The frightening COVID-19 pandemic, slowly but surely infecting millions, fueling an economic and political meltdown and metastasizing in the midst of a global Climate Emergency, has pushed a critical mass of us all to the brink.

Words can barely convey our waking nightmare, or fully expose the cabal of monsters and the degenerate “business-as-usual” practices that have brought on this disaster. Like a horror movie rerun, every night I wake up.

How did we ever let this happen? What can we do to protect ourselves and others? Can we rise to the occasion and organize a massive Grassroots Rising, head off disaster, and take advantage of this tragic “trigger moment”?

Can we deal with the degenerative practices that have unleashed this mega-crisis and bring to heel the perpetrators, the greedy elite who created and/or abetted this catastrophe?

As an international chorus of climate, environmental and political leaders warned this week, it’s now or never “to harness our fears, build hope and drive action to respond to the human health, economic, climate and biodiversity crisis with solutions that build resilient societies on the longer term.”

Droughts, fires, floods . . . climate instability is forcing U.S. farmers and ranchers to face increasingly frequent and intensifying natural disasters that threaten their land and their livelihoods—and increase food insecurity for everyone.

A growing number of farmers and ranchers understand that the more organic and regenerative farming and grazing practices they deploy, the more climate-resilient their operations become. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) knows it, too. But instead of increasing funding for  programs to help farmers adapt to climate change, the Trump administration is proposing cuts to those programs.

TAKE ACTION: Ask your members of Congress to help organic farmers by supporting the Agriculture Resilience Act!

Over the past five decades, as a food, natural health and environmental campaigner, anti-war organizer, human rights activist and journalist, I’ve had the inspiring and at times depressing opportunity to work and travel across much of the world.

Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned through my work is that people respond best to a positive, solutions-oriented message. Gloom-and-doom thinking—the kind that offers no plausible solution—doesn’t generally inspire people to get involved or take action.

That doesn’t mean we should downplay the seriousness of our current situation. We face unprecedented life-or-death threats. We’re up against formidable political, economic and cultural obstacles. We must continue to highlight and criticize, with passion, facts and concrete examples, the bad actors, practices and policies that have brought us to the brink of a global crisis.