The Betrayal: It’s Your Inheritance

They’re stealing our future and we watch.

It’s not just embarrassing anymore—it’s criminal. As an American, watching my country systematically dismantle climate progress while $6.9 billion worth of clean tech manufacturing projects get cancelled in a single quarter feels like watching arsonists torch the only fire station while the city burns.

The Paris Agreement was never enough. But walking away from even that symbolic gesture of global cooperation? That’s not policy—that’s sabotage. And the people orchestrating it know exactly what they’re doing.

The Math Is Brutal, The Window Is Closing

If you believe in science (or just read the latest IPCC reports), the urgency is undeniable. We need to stop warming at 1.5°C. That means immediate, wholesale re-industrialization—every country mobilizing like we’re at war. Because we are. We’re at war with physics, and physics doesn’t negotiate.

But instead of mobilization, America is “vigorously moving the other direction” under leadership that treats climate science like fake news. The EPA is literally trying to reverse the 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger people. This isn’t policy disagreement—it’s reality denial at the highest levels of government.

It’s Not About Politics. It’s About Plunder.

Here’s what makes me rage: this isn’t about ideology or science anymore. It’s pure economics. In 2024, Trump suggested oil executives should raise $1 billion for his presidential bid because he would roll back environmental rules. That’s not governance—that’s a protection racket.

The cost-benefit analysis is crystal clear. Every dollar spent on clean energy transition today saves ten dollars in climate damages tomorrow. Every renewable energy job created is permanent. Every fossil fuel job propped up is temporary. Yet Trump’s policies completely lack long-term business strategy, sacrificing America’s competitive advantage in the fastest-growing energy sector in human history.

The Youth Tax: We Pay for Their Greed

While politicians play games with our future, 75% of young people globally think the future is frightening because of climate change. In America, over 50% of people aged 16-25 feel sad, anxious, or powerless about climate change. This isn’t teenage angst—it’s rational terror at watching adults destroy the world we have to live in.

Two-thirds of young people report feeling sadness related to climate change, 62% are anxious, 67% are afraid, and only 31% believe the climate problem can be solved. We’re creating an entire generation traumatized by adult failure. Young people who experienced climate disasters have a 25% greater rate of mental distress—and the disasters are just beginning.

The 0.05% Problem

This comes down to power. The aggregate future—meaning everyone under 40—is losing out to the economic interests of roughly 0.05% of the population. The ultra-wealthy who own the fossil fuel infrastructure, the politicians they’ve bought, and the investors prioritizing quarterly profits over planetary survival.

These changes are sought in part to fund an extension of the provisions from the Trump 1.0 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act… at an estimated cost of $4 trillion over ten years. They’re literally stealing our climate future to pay for their tax cuts. With all their treasures, resources, and ownership, if they’re not helping the future, they’re stealing from it.

Procrastination as Violence

Every month of delay makes the transition more expensive and more painful. Without the IRA, US emissions are expected to settle around 4.2 Gt instead of the planned 3.6 Gt by 2030. That gap represents millions of lives, trillions in damages, and entire ecosystems lost forever.

Going backward now will only create more economic ghost towns, turn climate-vulnerable regions into permanent disaster zones. The Rust Belt will spread to the Sun Belt as heat makes whole areas uninhabitable.

I’m a Capitalist, But Not a Sociopath

I believe in markets, competition, and innovation. But this isn’t capitalism—it’s feudalism with stock options. The insatiable drive for lowest-cost extraction, treating nature like a free waste dump, must end if humans want to exist beyond the next few generations.

We call it “climate change” like it’s some natural phenomenon beyond our control. It’s not. The Trump administration is moving to destroy the methods by which his or any future administration can respond to climate change. This is systematic destruction of our capacity to govern ourselves out of crisis.

This is sustainability. It’s happening whether we participate or not. Refusing to adapt is choosing extinction.

The Youth Ultimatum

If you’re young enough to actually live with the consequences of today’s decisions, the paralysis is maddening. We can literally breathe in the answer—clean air, renewable energy, sustainable systems—while watching our own government work against our survival.

When asked if their own family’s security would be threatened by climate change, 65.5% of young people in the Global South said yes, compared to 42% in the Global North. But geography won’t protect anyone. Phoenix hit 114°F this week. The hurricane season starts earlier every year. The floods, fires, and heat waves are coming for everyone.

The Movement That’s Coming

A true climate movement hasn’t really started yet. Not the kind that will actually win.

But it’s building. It will be massive, global, and absolutely uncompromising. It will treat climate destruction as what it is—a crime against humanity. It will hold the fossil fuel industry and their political collaborators personally accountable for planetary damage.

When that movement arrives, it will dramatically reform human use of everything. Making it a crime against humanity to exploit without replenishing. Making Earth’s needs non-negotiable—

This is the only way humans survive.

And we will survive. But not because older generations finally decided to help out. We’ll survive because youth took control from people who’ve proven they’ll trade our future for their quarterly returns.

/// KJS.