Hey east coast friends, just a quick friendly note (🧵) on the wildfire smoke.
First, I'm sorry your air is full of smoke. Seriously. It's terrible and I hope you're doing what you need to do to protect your lungs and the lungs of your loved ones. Take good care. Truly.
Second, please also take care of how you talk about the hazy skies. Your wonderment about it is our dread here in the West. Your curiosity is our constant fear. We live every day for months fearing the winds will shift, the fires will rage, and the smoke will come.
It's terrible that y'all are dealing with 150+ AQIs. That's seriously dangerous for so many folks.
Now, multiply that by 3 or more. That's what our AQI was last September (...at least. Hard to know exactly, given that it literally went off the scale at various points.).
This isn't a competition and I hope you don't read it as such. But it is a reminder to take care to recall folks' trauma around fire and smoke out here. It's real and it's not going anywhere.
If you want to read a bit more, here are a few great pieces from folks out west on smoke and fire "season":
Here goes nothing: Some thoughts on the 2020 race, and our climate crisis...in the form of a perhaps overwrought thread because I'm still reeling a little bit. 🧵
Before I was #WithWarren I was with @JayInslee. Like Jay, I believe the climate crisis should be the central issue in 2020. I adored his focus, his drive, his passion, his team of experts, and the way he listened to communities to build the gold standard of climate plans.
Being with Jay was fun. It was inspiring and exciting to see climate and energy positions I’ve been pushing for years finally getting their time in the spotlight and being advocated by a powerful messenger on the national stage.
Ok I tried and tried to avoid doing this because I didn’t think it was possibly going to become A Thing, but it has and I’m tired. So here are some reluctant thoughts on Chris Koob, the listed treasurer of the Super PAC set up to express support for @ewarren’s candidacy. A 🧵
First things first, this is my personal twitter and my personal thoughts. These are not the thoughts of any organizations I am affiliated with and these are also not at all affiliated with any campaigns. This is me.
I have devoted my entire career to fighting the climate crisis. I have spent the last eight years literally taking the oil industry head on. I helped run a campaign with the tagline Exxon Hates Your Children. To say I don’t care for the oil industry would be an understatement.
If you’ve been watching my twitter stream recently, you may have noticed this but today’s a good day to be explicit: As someone who’s worked on the #climate crisis at the international, national and local levels for 15 years, I’m proud to be a climate leader #WithWarren. (🧵)
I spend my life fighting for climate justice and I’m absolutely convinced that a President @ewarren would work tirelessly to bring the big, structural change we need to address this climate crisis. Here are a few of the many reasons why I’m proud to be #WithWarren:
.@ewarren understands that corruption lies at the center the climate crisis. That’s why she was the first declared Presidential candidate to sign the #NoFossilFuelMoney pledge and is ready to stand up to the out-of-control fossil fuel industry.
Scrolling through the @Newseum’s “Today’s Front Pages” page today is pretty wonderful. Here’s what could turn into a bit of an epic thread of front pages in the U.S. highlighting yesterday’s #ClimateStrike.
The latest plan out from @JayInslee is what real climate leadership looks like. Full stop. It's time we got serious about taking on the out-of-control fossil fuel industy. His Freedom from Fossil Fuels plan does that. oilchangeusa.org/response-insle…
@JayInslee I mean just look at these headers! They're what climate leadership dreams are made of!
@JayInslee Gotta love the shout-out to the first rule of holes. And he's not wrong. We need to #StopFundingFossils. Now.