(Photo: joiseyshowaa / Flickr)Truthout staff writer Dahr Jamail has written a sobering piece on climate disruption, a crisis caused and accelerated by a world wrought by the industrial revolution. As many climate change deniers like to point out, carbon levels in the air have fluctuated for over 400,000 years, and our planet has warmed and cooled due to natural cycles of carbon in our atmosphere. While it’s true that carbon levels have waxed and waned over hundreds of thousands of years, we have never seen the rapid spike in carbon levels that’s occurred in the past 100 years. From the records climate scientists have kept, that spike is unprecedented. And given the proliferation of extreme weather conditions and events in the last 15-20 years, the evidence that human activity plays a significant role in climate change is, as Jamail notes, scientifically indisputable.
The protestations of those who like to say that the “debate” over human-caused climate change is not settled are based on motivations other than objective argument with the finer points of scientific data. In other words, climate change deniers want politicians and voters to think that factories, vehicles, aircraft, cattle farming practices and other carbon-emitting activities that humans have a hand in do not contribute to climate change. To admit that they do means the very industries that power industrial economies (most particularly, the fossil fuel industry) will have to be regulated or put out of business to keep our planet habitable for humans – and other life forms we need for our survival.
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,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy