The President is good at making deals? Not when the American Dream is at stake

Climate change.

Your eyes just glazed over that phrase, and you now feel a mixture of frustrations frustration at the apathetic masses, frustration at corporate deniers and political figureheads, frustration at constantly feeling frustrated about an armageddon that never seems to come.

I get it. You can only care so much, and theres a lot of things that will screw you over before you really have to care about climate change.

Even if you want to help, you dont know how. You roast the President in front of a social media audience that already agrees with you, you try to use your reusable Swell more than the Dasani you grab when youre too busy to do dishes, and you have meatless Monday to counteract the weight of Americas unsustainable obsession with red meat. Youve done enough to assuage your liberal guilt, but I have bad news for you.

That little voice in the dark corners of your mind telling you that youre not doing enough? Its right.

Now hold on. I know what youre feeling, but you have to fight the sinking anchor in your chest that comes with the paralyzing thought of inadequacy. This is no time to feel guilty. We dont have time for that.

We have to lead by example, and we have to march.

We have to march across the room and across the street to convince our families, our neighbors, and our ideological others that their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren deserve a healthy, stable world, with clean energy investment and support for green infrastructure. We have to march across the aisle and convince Conservatives that the hands in their pockets are reaching for a lot more than political sway and deregulation. Theyre robbing us of the American Dream.

The American Dream is the love-child of Capitalistic invidualism and American exceptionalism, christened by its god-father James Truslow Adams. Adams described this little cherub as A land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement. Adams American Dream is based on the principle of not only opportunity, but opportunity in proportion to an individuals talent and work.

What a coincidence the GOPs platform reads, The pursuit of opportunity has defined America from our very beginning. This is a land of opportunity. The American Dream is a dream of equal opportunity for all. And the Republican Party is the party of opportunity.

The idea of opportunity isnt partisan. How we go about ensuring equal and fair opportunity thats what gets people up in arms. Im not about to wade into that war zone. Im just here to point out that climate change doesnt care about your opportunity.

Coming from a coastal community, I have a personal stake in this. Ive seen maps predicting that a few degrees of global temperature rise will make my Southside home beachfront property. More frequent and violent severe storms and hurricanes are already ravaging our beaches, washing away our dunes and some of my fondest memories. The floods happening just south of me this past week are going to get more and more frequent. And as sea level rise shrinks the size of my home state, abandonment of coastal properties is likely to cause a collapse of the waterfront property market that would leave the 2000 and 2008 bubble bursts in its dust .

Whether its American fracking, Gulf oil rigs, or Middle Eastern drilling operations, fossil fuels will always have social, economic, and environmental costs, here and on the other side of the world. Droughts, hurricanes, and floods destabilize existing political and social structures, especially if those structures are weak or compromised to begin with. Its no coincidence that ISIS rose in the dust left behind one of the worst droughts Syria has ever seen science and history have shown how easily famine and heat-related disease can tip unrest into revolt.

Green companies, even giants like Google and Target who have pledged commitment to the Paris Climate Accords, arent the knights in shining armor we make them out to be. They just know oil is on its last leg. Its hard to change the world, but its easy to jump-on once the world is already set on changing. Thats all they and increasingly the majority of Americans are doing.

Still, there are always late adopters. And the late-adopters of climate-conscious policies are the most powerful men in the country. The ones who have all the opportunity, who wont see what were losing until its gone. But we the people of the coasts, the youth, the climate-conscious we know we dont have much opportunity to spare. Some scientists say were already past the tipping point. But if we still have a chance, an opportunity, to keep catastrophic changes from damaging the world as a whole, we need to take it.

So grab an overpriced coffee with a climate change denier and have a little talk about how you want to preserve the American dream. Its worth your time.