When I’m not doing high school, I’m trying to save the planet

Aaron Stigile’s Sunrise Story

(Sign up here for future posts from the Idaho Progressive Alignment.)

Written by Aaron Stigile

2030… that might as well be tomorrow.

Why don’t people care? Where is the urgency?

Those angered, frustrated thoughts washed through my brain like glaciers into the ocean. It was April 1st, and since high school had been put on pause due to COVID-19, I realized there was no better time to dive into the IPCC reports on Climate Change.

“Avoiding overshoot and reliance on future large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) can only be achieved if global CO2 emissions start to decline well before 2030.”

I lifted my eyes from the glowing computer screen and rubbed my temples.

“Why do I put myself through this?” I remember thinking.

“It’s to remember the stakes of our moment… to never lose the urgency that is required to attempt to meet this moment.” my brain answered back.

I looked back down at the report, and continued to read about the destruction that would run rampant across our planet if we allow 1.5 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels. Hundreds of thousands in poverty, swaths of ecosystems destroyed, and food supplies gone in some of the poorest areas of the planet. Those are just a few of the consequences.

I reflect on the current moment.

In the early stages of 2020, when our momentum was needed the most, a virus sidelined me and my friends in Sunrise Boise as we marched towards what was meant to be a climactic moment in climate justice history, Earth Day of 2020.

When the impact of COVID-19 finally became clear — that it wouldn’t be weeks or days that we’d be stuck at our homes; it’d be months — I dwelled in inactivity for a couple of days. How could we continue the fight for a Green New Deal, environmental justice, and limiting the impacts of anthropogenic climate change when our clear momentum builder, strikes, was put on hold?

In that moment of hopelessness, my mind drifted back to a matter of weeks ago, when I felt like our movement was on top of the world.

“Hey hey, ho ho, corporate greed has got to go!”

A thousand different voices shouted in unison.

A smile swept across my face as I scanned the crowd marching through downtown Boise, and I felt a particular glow when my Sunrise Movement counterparts came into view. Their yellow and black ‘Sunrise Boise’ banner glinted in the sunlight. Cloth posters with ‘Green New Deal’ emblazoned on them waved in the breeze. I nodded to myself and lifted my phone to take another picture. This is the type of organizing we need to win.

My eyes blinked twice, and I glanced back up from the space I had been staring into. I remembered how all of the nights before that march had been filled with late bedtimes because of school work, soccer practice, and Sunrise Boise organizing.

Those long nights weren’t for nothing.

They’d amounted to an incredible moment of social organizing and movement building. But, more importantly, all of those nights of pain reminded me of what reality is going to be like if we are to make meaningful progress in the future.

We aren’t going to save millions from going into poverty and millions of people from dying without a struggle. We aren’t going to save billions of plants and animals from extinction without having to feel some pain ourselves.

A livable future will not become a reality without pushing through the unlivable present first.

As a high-schooler, staring at the realities of a climate disaster riddled world right in front of my eyes, I believe my time and my efforts are worth investing in this fight.

But in order to win, we must unite as one progressive movement.

We will not win any battles in this class war if the corporate class remains united and we remain divided. That is a crucial reality of why we are still falling short of the gains we need to see to avoid true climate disaster.

I encourage all of you to stay motivated and push through the pain.

But most importantly, we need to start building connections among our movements in order to win the gains we need for a livable future to become our reality.