I am writing this from the inside of an air conditioned motel room in coastal Maine, where my partner and I went to try to cope with a heat dome, a recent phenomenon as far as I can recall. I went for a two hour walk this morning – from 5:30 to 7:30 a.m., and even along the coast of Maine, I worked up a serious sweat! And my wimp of a dog refused to even walk that long … he was deposited back in our room by 6:30. There was a breeze for sure, but unlike in past years, the breeze was a hot and uncooling one — maybe what it feels like in a desert? The availability of a lovely, very reasonably priced motel room is probably one of the very few reasons I have to thank the oligarch in DC: there were tons of last minute vacancies in prime season during a heat wave because the many citizens of Quebec who used to vacation yearly in the beautiful seaside town of Ogunquit are in short supply; there are still some vehicles with Quebec tags, but they are few and far between.

It feels as if many Americans have decided that, for whatever reason, the human-caused heating of the atmosphere and the many terrible effects just don’t seem to matter. But the people I choose to call friends are all aware and do what they can to be responsible citizens of the world. They both work for and support policy goals that will limit the massive damage being inflicted on the natural world. Many have purchased electric vehicles to replace the previously gas powered rust buckets. Many, like myself, use bicycles, electric or traditional, for local transportation. The science is clear: there is a true danger of ending life as we know it on this planet if we don’t take this moment seriously.

The hostility of the Republicans to science is pretty amazing. There has always been a very anti-intellectual strain on the right, but Donald Trump and his merry band of lying fascists have taken this to an amazing place: the lies about our natural world that the MAGA cult clings to are pretty rich, and it is probable that Trump may believe his own insane ramblings, but those who have chosen to be in his cabinet, in the ever more silent majority in Congress probably know better. Many of them probably have a better grasp on reading and writing (although not some of the recently elected and truly dumb ones (Tommy Tuberville, Katie Britt, Markwayne Mullin, Lauren Bobert, to name a few) than the mad king they choose to follow, but for pure greed and hunger for power every one of them, and that definitely includes the Hakeem Jeffries/Chuck Schumer wing of the Democratic party, have been silent as our planet burns. Interestingly, in 2022, Schumer seemed to be a bit concerned, but since Trump has been in office, drill, baby, drill seems to be OK with them.

Most of us have seen the warnings: we have a very short window of opportunity to make our planet habitable for life for the billions of inhabitants. We also are living under a government of what may be the stupidest ruling class in history. Donald Trump seems to have an amazingly nihilistic goal: use as much fossil fuel as possible. There may or may not be a rational reason for this, but it is clear that his insane policies — forcing coal plants to remain open, or even re-open when even the utilities don’t want them, trying to kill the burgeoning electric car industry, deforesting as much land as possible, eliminating all restrictions on emissions — the destruction is endless. Given the racist rhetoric of Donald Trump and his nearest and dearest, the most terrifying possibility is that they actually want to kill off the poor, non-white populations on our earth. I try not to go there, but the behavior towards those of us who protest the Israeli starvation campaign against the people of Gaza suggests that this may be true.

Many young people are feeling hopeless. They understand that at this moment, the majority of older Americans will do absolutely nothing to guarantee a livable planet for their futures. Demanding that discouraged young people bring more babies into the world when they know full well that they will not be able to live on a planet with a habitable climate, and a chemical stew of poisons in the air, water, and food is a fool’s errand.

I have birthed two children, and raised a third who joined our family through adoption. I have vowed to do whatever I can to give them, and their children, a future worth living for. When everything feels so discouraging, I try remember that the European colonists of North America pretty much did their best to kill off every last Native of this continent. They are still here. And when I travelled to northern Minnesota in 2021 to join a protest against Line 3, a pipeline that was a terrible assault on the land that the local Native Americans hold sacred, the grandmothers reminded us all: we have a responsibility to each other, to our fellow creatures on earth. And we can’t give up.