“Nearly four in 10 Americans say their communities were damaged by extreme weather in the past year, as climate change helps fuel high heat, intense flooding, and other events. And 57% of those US adults who have felt the effects of extreme weather in the past year are worried it’ll happen again in the next, according to the new poll from the Walton Family Foundation and Gallup. The East South Central states are most impacted, including Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee — all deep-red. Trump has come under scrutiny for cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which critics say leave the US less prepared to respond to weather events and track important environmental changes.”  https://news.gallup.com/poll/713342/say-extreme-weather-damaged-community.aspx

Let’s be frank: the issue of the climate crisis, the existential climate emergency we are in, has been a secondary issue, at best, for most progressives since the Trumpfascists took office 20 months ago. This is true not just for those of us who have other priorities but even for those of us for whom this issue has been our main one for years or even decades. That includes me.

There are understandable reasons for this, given the Trumpist regime’s efforts to destroy democracy, its massive downsizing of federal government programs, except for the military and ICE/Border Control, its invasion of Venezuela and attack on Iran, the importance of getting at the full truth in the Epstein files, and more.

Why should we, now, as a broad pro-democracy, pro-justice movement working to emerge from November 3^rd with control by Democrats and allied Independents of both the House and Senate, consciously raise up the climate issue?

It’s not just because it’s one of many important issues that has been de-prioritized since Trump’s election, or even because the dominance of the fossil fuel industry is such an existential threat to all forms of life on earth as the 21^st century unfolds. It’s also because right now, in mid-August, people all over the country are suffering through triple-digit heat waves, smoke from climate-crisis-magnified fires in Canada and throughout the US West, and flooding from storm after storm. The crisis is not off in the future somewhere, it is here right now.

This is also not really a “progressives vs. moderates” issue, although there are differences over what needs to be done and how fast. Indeed, the climate issue has in the past and can right now and in the future help our movement find the ways to work together most effectively. It can also broaden out our base since this is an issue that affects all of us, whatever our politics. For example, there are many experiences over a number of years of fights against new proposed oil and gas pipelines and infrastructure bringing together socialists, progressives, liberals, conservatives and even MAGA people, uniting against a common, destructive enemy.

We are seeing this dynamic right now when it comes to the issue of fossil fuel- and nuke-powered AI and Data Centers. Over the last year or so an extensive and rapidly growing mass movement has emerged to fight them in blue, red and purple areas. Indeed, for many of us, there are similarities between the fight to prevent worldwide climate destabilization and destruction and this fight against billionaire efforts to ultimately replace democratically-run human societies with something very different, very scary.

We need a massive anti-Trump turnout for the elections; talking about the climate crisis that many of us are experiencing in our daily lives right now will help that happen. And that turnout will, ultimately, be the best defense against the Trumpfascist efforts to disrupt them.

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of two books, Burglar for Peace and 21^st Century Revolution, published in 2020 and 2021 and both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com

It is crystal clear that millions of US Americans are prepared to organize and take action to fight the efforts of the Trump regime to impose a form of 21^st Century fascism on the USA. From the first youth-led, #50501 actions in all 50 states on February 5^th to the more than five million people who came out in over 2,200 localities on June 14^th, No Kings Day, and everything in between and since, it is unquestionable that there is a mass resistance movement that is not giving up.

History is calling upon us to step up, and we are doing so.

This resistance movement has been a multi-issue movement participated in by people with a wide diversity of radical to progressive to liberal to common sense sentiments but who are united in our fear, rage, and support for democracy and social and environmental justice.

One of the issues of this multi-issue movement has been the climate crisis, but it has not been a priority. This is the case even as the world’s scientists and accelerating extreme weather events worldwide are clearly saying that this existential crisis is getting worse, and time is running out to turn things around in enough time to prevent worldwide climate catastrophe.

Since the Trumpists have taken office it has become increasingly clear that, despite significant Republican voter support in many states for jobs-producing wind and solar energy and electric cars, the Trump Administration is doing everything it can to halt and reverse the growth of these critical industries. A few weeks ago the head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, former NY Republican candidate for Governor, announced that he intends to try to overturn the “endangerment finding” upheld by the US Supreme Court 16 years ago. That finding determined that CO2, methane and four other greenhouse gases are pollutants that can be regulated and reduced.

But the climate movement in the US and elsewhere is fighting back. Finally, on the fall equinox weekend of September 20^th and 21^st, the climate crisis will be a central issue in mass demonstrations around the US and beyond.

On the 20^th world leaders will be gathering in NYC for the UN General Assembly and Climate Week. A major climate justice demonstration will be held that day in NYC, convened by international 350.org, DRUM, Climate Defenders and the Women’s March and endorsed by over 100 other groups so far. Simultaneous actions will happen on that day around the world as part of a Draw the Line campaign. The youth-led Fridays for Future is calling for actions around the world beginning on September 20. We are uniting across the world to demand a better future for our communities and for all living beings!

Then on Sunday, September 21, “Sun Day”, local actions around the country organized by national Third Act will “celebrate solar and wind power and the movement to leave fossil fuels behind. Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power on the planet—and gives us a chance to actually do something about the climate crisis. But fossil fuel billionaires are doing everything they can to shut it down. We will build, rally, sing and come together in the communities where we must work to get laws changed and work done.”

But this isn’t all that is happening five weeks from now. On the Thursday and Friday before this big weekend, September 18-19 in Washington, DC, actions are happening each day calling for: Hands Off Our Planet, No Fracking Petrostate

–Thursday morning: Action at the monthly meeting of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to demand that this agency do what the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals has said they must do: stop approving new methane gas projects unless they have done serious analyses of the greenhouse gas emissions and environmental justice impacts of proposed new methane gas pipelines and other infrastructure.

–Thursday afternoon: Action at the federal headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency as the beginning of a sustained national campaign to demand its restoration and the removal of Administrator Lee Zeldin.

–Friday morning: A Petrostate Tour stopping at trade associations that have captured our government, compromised the environment, and violated private property rights, including the American Petroleum Institute (API), American Exploration and Production Council (AXPC), and the American Gas Association (AGA). 

These DC actions are being organized by Beyond Extreme Energy, Elders Coalition for Climate Action, Third Act Actions Lab and the UnFrack FERC Campaign, supported by many others.

The peril our planet is in cannot be overstated. The popular democracy movement which has done so much over the last seven months to resist Trumpist tyranny must, really must, hit the streets next month.

Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21^st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.