As a born and raised New Yorker I've always deeply identified with the City. As an accidental environmental activist and broadcaster I always fear for our planet and all her inhabitants. Twenty years ago I helped to promote The World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, a paper that told us "No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished". Those one or a few decades have passed and it's not just humanity whose prospects are immeasurably diminished. Now, the streets I walked so often on the Lower Eastside of Manhattan have been under water. A lot of water. And this is just the beginning. Frankly, I take that personally. I am saddened and I am outraged.
The Climate Crisis is not some abstract scientific paper. It's certainly not the alleged hoax so many far-right reactionary ideologues would have us believe. It is real, it is human-caused, and it is upon us. We can take down greedy financiers and traders on Wall Street, we can stop immoral home evictions, and we can rebuild devastated communities, but how can we push back the change in our climate? There are multiple answers to that question and it is a personal thing for each and every one of us, even for those who have never given the natural environment a second thought. Since we are legion we can address all the answers. We can change the way industrial civilization uses the planet we all live upon. We can do this thing too, but we must do it now.
