May 10, 2021
Nearly 2000 collective entities of one sort of another – including cities, town councils, entire countries, and even the European Union – have by now declared a “climate emergency,” signaling the need for drastic action to address the building climate crisis. Hawaii, however, is the first state – not coincidentally, the only island state – in the U.S. to do likewise.
The other 49 states should copy Hawaii’s example, post haste. What are they waiting for? Surely the unfolding catastrophe is not waiting. On the contrary. Rapidly melting glaciers and ice caps, rising temperatures and sea levels, wildfires, hurricanes, and other increasingly frightful weather occurring with growing frequency, collapsing species diversity, heightened human exposure to zoonotic pandemics – these painful realities are already upon us. On the not-so-distant horizon – mass population migrations, major disruptions to agricultural production, dying oceans, civil conflict over water and other depleted and/or unreliable resources, a very real threat of global capitalist civilizational collapse, if not extinction of the human species itself.
Nothing is more rational than recognizing the simple truth when it’s staring you in the face. Here it is: The global house in on fire! We face a real emergency, in fact the greatest emergency in the relatively brief history of homo sapiens. Wake up, America, to the truth that Hawaii is telling. Wake up, and act!
The Southern Miss School of Social Work 