The climate crisis is here, it’s accelerating, and it demands action

For 24 days in early 2025, the Eaton wildfire swiftly consumed neighborhoods in Los Angeles, moving with devastating precision from street to street, leaving a nasty, toxic environment in its wake. Sam Strgacich had eight minutes to evacuate his home and has been displaced ever since. His ordeal has put his family’s long-term economic security at risk. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Meanwhile, two thousand miles west, Illinois recorded 12 separate weather events in 2024 that each caused over a billion dollars in damage to Illinois and surrounding states, taking 129 lives. Flooding, extreme heat and storms that used to come once a generation now come every season.

These are not two separate stories. They are but one story, told in two different places.

Climate change does not respect state lines or elevation. It is destroying and altering communities across this country right now, and the federal government is responding with total denial. The Trump administration is systematically rolling back the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to control climate pollution, dismantling the financial oversight tools that would help us understand how exposed our banks and communities are, and letting real estate platforms remove climate risk data from home listings. Hiding that information doesn’t make climate........

© The Hill