Last October, when my infant son was just one month old, I read the U.N. climate report that said that we have 12 years to act in order to prevent climate change’s worst effects: pandemics, mass extinctions, mass food shortages, and millions of refugees from lands that are no longer arable. What we thought we had decades to do — a better Administration, a better Senate map — we in fact have to start now. For all Americans who are not buying the fossil fuel-funded climate denialism, it is difficult to go about your day-to-day activities and really hold the truth of what is barreling towards us. I fear for my son’s future, and for all our children.
Then the hopeful youth of the Sunrise Movement brought us a game-changer. Politicians are usually only as courageous as social movements make room for them to be, and by demonstrating in soon-to-be House Speaker Pelosi’s office and organizing members of Congress around the vision of a Green New Deal, the generation with everything to lose made us see that we can address inequality and climate change — both crises brought to us by a broken democracy — now.
Last weekend, I was on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and, with minutes left... Read more
