Being Our Own Climate Heroes
Once again, our communities are going to have to be our own climate heroes.
The global climate conference COP29 is off to a less-than-promising start. As Spain reels from devastating flooding, Azerbaijan — a major oil and gas producer — is hosting perhaps the most fossil-fuel-friendly COP gathering yet. As Sam Pizzigati reminds us, that suits oil industry lobbyists and the world’s wealthiest just fine.
Closer to home, as Basav Sen writes in The Progressive, those lobbyists have thrown themselves into promoting false climate solutions like carbon capture, which also pose a major threat to progress. And as more “captured” carbon dioxide is moved through rickety pipelines, more communities will be at risk of catastrophic leaks.
Unfortunately, climate disasters aren’t the only way billionaires threaten the roofs over our heads.
As our recent report explains, billionaires have been supercharging the U.S. housing crisis — and rich investors’ cynical drive for profits is putting ordinary people’s access to housing at risk. Omar Ocampo reports this week how a greedy property developer is trying to evict residents of the Li’l Abner mobile home park in Sweetwater, Florida, who’ve been given six months to abandon their homes.
“Mobile homes are one of the most reliable and important sources of affordable housing,” Omar writes. It’s “unconscionable to wipe away the investments hundreds have made in this wealth-holding asset.”
It’s time for these billionaires and corporations to pay their fair share towards addressing the crises they helped create. In an insightful Q&A with Justin Schein, director of the new film Death and Taxes, Bella DeVaan discusses the community needs that we could fund by taxing the rich.
Taxing the rich would fund truly and permanently affordable housing, climate change adaptation, and solutions to the other most urgent crises of our time. Greedy corporations have their powerful investors — it’s time for bold investment in our communities instead.
We’re gearing up for a big fight against more corporate tax cuts next year — and we’ll be looking hard at every opportunity to invest in climate solutions and raise revenues from corporations and the wealthiest at the state level, too. Thanks for being in it with us.
Want to get weekly updates like this? Subscribe to our newsletter to get this and much more each Friday.
