We’ve all heard how daunting climate change is—that regardless of what we do, the situation is hopeless, and that eventually the emergence of clean technology will solve all of our climate problems. I challenge those who use one or all of these obstacles as justification to push climate change, the moral issue of our time, to the back burner. For a minute, step outside of the mindset that enables us to fulfill our immediate responsibilities and desires. Think hard about whether creating a just, equitable, and sustainable future for all who call planet Earth home is an ideal toward which you aspire.
If this is the case, then contemplate what compels us to recklessly strip the environment bare of its natural resources, which do not belong to any individual but to all current and future inhabitants of the earth. Without recognition of and the intention to correct this mindset and the systematic injustices that result, we will continue to ravage the land, the air, the sea, and the forest at the expense of fellow men, animals, and the natural world. So take it upon yourself to become informed, to speak up, and to align your thoughts and values with action.
As Dante once said, the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral crisis. It is time to wake up and fight for a just, equitable future. Individually, we have choice of action, and together, we have power. Divestment from fossil fuels is our generation’s Declaration of Independence. Divestment is our way to start breaking the dependence, the neutrality, and the silence—our way to shake the apathy and passivity entrenched in our nation’s consciousness, and to demand, unequivocally, a future that is not tied to the destruction of this planet.