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I feel for people who lose their lives and livelihoods to extreme weather, and I'm scared that it's only a matter of time until it directly hits me and my community.
These climate disasters made me realize that many news stories show no connection between them and their main cause: fossil fuels. This is dangerous, because many people will continue to refuse to see that longer, hotter and deadlier summers are caused and perpetuated by the disastrous coal, oil and gas projects -- the fossil fuel industry.
The science is clear -- the longer we allow coal, oil and gas companies to dig and burn, the worse the impacts of the climate crisis will be. With every fraction of a degree of warming, we'll see and suffer more extreme heat, droughts, floods, wildfires and hurricanes. But the fossil fuel industry continues to keep digging, burning and profiting with zero accountability.
People who did the least to cause the climate crisis suffer the worst from its impacts. They lose livelihoods, hope and worse, their lives, while oil companies continue to hit record profits. This is wrong on so many levels.
Local, regional and national media have an important role to play, and a moral obligation to tell the whole truth. It's time to make one thing about extreme weather very clear: it's not a crisis that just happens to us. It's a crime, and the fossil fuel industry is guilty.
Bobbie Best
Wailuku