On Thursday when the announcement hit that Trump was taking America out of the Paris Climate Accord, my social media feed predictably blew up. As an environmental journalist with a lot of left-leaning friends, you can imagine what it looked like: anger, frustration, shock, sadness, another outrage from the world’s most outrageous leader. All of a sudden every one I knew was talking about climate change; I’ll admit it was a nice change of pace, but after nearly ten years of covering climate change I also knew it would be fleeting.

Liberals have been the champions of climate action for decades, but they’ve largely championed it as an after thought, something that comes near the end of a long to-do list, like the brussels sprouts you conveniently forget to pick up at the grocery store (polling bears this out). When I bring up climate change during chats with left-leaning friends, I often get that pause – that suspended moment – when I can see someone in the group look askance. I can see what they’re thinking, “Again, Jeremy, with the climate change?”

This visualization illustrates Earth’s long-term warming trend, showing temperature changes from 1880 to 2015 as a rolling five-year average. Orange colors represent temperatures that are warmer than the 1951-80 baseline average, and blues represent temperatures cooler than the baseline. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Scientific Visualization Studio.

And I want to yell: “Yes, again! Again and again and again! Of course, again. Don’t you get that this is a crisis of civilization? Don’t you understand that all your other concerns will be swallowed by this one?” But I’m a polite Midwesterner, so after spouting my two-minute climate piece, haltingly and in eloquently, I let the topic shift to something everyone is more comfortable with like civil rights, health care, or crippling student debt.



You see, the GOP has made it too easy for liberals in the US to simply shrug their shoulders and say: it’s their fault we can’t get anything done. And, of course, this is true. In part. Of course, the GOP is world’s only major party that still denies climate change. Of course, the GOP has been corrupted by fossil fuel industries to the extent that they willfully ignore the world’s greatest national security threat.



Let me say that again, because it is so important: climate change is the great aggravator. Jeremy Hance

But Obama’s 2010 climate legislation in the US didn’t just fail because the GOP refused to support it. It also failed because Democrats didn’t support it enough, some of the them even openly opposed it. The Democratic Party has been in general timid, conservative, and coy on climate change. Oh, at times their rhetoric has been inspiring, but their actions have no-where near measured up to the what the science demands. They include it in their platform, but rarely prioritize it. Yes, Obama got more done than any other president before – but even during the administration best moments it never felt like the planetary emergency it is.

Liberals: climate change belongs on it’s own tier above all others, shared perhaps with nuclear war – only climate change is already here and inevitable, future nuclear wars are not.

But communicating that to anyone who isn’t required to spend their work days (like me) reading up on the latest climate science is almost impossible. This is not exactly surprising. Psychological research shows that people simply don’t respond to a problem that is viewed as a future-oriented or too big to make a difference (neither of which is true of climate change, but it is often been communicated that way). Sure, we like to watch the civilization collapse on shows like The Walking Dead, but no one likes to confront the possibility that they and their loved ones may one day see a world melting down. Health care feels so much more present (and I get it, I have a precondition and my family wouldn’t have access to insurance without the Affordable Care Act) but for all its importance, health care legislation isn’t going to prevent the collapse of the world as we know it.

Climate change is the great aggravator. Let me say that again, because it is so important: climate change is the great aggravator. Every single issue that liberals care particular about – whether it is economic inequality, racism, sexism, injustice, war – is going to be made worse by climate change. Climate change will hit people of color, the poor, indigenous, and marginalized communities hardest and first, whether they live on eroding islands or high-rises in the middle of Brooklyn. And, yes, climate change will disproportionately injure women over men. Of course, climate change will also strike what conservatives care about most. The global economy will be absolutely shattered by climate change and national security threats will popup like overheated groundhogs – even the most rich and powerful will not get away unscathed.



The worst thing about climate change won’t be its physical impacts; it will be what it makes us do to each other. Jeremy Hance

Imagine a world with millions of migrants escaping from rising sea waters, with agricultural systems failing and the price of food rising. Imagine a world where every nation suffers from the same water scarcity currently plaguing the Middle East. Imagine a world where hurricanes, rainstorms, wild fires, and blizzards are taking more and more steroids. Imagine a world of mass extinction, where species and entire ecosystems – like coral reefs – vanish from under us. Such impacts will add stressors to every society in the world; they will compound and aggregate.



What happens when a society becomes overstressed? It’s not pretty. Historian Christopher Wickham, has described the period following the end of the Roman Empire as “extreme material simplification”: population declined, technology stagnated, conflicts erupted, the standard of living plummeted and the written record vanished – hence the popular term ‘Dark Ages.’ It’s not just centuries ago: the unimaginable horror and stress of World War I allowed the rise of totalitarianism in both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia.

In especially extreme cases, civilization as we know it simply collapses in on itself: witness the mute statues on Easter Island, testament to a conflagration and ecological overreach that is lost to time. Witness the temples of the Mayans overrun by jungle or the multiple societies that rose and fell in South America’s Atacama Desert. But before this happens, extremism, xenophobia, civil war, internecine conflict are the products of a society under extreme stress. When stressors compound, majorities lash out violently. They scapegoat minority groups, whether it’s the Jews or people of color. Law breaks down and the rule of strong over the weak becomes the norm.



But even these impacts aren’t some future thing. Climatologists have linked the civil war in Syria in part to water stress exacerbated climate change. Changing rainfall patterns in sub-Saharan Africa are contributing to food crises there, increasing the chances of famine, and you can bet, the possibility of worsening civil and national conflicts, such as what we see in South Sudan. Desertification in the Sahel is resulting in rising extremism. None of this is to say that climate change is solely to blame for any these conflicts or disasters, but you have to be particularly naive to think that a hotter world won’t have violent, destabilizing consequences. The US military has been studying climate-stressed conflict – and performing war games – for decades.



The worst thing about climate change won’t be its physical impacts; it will be what it makes us do to each other.

So, what can liberals do? First off, if your understanding of climate change is only passing, educate yourself. Some good places to start: here, here and here. Learn too about off-shoots like ocean acidification, deforestation, mass extinction. Next take action: march, protest, divest your money from fossil fuel companies, use public transit, eat less meat (especially beef), trade in for an electric car, put solar panels on your house, buy carbon credits, do something, do many things.



But of course the biggest changes need to come not at the personal level, but at the societal one. So, reach out to your representatives, whether liberal or conservative, and tell them: this is a top tier issue. Tell your representative you don’t vote for politicians who aren’t aggressive on climate change. And then make good on that in the ballot box. And if you ever get a call from a pollster who asks what your most important issues are – don’t say the economy or health care. Lead off with climate change. And if they say: oh climate change is not one of the issue their list, then ask them why the hell not?

Finally, yes, once you feel confidant in your knowledge, then reach out to your liberal, center, and conservative friends or families and open up about climate change. Do it respectfully, be ready to listen – maybe even to some crazy conspiracy theories or really misinformed science – but explain your views and have evidence at hand. Maybe they’ll come around, maybe they won’t – but some research has shown that such one-on-one interactions with loved ones may be the best way to move the dial: candid conversations can change society.

So, yes, good on you liberals: you’re on the right side of history and science when it comes to climate change. Pat yourself on the back. But here’s the thing: your kids aren’t really going to care that you believed in climate change, if we don’t stop climate change. They aren’t going to listen to excuses like ‘but it’s the Republicans’ fault’ or ‘but Trump, Trump’. If you continue to view climate change as a lower tier issue, liberals, I guarantee you it will be the only issue for your children and grandchildren. And all those other things you cared so much about will be subsumed in a planet of storms, heat, floods, fires, extremism, xenophobia, injustice, violence, war, death, and suffering. This issue will burn away all the others.

