Being a climate change activist in today’s world can often feel like an impossible task. Trying to move lawmakers on anything, much less climate change and fossil fuel dependence, in today’s post Citizens United world can seem like an impossible task. Reconciling the urgency of the scientific community about climate change, the unwillingness of our government to implement even the bare minimum regulations in order to meet global projections, and the images we see on our phones every day of climate catastrophes happening across the globe can seem like an impossible task. 

What if I told you it’s probably about to get a lot worse? What if I told you that these climate projections (that we were effectively ignoring anyway) underestimated the situation we currently find ourselves in?

For this month’s Econet Community Spotlight, we at Move to Amend and the Ecology Network chose not to focus on a specific community but rather a global one, as the unfortunate truth is that this issue will likely be making its way into a community near you sooner rather than later.

This past month Patrick Greenfield of The Guardian reported that in 2023, nature’s carbon sinks—oceans, forests, soils—showed alarming signs of failure, absorbing far less carbon than expected. This drop wasn’t anticipated by climate models, suggesting that global heating could accelerate beyond current predictions. Extreme weather, driven by rising temperatures, is stressing ecosystems that traditionally absorb nearly half of human emissions.

A carbon sink is any natural or artificial system that absorbs more carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere than it releases, helping to lower the overall concentration of CO₂, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Carbon sinks play a crucial role in regulating Earth's climate by storing carbon in a stable form, keeping it out of the atmosphere where it would otherwise contribute to climate change.

Scientists worry that human reliance on natural carbon sinks in global projections is risky, as their decline would require far greater emission cuts to achieve climate goals. As ecosystems degrade, critical sinks like the Congo basin’s rainforest remain some of the few still effectively absorbing CO₂. Yet, the models currently guiding climate policy don’t account for drastic collapses, like the 2023 land sink failure, leaving countries like Finland and regions in Australia and Europe struggling to offset emissions despite reductions elsewhere.

In short, we’re in for a rude awakening when it comes to the climate. The conservative estimates and projections from the scientific community about where we need to be don’t account for carbon sink failure and worsening weather. 

What’s the answer? What does this mean moving forward? To prevent worsening scenarios, scientists urge immediate action on emissions, deforestation, and ecological protection, as technology alone won’t compensate for nature’s weakening carbon storage. While I both agree with and respect the scientific community, this is not nearly enough in order to make possible the impossible task of saving our climate and saving our country from corruption. 

What we really need is a climate revolution - a radical and fundamental rethinking of our constant-growth capitalist society and the way we approach this problem. 

Put simply, this needs to be a bigger issue. Lately, the climate debate seems less like a debate and more like lawmakers and policy officials from across the political spectrum outright ignoring the mounting pleas from the scientific community and the public. 

After previously cosponsoring the Green New Deal as California’s junior senator, Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris has been almost silent on the issue in her presidential campaign, likely due to polling that suggests that climate change is not a leading issue for voters in the 2024 election. According to Gallup, the percentage of respondents who believe "protection of the environment should be prioritized, even if it risks slowing economic growth," has dropped from a peak of 65% in 2019 to 52% in 2024. 

The Democratic Party’s platform on climate largely reiterates the Inflation Reduction Act’s policies, offering few new commitments. The Republican Party platform on climate change remains defiant if not non-existent. 

A lot of things have got to change.

Our legislature, where politicians don’t address the root causes of climate change because doing so would challenge their corporate overlords and the capitalist world order, has got to change. We must pass the We The People Amendment to end legalized bribery of elected officials by the fossil fuel industry and other corporations.

Our elections, which force upon the public the false dichotomy of the easily controlled two-party system and make us choose between bad and worse climate policy, have got to change. We must support pro-democracy measures such as Ranked Choice Voting and other systems that increase the public’s say in who represents our interests.

Lastly, you and I have got to change. If the rising floodwaters outside your home weren’t indication enough, climate change is today’s problem, not tomorrow’s. We need to treat it as such and demand more from our leaders and ourselves. Storm’s a’comin! It’s time to batten down the hatches.