This article is from the Bill McKibben substack The Crucial Years.

The Stakes: Why Beating Trump Is Absolutely Necessary

This epochal presidential campaign entered a new and I think more hopeful phase yesterday—I’m feeling buoyant, and ready to get to work. At least for a day, it feels like Kamala has a true fighting chance, and my oh my is that a fine feeling.

But first I want to remind everyone of why it matters so much. And that’s because the climate catastrophe is now playing out in real time. She may be the last president able to truly help stem the tide. Here’s a new study that shows “a large decline in the land carbon sink in 2023.” The paper—rushed into circulation this week by its alarmed authors—shows that the earth’s forests and soils absorbed considerably less carbon than usual last year, because the Canadian wildfires and widespread droughts reduced their ability to soak up the gas from the atmosphere. As Evrim Yazgin explained in Cosmos magazine,

In other words, the authors suggest, the warming already caused by the emissions of greenhouse gases may be creating a feedback loop in which increased temperatures and dryness are weakening carbon sinks which leads to increased emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere.

The authors warn: “If very high warming rates continue in the next decade and negatively impact the land sink as they did in 2023, it calls for urgent action to enhance carbon sequestration and reduce greenhouse gasses emissions to net zero before reaching a dangerous level of warming at which natural CO₂ sinks may no longer provide to humanity the mitigation service they have offered so far by absorbing half of human induced CO₂ emissions.”

To read the entire article and some of Harris’ history related to climate action, click here.