After four years of running in place, November 2016 seems like a lifetime ago. The United States of 2020 is a very different place, at once more devastated and more hopeful than at least we were a mere four years ago.

The day after a nail-biter of a historic election, the United States became the only country to back out of the Paris climate change agreement.

President Trump has consistently garnered the lowest possible ratings from environmental and climate crisis groups. Preeminent organizations of scientists — both national and international — have decried his policies and his removal of the United States from environmental and health agreements. Career scientists and policy-makers in federal agencies have resigned over the administration's new policies. Employees of federal agencies are no longer permitted to use the phrase "climate change."  The rule changes affect air and ...

Seven in 10 voters support government action to address climate change, with three-quarters wanting the US to generate all of its electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind within 15 years.

Although student activists often direct their ire toward school administrations, their greatest antagonist may simply be a ticking clock. Undergraduates generally only get a four-year window on campus to make a difference, and they’ve lost precious time because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has in some ways pulled focus from climate issues.

The effect of such climate silence is to imply that the wildfires are random—a stroke of bad luck, perhaps, in an already woefully unlucky year. But we know better than this. We know that we humans are causing disasters like this. And we know that we can solve the climate crisis, should we muster the political will to do so.