Fossil fuel industry behind climate disasters

Seeing headlines in local news outlets covering these climate disasters made me realize that most news stories show no connection between them and their main cause: fossil fuels.

This is dangerous, because many people will continue to refuse to see that longer, hotter and deadlier summers are caused and perpetuated by disastrous coal, oil and gas projects, the fossil fuel industry. The science is clear. The longer we allow coal, oil and gas companies to dig and burn, the worse the impacts of the climate crisis will be.

With every fraction of a degree of warming, we’ll see and suffer more extreme heat, droughts, floods, wildfires and hurricanes.

But the fossil fuel industry continues to ignore these alerts and undermine our chances for a safer future, and CO2 emissions keep rising.

We all know this is causing global heating, and resulting in extreme weather events, yet they keep digging, burning and profiting, with zero accountability. Climate impacts, like the recent heatwaves and wildfires, disproportionately affect people and communities who are already marginalized and disadvantaged.

People who do the least to cause the climate crisis suffer the worst from its impacts. They lose livelihoods, hope and worse, their lives, while oil companies continue to hit record profits. This is wrong on so many levels. It’s time to make one thing about extreme weather very clear: It’s not a “crisis” that just happens to us — it’s a crime, and the fossil fuel industry is to blame.

Sandra Forgan Kihei