CEED’s Byron Gudiel and Earthjustice’s Abigail Dillen
Raising kids today means having to answer difficult questions about our changing climate — like why the air will sometimes smell like smoke, or why we can’t play outside when it’s too hot. As parents raising kids in California, we have to answer these questions more frequently.
When the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena, Calif., a historically Black community, it consumed the Eaton Canyon Nature Center. It was a place that shaped so many families’ relationships with nature, where community members — many of whom historically lacked access to outdoor spaces — gathered to connect kids with the natural world that sustains us. The Nature Center represented decades of community investment in our young people — all of it now reduced to ash.
When we talk about what’s lost to climate disasters, we can’t only count structures and acres. We lose the infrastructure of care and connection for current and future generations.
Instead of protecting us and our children from the climate crisis, the Trump administration is making climate denial official government policy. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is repealing its own scientific finding that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare.
For 15 years, the endangerment finding has affirmed what we can all see with our own eyes. Our government’s authority and obligation to address climate reality is a matter of irrefutable science and settled law which has been affirmed and re-affirmed by the Supreme Court.
