When the election results poured in on November 5, Dominique Browning, Moms’ Co-Founder and Director, felt despair and grief—as a mother, grandmother, and climate activist.
Climate change wasn’t even on the ballot this election cycle. The subject barely made the debate stage. Addressing the urgent need to cut the sources of global warming was never made a defining issue for voters, despite the fact that, as Dominique writes in an essay in Time magazine, the election took place in an envelope of extreme weather events: massive flooding, record-breaking heat waves, devastating wildfires, and catastrophic storms.
Grappling with the fact that everything she “and the millions of others who fought so hard to achieve in beginning to secure a healthy planet into the future is imperiled,” Dominique made a decision: Giving up on climate action isn’t an option.
Tell Congress: Hold the Line on Progress to Cut Climate Pollution
She writes, “Rather than wallow in defeat … I propose that we face our dread head-on and use it to galvanize our advocacy. Global warming’s negative impacts transcend parties and red-blue-purple state lines. It is very real, very powerful, and a fundamental part of the DNA of the fear we are all feeling. No, we did not vote for an administration that would deal with this problem. But equally, people did not vote to destroy the stability of our planetary climate.”
The necessity to address the problem remains real and powerful. The National Centers for Environmental Information reports there have already been two dozen climate disasters costing more than $1 billion each and the loss of hundreds of lives this year alone. We know that these numbers, both financial and human, will continue to rise because climate change will continue to intensify extreme weather catastrophes. As the devastation of Hurricanes Helene and Milton made agonizingly clear, Dominique writes, climate change is literally shifting the ground we are standing on.
The detrimental effect of this hits all of us, across all aisles. “Of great concern is the physical and mental health of our children and grandchildren and those of generations to come,” Dominique writes.
For now, as we see how things unfold with a new president and an administration with, as Dominique puts it, “exactly zero interest in a strong and protective Environmental Protection Agency,” it remains wise to find ways to cut the pollution that is warming the Earth.
“We must cut across the polluted politics that are distorting our ability to see this reality. As parents and grandparents who love and care for our children and grandchildren we must continue to fight, we cannot give up,” says Dominique.
Read the full article in Time.
Tell Congress: Hold the Line on Progress to Cut Climate Pollution