Brianna Craft
This blog is an excerpt from Everything That Rises: A Climate Change Memoir, following the first election of President Trump in 2016.
I envied those with the ability to speak freely, effortlessly filling journalist’s answers to questions about the Paris Agreement with noise. How were they not scared? It didn’t matter how much I wanted my people to honor their commitments and address the climate crisis, I knew another painful moment was coming as soon as he took office.
It was only a matter of time.
In the end, it happened during a breezy London evening, morning in Washington D.C. Watching the news used to be a chore, a dull duty I felt bound to perform. Now, it was an emotional rollercoaster featuring the world’s most terrifying drama. Crises innumerable kept me retreating inside my head. President Trump stood at a podium in a White House rose garden that brimmed with June sunlight. Then he started speaking, and for the first time in a long time, I transformed into the crazy flatmate that won’t stop yelling at the TV. Shocking even myself.
I just couldn’t help it.
“Thus, as of today,” he said, “the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country. This includes ending the implementation of the nationally determined contribution and, very importantly, the Green Climate Fund which is costing the United States a vast fortune.”
What?!
No authoritarian international climate regime existed. No UN body had forced us to do anything. Every single thing Trump said about the Paris Agreement and the contribution the United States was supposed to make towards it was factually inaccurate. The US government had defined its own emissions reductions target. Set its own pledge to the Green Climate Fund. And, in so doing, had weakened the treaty beyond contemporary use!
He kept talking about the cost to American jobs and the American economy as though there was no cost associated with doing nothing. As though no jobs or development were gained through addressing it. And as though the climate crisis was not already costing Americans billions of dollars in damages every year. Thousands of lives lost to more intense heatwaves, droughts and wildfires, more powerful hurricanes, and more crippling Nor’easters.
I couldn’t stand it!
“You’re lying!” I kept shouting, the floodgates breaking open. The fear I had on inauguration day manifested into tearful embarrassment, a distress that finally broke through my lack of speech. At this rate, I would be hoarse by the time he finished.
“But the bottom line is that the Paris Accord is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States,” Trump said.
My mouth fell open.
How utterly absurd.
Fortunately, Janna completely understood my sentiments. She took to social media in response to Trump’s announcement where she posted pictures of Marika, her, and I during Paris’s closing plenary. In the shots, we’re laughing – elated at the newly adopted treaty. Now she added, “F*** you Trump!” in thought bubbles over our heads.
The pictures were later taken down.
I knew this was not the first time the United States had shaped an international climate agreement only to walk away from its responsibilities after its adoption. That didn’t make dealing with the fact that my country, the world’s single largest contributor to climate change and foremost economy, would do nothing about the crisis it was most responsible for any easier. The shame. The reckless disregard. We who had done the most to cause the problem and had the greatest means to fix it would not undertake the pledge we had written to bring down our emissions. Nor would we deliver the money we promised to the Green Climate Fund.
We would walk away.
We would be the only country on the planet not to act. We would let the poorest die from a problem of our making, while saying it wasn’t fair – to us.
It brought it all rushing back. I remembered the shock and disbelief of learning about climate change in the first place. My horror that, in America, the problem was still not universally understood. I remembered the dread that followed as I continued to study. The sense that I should give in to fear. That it was all too late anyway. We had pushed the climate to unprecedented limits already and the necessary amount of political will required to do anything about that didn’t exist.
Based on these arguments, giving up seemed not only logical, but smart.
But now, my mind also filled with all the reasons why we hadn’t; why we couldn’t, even now. There were answers. And so many people worth protecting. The relationships I had built my life on. The friends I clung to with a wild and awed love.
I had a best friend. Chalayn and my friendship began when having a BFF was ubiquitous. In middle school, the term was used so frequently it could mean anything. I had lived long enough now to know that what we had was rare and precious. I had no secrets from Chalayn. That didn’t mean that I had told her everything. It meant that there was nothing I wouldn’t tell her. I had spent my adult life hoping that I would end up on her sofa, just talking. I traveled the world with the assurance that I would always have a place in her house. This knowledge made me braver; able to take risks I wouldn’t have taken otherwise.
And there were Michelle and Erina. Friends I had laughed with across countries and continents. People who challenged me to see the world from perspectives I hadn’t considered, taught me things and ways of living I hadn’t known. I loved our shared sense of difference and the humor we found in it. That when I called Erina, “Shaniqua Lou” came up on her phone and that I still texted Michelle, “Morning Hindi” and sent Erina the sushi Bitmoji. I loved the expanding horizons they brought to my life. They were such amazing people. Their fearless drive to achieve what they wanted inspired me to do the same. I saw them in the possibilities I imagined for myself.
Like Pa Ousman and Bubu, climate change impacted everyone I loved. It dictated the choices they could make and the futures they would have. Michelle wanted to practice medicine in New Orleans, a city already below sea level. She was also considering Chicago, where polar vortexes now regularly killed animals and people alike. Erina lived in New York. I checked in with her during Irene and Sandy, hurricanes that shut down the entire eastern seaboard. I wanted them to be safe. To not have to live with the fear that our changing climate would bring storms that were stronger and more frequent.
I wanted Chalayn and Kevin to enjoy a Pacific Northwest that resembled what we knew as kids. To hike and camp in landscapes rich with animals who had survived there eons before we arrived. I wanted Kevin’s contracting business to be successful and for him not to suffer the health impacts associated with working outside during the hottest years on record. I wanted mom’s garden to bear fruit in seasons that began and ended according to long-held pattern. I wanted another thirty years with her, and another seventy years with Chalayn, Michelle, and Erina in a world that we recognized.
My African-American upbringing taught me that change did not come quickly or easily. That safety came at a cost paid in sacrifice and risk. The yearly marches. Granddad’s stories of standing at the National Mall that celebrated day in Washington D.C. Maynard, who we saw every Thanksgiving, was there too. Together with him in the crowd. The struggle his too because the way things were hurt people he loved and standing against it was the right thing to do. The people I cared about were worth protecting. Behind all the briefings and research, they were the reasons I marched and voted. Invested in solutions rather than pollution.
I thought about Marika and Janna, and facing the negotiations together. I thought about Becca starting her new job in renewable energy. And I thought about what motivated us – all of us – and how its foundation was too simple and too inherent to overlook. And perhaps the only thing powerful enough to rectify a climate in crisis.
Brianna Craft is the author of Everything That Rises: A Climate Change Memoir and We Don’t Have Time For This. Brianna works to further equity in the UN climate negotiations for the world’s poorest countries, which have done the least to cause the climate crisis but are the most vulnerable to its impacts. When she’s not writing justice-focused climate stories, she works at the International Institute for Environment and Development. Brianna holds a master’s degree in environmental studies from Brown University and is an alumna of the University of Washington. From a small town in Washington State, she now lives in London. briannacraft.com
Call to action: The climate crisis is impacting every person you love. Every. Single. One. We must all act if we are to stop it. The problem is too big for any one person, one government, or one country to solve alone. It will take all of us working together to shape our collective response. Climate change is the single greatest threat we have ever faced.
Vote. Any person without a plan to confront the climate emergency is not fit for leadership. Your elected officials must enact policies that cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, and they must work to bring communities together to stop climate change and address its unjust impacts.
Protest. By not acting with unrivalled urgency and determination, elected officials are endangering their citizens. This cannot go unmarked or unanswered. Our lives and the lives of our friends around the world are worth more than short-term profit. Make your government hear you.
Divest. Your time and your money should not fuel pollution. Nor should it subsidize fossil fuels. Wherever possible, finance the solutions that will sustain us – all of us. And let this choice register with those who have lost your investment. Start with the things that matter to you.
Let love guide your way. It is the only thing powerful enough to solve this crisis. Those you love are worth protecting.
Love is climate action.