Lake Oroville on Memorial Day 2021. By May, water levels had dropped to only 38 percent of capacity—a symbol of California’s lengthy drought due to climate change. (© Frank Schulenburg / CC BY SA 4.0)

 If humanity beats the climate crisis, it will be because of the actions of activists like us around the world, who are willing to step up. After forty years, “global warming” has morphed into a climate emergency. Drastic measures are now called for, and we must act with urgency. We must each accept responsibility and reduce our carbon footprint even when it is inconvenient.

• We must vote with our dollars, insisting that if businesses are not “green,” we will stop patronizing them.
• We must make our elected officials understand that our votes for them are tied to their support for green legislation.
• LVW-PA must act together with other organizations, because no one organization alone can overcome climate challenges.

This is a call to action for all people to reverse global warming. As our parents and grandparents won two world wars and fended off another by reaching the moon, we too must be victorious. Our current environmental challenges are as large as those challenges combined. The science is clear—the future lives of our families depend on the actions we take now.

Historically, when it comes down to moral decisions, most of us do the right thing. The women’s movement, civil rights, the LGBTQ movement, all faced denial initially, but all are prevailing as you read this. Poet Wallace Stevens said, “After the final no comes a yes, and on that yes the future world depends.” We must say yes, as others have before us. It is our turn to step up, and keep stepping up for the sake of humanity, until we win this.

And we believe that we are going to win this historic challenge, and it will be glorious when we do. Danny Chivers, the carbon footprint analyst, writer, and performance poet, put it this way:

This is going to be the most amazing, inspiring, and unifying social movement that the world has ever seen.

— Greg Apodaca and Xine Trevino for the Natural Resources Committee