I once watched a group of grade school children put on a play for their community, mostly their parents as most elementary productions draw, about the dangers of climate change. It was a PSA to their relatives: be cautious with how much wood you burn or our planet will be uninhabitable. You’d think this message would be to large consumers, but it was not. They were in rural Uganda. Most don’t even own a car and take a public van into the city once per week to use the internet. Their electricity is hydroelectric, coming and going with the rain.

These families have some of the smallest carbon usage on the planet. Yet, their children pleaded for care in how they pollute, because their lives are at the heart of the climate change battle. Their rainy season is becoming less predictable, destabilizing the steep hills on which they live. They live in fear of mudslides.

In my second month there, the unthinkable but entirely predictable happened: a giant mudslide took out groups of homes. Children that had been playing in the streets the day before slipped away, down the mountain, with the ground beneath their homes. Whole communities disappeared into the earth.

It can be hard to connect to the devastation of such tragedy. It can be even harder to accept our role in its cause. The changing world is not the fault of these people, living simply and with little waste. We are the ones outputting carbon dioxide. I couldn’t help but feel guilty about my flight to Africa to meet these people, polluting in an irreversible way, without really understanding the impact the collective of such actions has on the real lives of real children there.

Let us not be fooled. Failing to do our part to curb climate change is an act of violence. We may not be dropping bombs, but we are actively choosing to continue on a course that will cost more lives. More areas will become destabilized, in the earth, in their food supplies, in their water, and people will suffer. There is scientific consensus that our carbon emissions are a major cause of the climate change that leads to such death.

So as Trump considers withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, we MUST respond as I believe that withdrawing would be an act of violence. It would harm the most vulnerable first, but eventually us. We are all benefactors of a stable world. Withdrawing from our allies in this effort is to commit violence against the global community, as though we actively choose to disregard the lives of these children.

As a representative for the 7th district of Pennsylvania, I will work for legislation that honors our duty as a nation to improve the quality of our environment, both at home and abroad.