Earth Days come and go. Wonderful speeches are made. Corporations, the biggest polluters, take out ads assuring the public they are green and are dedicated to preserving the environment. And then it's plunder and exploit business as usual. Planet Earth, the ship we are all passengers on is gradually going down. Moving deck chairs around is no solution. Given the urgency of the situation and the level of threat to humankind the lack of an urgent response is astonishing. The climate crisis is a justice issue, not an esoteric debate among scientists. Will the super rich survive inside a bubble-enclosed, fortified, gated community while the rest of humanity faces the consequences of climate change? No civilization has survived the destruction of its environment. Nor will ours.

Brian Tokar is director of the Institute for Social Ecology in Plainfield, Vermont. He lectures widely on a variety of environmental and political topics. He is the author of Toward Climate Justice, The Green Alternative, and Earth for Sale.