Death, Taxes, and the Climate Crisis

Our Government Must Stop Funding Death

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes,” Ben Franklin quipped. But, for the first time ever, tax day was pushed back this year three months because of the coronavirus, a reminder that even the most entrenched institutions can, and sometimes must, change.

This time of uncertainty demands a radical re-imagining; the pandemic has claimed more than 130,000 US lives causing the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression; Black and Brown people and their allies have risen in the face of police brutality and systemic racism to demand immediate change, and the climate and ecological crisis continues to worsen. We need a vision of the future that can support life, not destroy it, and our government spending to align.

Black Lives Matter asks us to do just this: rather than use government money to fund the police, men trained in violence who too often kill people of color, we must shift our vision and our tax money to protecting and helping our most oppressed communities.

The environmental movement calls for a similar shift: use our tax dollars to support a transition to clean energy and invest in communities, rather than propping up the dying and deathly fossil fuel industry.