Let’s say you step into an elevator, push the button for the 10th floor, watch the doors slide shut and cast a quick glance at the other passengers in the car. Lo and behold, you spot one of the Koch brothers! No, it’s the CEO of ExxonMobil! Or the CEO of TransCanada, the outfit behind the Keystone XL pipeline! Or maybe it’s President Obama himself! You swallow hard. This is your one and only chance to say in 30 seconds why you care about tackling climate change. What do you say?
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The “neighbors” we love when we work to stop climate change include everyone already suffering from the effects of climate change. Those neighbors also include our non-human kin and our descendants. As theologian Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners, commented in a recent blog about climate change, “We should not and cannot leave our children’s children with a fundamentally different planet. Perhaps we should replace the classic image of a polar bear on a small floating piece of ice with an image of our great grandchild standing in line for his or her water ration.”