Scorching, sweltering, suffocating. We’re all struggling to keep our cool these days, as a dangerous heat dome hovers over much of the country and threatens lives and livelihoods. Here in Nassau County, we’ve experienced successive weeks of extreme heat that’s disrupting everything from our transit systems to enjoying the outdoors. This just after last summer, where historic wildfires in Canada brought unbreathable, smoky air to our state.
We can choose to stay indoors all summer, or we can be honest about how we got to this overheated moment. We know exactly what is causing this dizzying change in our climate. Emissions from burning fossil fuels – oil, gas, coal – produce greenhouse gasses that blanket the globe and trap the sun’s heat. And we know that global carbon emissions have been steadily increasing, broiling our oceans and atmosphere.
But even in the face of damning evidence the fossil fuel industry won’t back down. The industry continues to drill new wells, build new pipelines, and sell oil, gas, and coal to burn– trapping us all under heat domes that are not just unbearable, but lethal.
Why haven’t we moved away from burning fossil fuels? Because fossil fuel corporations have used their resources to block necessary climate action at every turn.
Decades ago, the fossil fuel industry documented a sophisticated scientific understanding and predicted with uncanny accuracy how the globe would heat. Next, they developed a sophisticated, multipronged effort to undermine the scientific data they themselves had uncovered–just so they could stymie policies that might reduce use of fossil fuels. Part of that campaign was also a sustained effort to frame climate change as a matter of individual actions (such as recycling or turning off the tap while brushing our teeth), as opposed to structural policy change.
Rather than investing in new solutions, these corporations spent billions on the people and the systems that would enable it to continue to frack, mine, extract, and, most importantly, pull in constant, breathtaking profits–even while the planet got hotter and hotter. This included investing in policymakers and politicians, from the Halls of Congress to the Supreme Court to State Houses, as well as universities. Today, legislation that would – and should – enable us to invest in clean energy solutions is routinely squashed because of the powerful sway of the fossil fuel industry. Their profits are constantly valued over our very lives.
So where do we go from here?
Simply put: to the streets, to the State Houses, to the Congress, to the ballot box. And we need to do it together. As we move through a summer that is already one of the five hottest ever, we need to wield our collective power: as voters, as citizens, as consumers. We need our millions of people to stand up to their billions of dollars. We need to demand the kind of big, systemic changes that are our only hope to slow the pace of change and give us a chance to survive.
Because, make no mistake, we have the means to change course on this path of destruction. Just as humans created coal-powered trains and oil furnaces, we have invented clean energy solutions such as solar, wind, and water-powered electricity.
But we need to demand this change. That is why I will be joining people of faith at the Summer of Heat action outside the Citibank headquarters in Manhattan on August 1. If we can convince financial institutions how much we care about this, and manage to cut off funding to the fossil fuel industry, we will be taking a huge step toward dismantling that industry.
People of all backgrounds need to show up with spiritual audacity, educating, energizing, and mobilizing our communities to act. When people realize that generations to come may face ever more devastating disasters – droughts, fires, floods, famines – they need the inspiration to turn despair into action.
Bottom line? If we want to beat the heat, we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground and unburned. Which means challenging the fossil fuel industry with moves to cut off funding from their banks, asset managers, and financial firms.
I think of the quote from Deutoronomy: “It is not beyond us in heaven.” Indeed, humans can make a new future. We have the capacity. We have the science, the resources, the people, and the power.
It is in our hands and in our hearts, and we can do it. We must.
