The climate is changing, and that is a fact. This isn’t a conservative issue, this isn’t a liberal issue, this is a humanitarian crisis; one that will kill all of us and the earth if our society doesn’t change now. So why aren’t we changing? Why are politicians supporting oil and gas companies over humanity? Why do climate change deniers still exist? The answer is far from simple, because the forces that are stopping significant strides towards solving climate change are much bigger than everyday people like you and me. 

Despite continuous reports that underline the severity of the climate crisis, the situation is continuing to worsen because of people like the Koch Brothers. While the Koch brothers aren’t the only upper-class businessmen and politicians who are making money by killing the earth, they have been facilitating the government’s complacency on climate change for decades on multiple accounts.

Since 1991, the Koch brothers and their lackeys have managed to mastermind the current political atmosphere in which it is nearly impossible to get green policies to pass into law. While the most obvious contributions lie in their involvement in the oil, gas, and fossil fuels industries and lobbies, you can also see it in their involvement in the derailment of public transportation in the United States and the way they established the harmful rhetoric that has since created the climate change denial movements. Like I said before, they aren’t the only ones to do this.

There are dozens of politicians and businessmen who are mimicking the actions of the Koch brothers by destroying our earth and toying with our futures for a quick buck. They’ve all created these huge schemes, and even though they might have been succeeding for the last few decades, there’s been a huge change since they first started. My generation is a factor they never saw coming. 

Here’s the thing; Greta Thunberg wasn’t alive in 1991. The schoolchildren who are suing the United States government for not taking action against climate change weren’t alive in 1991. The millions of teenagers and young people who have been marching this week for action against climate change weren’t alive in 1991. 

I marched myself this past weekend, and saw firsthand how many young people around our own city were passionate about holding our elected officials accountable. I got to speak on this very issue in front of hundreds of students, and I could see the passion in their eyes and in the way they gripped onto their painted signs. 

They didn’t anticipate us and our power and yet here we are, poking holes in their agenda and raising our voices to fight against it. Even though we have lived our entire lives in a world that these forces have been polluting, we are the ones rising up to say that enough is enough. We are making our leaders listen. In a few years, we are the ones who are going to be voting, and then shortly after that, we are the ones who are going to be in power. 

After decades of their disgusting practices, these leaders, businessmen, and politicians have finally met their reckoning, and we are brighter than any wildfire that they could ever set.