We Can Be Heroes

What needs to happen to make the United States carbon neutral within ten years?

Every vehicle needs to run on carbon-free energy. This means replacing every gas or diesel fueled car and truck in the entire nation within the next ten years.

Every appliance needs to be electric. This means replacing every gas and oil appliance with an electric appliance within the next ten years.

To provide the electricity for those new vehicles and appliances, we also need to supply enough carbon-neutral energy to power them. This means building solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, wave-powered, and whatever other sources of energy we can create to replace all current gas, oil, and coal plants within the next ten years. It also means improving the electric distribution systems to handle the new sources and storage systems to match the load to the generation within the next ten years.

All agriculture needs to be regenerative rather than carbon-emitting. This means changing our farming techniques to add carbon to the soil rather than release it, and taking care of run-off. It means reducing livestock methane emissions.

This is a huge project. It is a mobilization on the scale of World War II.

Of course, we have mobilized that way before. And how do we think of the Americans who went to work to win that war? They are heroes. They faced the truth – that lives and liberty were at stake – and set out to do what needed to be done.

Lives and liberty are at stake now. Climate change is already killing people, and the people displaced by drought and the war it brings are hardly free. It's not liberty to face a vastly reduced future from the one we have now. We owe it to future generations to leave them as rich and habitable a planet as we have now.

(And by the way, our neighbors are not asking us to save them. Indigenous people know how to keep the land and water healthy. People of color see the pollution we've created in their backyards. Youth know that we are leaving them less than we had. They want us to listen, help them, and clean up our own messes.)

It's time for us to take on the climate crisis with the energy and scope and creativity we used to beat Hitler. We can be heroes, like the Greatest Generation, who stepped up to take on the challenge of their time.

(This truly would make America great again. No one needs to be unemployed or doing meaningless work. We need all hands on deck.)

(And when we brought everyone into the effort, and worked for the good of other nations as well as our own, we gained decades of prosperity and international respect.)

What can we do?

Envision the future and take steps to match it.

Vote for candidates who will face the climate crisis and act on it.

Take the carbon out of our own households, transportation, and food.

Divest and withdraw our money and energy from organizations that don't join the fight.

Speak up. March, rally, write, talk to family and neighbors.

Give our money and labor and creativity to creating a carbon-neutral or carbon-storing economy.

The race is on. Let's win it.