We’re living under a dark cloud, with a steady downpour of graft, thuggery and baloney. There’s the raffling of presidential pardons and the attacks on reporters for doing their jobs, the clownish trade war with Canada, the bungled disaster in Iran, the petty obsessions with the ballroom and the Kennedy Center, the hogwash about a stolen election, the attacks on immigrants and the shameless presidential profiteering while working people suffer the cost of Trump’s countless broken promises. I could go on, and I will.
But rest assured, I have not forgotten about the boost I promised. For all the affronts, nothing strikes me as more sinister than the Trump administration’s ambitious assault on the planet. Despite nearly daily headlines about the global calamity of overheated oceans, melting glaciers, stark weather transformations and species extinction, Trump keeps shoveling more coal onto a fire that will rage long after he’s dead and gone.
He’s gutted environmental protections and scientific research and dismantled clean energy initiatives. Now his administration is rolling back limits on power plant emissions, attempting to open the California coast to more oil drilling and sabotaging the state’s ambitious goals on emission controls and electric vehicle conversion. We don’t need AI to threaten the future of humanity.
It’s tempting to duck under the covers and wait for the nightmare to end, but the good news is that a lot of people are standing up rather than rolling over, rebelling against the ignorance and callous disregard that threatens our most precious and fragile shared inheritance. In August, hundreds showed up to defend California’s authority to govern its own coast at a Santa Monica hearing of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, and 18,000 more people filed comments online. The rollback of environmental safeguards is, for many, a call to arms.
Third Act now operates in about 30 states, with a robust chapter in Southern California. Former Times reporter Zan Dubin has worked as both a volunteer and a paid communications consultant for Third Act, and I asked her what someone could expect to do if they became a member of Third Act/SoCal. She said Third Act co-sponsors protests at Dodger Stadium, and she and others planned to meet at Vin Scully Avenue and Stadium Way for Sunday’s game against the San Francisco Giants.
They want the Dodgers to stop doing business with Big Oil and bench their sponsorship deal with Phillips 66. She also called out Disneyland for its exhaust-spewing Autopia attraction, along with former Times climate columnist Sammy Roth, and Disneyland responded by announcing in 2024 that it was switching to electric cars beginning in 2027. Dubin, co-founder of National Drive Electric Week, said 170 volunteer-led events were being held nationwide over the next month to promote EVs, and she was leading one Friday in Irvine.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
