Earth Day 2025 may be the most important one ever.
By Mark Dunlea
While we hear the message that this national election is the most important ever, the future of humanity on our planet is more imperiled than ever this Earth Day (April 22, 2025). Not only has global warming over the last 18 months breached the target cap of 1.5 degrees Celsius, but America has also once again elected a climate denier as President.
Trump’s war on the environment needs to be countered by elected officials in America at every level. Not only states but cities and towns need to speed up the development of clean, renewable energy, while investing in decarbonizing buildings, battery storage, energy efficiency, and transportation.
In New York, Governor Hochul (D) is instead retreating, stalling her cap and invest carbon pricing program needed to reduce emissions, slow walking building publicly owned renewable energy, and blocking proposals like NY Heat to make energy costs affordable while ensuring that actions by state agencies are in alignment with the state’s climate law (CLCPA).
The Green New Deal, first called for by the Green Party in 2010, is intended to not only speed up the transition to 100% renewable energy and zero emissions, but to ensure that it is affordable for everyone, including workers in the fossil fuel industry. It includes support for ecosocialism, starting with a strong Economic Bill of Rights, like what FDR called for in 1944: universal health care, living wage jobs and guaranteed income for all, free college education, and quality affordable housing.
During Trump’s election, he told the fossil fuel industry that he would be their champion if they donated a billion dollars to him. The fossil fuel industry was exempted from Trump’s recent tariffs. Trump has declared war on many renewable energy sources, such as offshore wind turbines after he felt they impaired the view from his golf course in Scotland. Trump’s new head of the EPA feels no need to protect the environment or public health, instead vowing to slash his staff while repealing every step taken by his predecessors to reduce global warming. Even though the United States already became the largest producer of gas and oil in the world under President Biden, Trump vows to “Drill Baby Drill.”
Even fossil fuel and utility executives have pushed Trump to temper his attacks on the transition to a clear energy future. Unlike Trump, the fossil fuel industry has long known that climate change is real and is caused by burning oil, coal, and gas. They know that renewable energy is our future; they just want to profit as long as possible from fossil fuels. They want to keep much of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which provides enormous subsidies for various false climate solutions, such as carbon capture and sequestration, biofuels, and nuclear power.
The head of the United Nations has repeatedly warned that the refusal by governments to take effective climate action not only means that we have run out of time but that we have opened the Gates to Hell. Extreme weather is exploding across the planet, with devastating floods, wildfires, drought, and heat waves, with ever more powerful hurricanes and cyclones. Humanity has already breached six of the nine planetary boundaries necessary for maintaining a stable and resilient Earth.
Many elected officials have retreated to talking about keeping global warming below 2.5 degrees C, a goal long ago rejected as being too disastrous. The French government recently stated that they expect that global warming will breach 4 degrees C by the end of the century. Such warming would be catastrophic, threatening the very existence of human civilization, with sea-level rise and high temperatures making many communities uninhabitable. We would experience ecosystem collapse, food shortages, and massive number of climate refugees. More wars would break out over access to food, drinking water, and land. Many of these impacts are already occurring.
The Greens and other groups over the last decade have stressed that system change is needed. Both the Pope and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have recognized that we can not solve the climate crisis under a capitalist system that prioritizes profits over the common good and sustainability. True grassroots democracy is needed, as the problems of economic inequality, militarism, racism, and attacks on immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community are interconnected.
We need to pay for the transition in a way that protects the average American. One key step – which Trump in theory should support – is to slash the military budget (50 to 75%), focusing on protecting our country rather than acting as an imperial global power. We need a tax system that makes the rich, especially the billionaire class, pay their fair share. Yes, we need wealth distribution, like the old biblical concept of Jubilee where debts are forgiven every 50 years to reboot the economy.
Another step is to end the massive subsidies provided by governments to the fossil fuel industry. The International Monetary Fund estimates that subsidy at over $7 trillion annually. The vast majority is due to the failure to make companies pay for the damage caused by their pollution. New Yorkers alone incur an estimated $50 billion in annual health care cost from fossil fuels. UNICEF estimates that over eight million people died globally from air pollution in 2021.
This is why carbon pricing is so important. Consumes would more rapidly move to renewable energy if fossil fuel products reflected their true costs. Some of the revenue would be rebated to residents to offset any rise in their energy bills. New York recently approved a Climate Superfund program to raise $3 billion a year from the largest polluters to help governments repair damage they have caused to infrastructure.
Young people are terribly upset with older generations and our political leaders. They are going to inherit a world which will be far more difficult – if not impossible – to live in. As Chief Seattle noted, “We don’t inherit the earth, we borrow it from our children.” While the impacts of global warming are already being felt, many older political and economic leaders shrug off any action since they feel they will have died before the worst impacts are felt. Younger people do not have that luxury.
Since 2012, the Green Party has observed Earth Day to May Day to highlight the interconnection between issues such as the environment, worker rights, and immigration. The EcoAction Committee is holding a webinar on Monday April 14 at 8 PM (ET). Register Here
Mark Dunlea is author of Putting Out the Planetary Fire. He is Secretary of the EcoAction Committee of Green Party of the US