Over half a decade has passed since you ratified the Paris Climate Accord. Do you remember that momentous day? You spoke with soaring platitudes about new beginnings and unprecedented global cooperation. You positioned yourselves as the bona fide saviors of all living things. But even though you knew then that your paltry commitments of decarbonization fell far short of what nature and humanity requires of you, you still lacked the political courage to see them through.

Since then, the climate crisis has dealt a spate of deadly heat waves to cities across Turtle Island (colonially known as North America). Million-acre wildfires have reduced thriving Siberian villages to ashes. What were once “500-year floods” in China have become a macabre series of monthly events. Over a million people in Madagascar will soon suffer the first climate-induced famine. Even if we immediately got back on track to meet the goals of the Paris Accords, the planet could warm 3 or more degrees, leaving over half the earth uninhabitable, displacing or killing hundreds of millions of people, and causing feedback loops that could rapidly worsen conditions and make climate adaptation impossible—all within the lifetimes of my two toddlers. You have squandered years of meaningful progress when we could not, and cannot, afford to lose a single day.

Adequate action today thus requires transformative vision and a relentless will to survive. From the Standing Rock occupation in 2016 to the Youth Climate Strikes in 2019, the climate justice movement has mobilized more people since 2015 than any of us would have thought realistic. But as long as you continue to fight against us rather than with us—invested in piecemeal incrementalism that evades society’s most pressing problems—we will never be able to mobilize the public participation needed to secure climate survival, let alone justice.

Read the full article about Indigenous climate action by Kaniela Ing and NDN Collective at YES! Magazine.