As the World Confronts Climate Change, the US Leaves Our Future Behind

Last week, the Inter -American Court of Human Rights announced a historic decision on climate change and human rights. Considered as “a plan for climate action based on rights”, the 234 -page advisory opinion clearly indicated that in the middle of an unprecedented emergency which threatens practically all imaginable human rights, health and access to water to life itself, national governments have resounding obligations to act – after being in the process of making these rights not only in the present but also for future generations. As one of the countless climate activists for young people who devoted my adolescence and my life for young adults to fight against climate justice, many of whom played an invaluable role in the possible yield, I felt an apparently simple feeling but, in fact, rare and powerful: I felt heard.

Although the recognition of the need for serious climate action fulfilled me with hope, I also ended up with a deep feeling of rage. While I watch the world go ahead and take the climate emergency seriously, I also look at my country and our future to be behind.

Earlier this month, on July 4, our birthday from our country arrived in the heels of another record heat wave, among the deep, systematic and continuous rollbacks for environmental legislation. During the last month, Trump’s White House brought a hammer to critical climate policy. The Environmental Protection Agency has announced declines of crucial regulations limiting emissions from fossil fuel power plants, which would have eliminated as many carbon emissions as what would be produced by driving more than 320 million gas cars for a year. In June, Trump announced “screening” not the economy of fossil fuels, but rather of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a crucial federal agency for preparation and response to disasters. As dozens of working, health and environmental groups have requested it, the agency should be at the forefront of developing systems to protect Americans from the dangers of losing their homes, their livelihoods and their lives to a climate disaster. The need for climate fema has become clearly clear when huge floods in Texas – fueled by climate change, making these extreme meteorological events more likely – used a tragedy of immense proportions, killing at least 120 people, with more than 170 people missing. All this occurs while the United States, the largest historic contributor to the global carbon dioxide emissions, again withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

In the United States, for those of us, the opinion of the Rights of the Rights of the Inter-American Court must serve as alarm clock: our ability to fight to and win climate policy is more than ever tested, and now is the time to take up the challenge of building a future where our communities and our planet can prosper. Opinion represents a powerful illustration of what a united front on the need for climate action can carry out, with countless civil society organizations and community activists contributing to the decision. It also provides an essential basis for new legal action and advocacy in matters of judicial which prevents national governments from accounting and requires regulating the behavior of companies which contributes to climate change. Although it is not directly applicable to the United States, the effects of advisory opinion could extend far beyond the immediate jurisdiction of the Court and influence new international legal developments, in particular the next advice opinion at the International Court of Justice on the obligations of climate change of nations. The opinion of the Inter -American Court can still be instructive for Americans in the way we conceive the responsibilities of our government to fight Montana c. UNITED STATES.

Admittedly, advisory opinion is not a panacea, and the legal arena is only one of the many essential borders to advance climate action. As pointed out by the former and current special rapporteurs of the UN David Boyd and Elisa Morgera, opinion does not directly call for the vast edition of fossil fuel that the climate science shows is essential to avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis, despite the detailed stages required by a national environment which implies the need for this extent and to underline the need to guarantee the right to a healthy environment current and future generations.

Nevertheless, the clarity of the opinion of calling national governments to reduce emissions and allow the attenuation and adaptation of climate change makes it an invaluable tool. This tool can and must be widely used – by activists, journalists, pro -climate politicians, business leaders and community members – to expose how the United States remains to respect its fundamental obligations on climate change and human rights. It should be used to galvanize the majority of Americans (65%, according to the latest Yale program report on climate change) worried about global warming at state levels and local, where governments can make essential progress to accelerate green infrastructure and community protection, and need our support in the middle of federal attacks against efforts to pay for pollutors.

Some Americans, especially many of my peers, could be as exhausted by reading these calls for action as to write them. But as I have already said and I repeat, the only way to follow is to continue to remind us that abandonment is simply not an option.

Whether we call it our commitment to the climate movement or to protect the environment or to defend human rights, our commitment to each other – to our communities and to all our neighbors, no matter how they voted in the past and whatever their origin – is what matters. Our job is to focus on what we can do. It is to build the popular majority of voters who will put our collective future first in the ballot boxes, electors and defenders of politicians who will support this future, and will never stop looking for the moments of love, kindness and connection that remind us why we are doing that day.