
It feels crazy, but we’re not alone. In a Morning Consult survey, a third of young adults cited climate change as a reason to put off having kids they otherwise wanted.
Even worse, many politicians are unabashedly on the side of collapse. The Trump administration is loosening pollution controls right and left, censoring climate science, and pushing for 20-year prison sentences for activists who disrupt pipeline construction — even as those pipelines pump poison into our atmosphere.
In Texas, they’re pushing to sentence pipeline protesters on par with attempted murderers.
And here in Ohio, where my wife and I settled after years away to be near our toddler’s grandparents, state Republicans are trying to use “clean energy” funds to bail out coal and nuclear plants. This is utterly insane.
Floods are submerging huge swaths of the Midwest. And in Dayton, the city where I grew up, armed people are remaining in their tornado-devastated homes for fear of their remaining possessions being looted.
When you see that in your hometown, it’s easier to imagine the wheels coming off everywhere else.
The silver lining is seeing movements waking up — really waking up — to what climate change means and how desperately we need to remake our societies to address it.
Hundreds of thousands of children have walked out of school demanding their right to a future. Hardworking activists put the Green New Deal front and center of the Democratic primary. In Europe, Greens won big in the last parliamentary elections.
When I look at my innocent little child, I feel enormous gratitude for these people. And as a Father’s Day gift for myself, I’m resolving to join them.
If you or anyone you love is still going to be here in 30 years, I hope you will too.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
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