This Fall, Don’t Let Your Climate Power Slip Away

“You have power unless you give it away” are words my grandmother instilled in me as a young boy growing up in the mountains of Appalachia.

Her words have been echoing in my head as the seasons turn. Today is the first day of fall, and already the air feels unsettled, like it’s carrying both memory and warning. Climate Week is here, the Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus is convening, and the Trump administration continues its ruthless rollbacks, including attacks on the federal Endangerment Finding that once recognized greenhouse gases as a threat to human health. These moments are not disconnected — they are braided together by a single truth: power is only real when we claim it, when we wield it for the protection of our communities, when we refuse to hand it away.

Climate Week NYC has become one of the most visible stages in the world for governments, corporations, and NGOs to declare what they’ll do about the climate crisis. But as the speeches fly and the banners hang, I keep wondering: where in those rooms are the frontline voices? Where are the people who live beside refineries, whose lungs carry the soot of other people’s profits, whose homes are washed away by floods, whose neighborhoods are turned into heat islands because trees and investments are stripped away?

The answer is that too often, we’re left outside the door. And yet, the irony is that our communities know more about resilience than any press release. Black communities in America have survived extreme administrations before, weathered policies designed to erase us, endured storms — political and meteorological — that tried to sweep us away. But the extremes are intensifying. The rollback of protections, the rise of authoritarian voices, the choking pollution, the hurricanes with names we don’t forget, the floods that arrive uninvited — all of it converges now.

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The impacts land hard on our bodies and our minds. Black families are more likely to live near highways and industrial corridors, where asthma rates run high. We are more likely to bear the brunt of extreme heat, with cooling centers underfunded and energy bills out of reach. Floods displace us, mold creeps into our walls, and the stress — constant, grinding — creates mental wounds that don’t heal easily. Environmental racism is not just about smokestacks; it’s about the trauma of watching your child gasp for air, the humiliation of being told to wait for justice that never comes, the fatigue of explaining over and over that our lives are not disposable.

And yet. My grandmother’s words rise again: “You have power unless you give it away.” We are not powerless. Our souls are rooted in the land, our hands still hold the memory of cultivation, our communities still know how to steer a course when the official maps fail us. This fall, as storms gather, as elections loom, as Climate Week makes promises, it is on us to remember that we are cultivators of destiny.

We know what we want and why. We want environmental justice and cimate justice efforts that deliver — not in the abstract, not in boardrooms, but in our neighborhoods. We want clean air that does not sicken our elders, clean water that does not poison our children, and jobs that build a healthier future instead of dismantling it. We want protections that last beyond one administration, beyond one week of announcements in New York, beyond one conference in Washington.

There are organizations already pushing this forward: WE ACT for Environmental Justice, the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, the Hip Hop Caucus, Young, Gifted & Green, and others who remind us that solutions are born where suffering has been most acute. They are organizing petitions, advancing legislation, mobilizing communities, demanding investments. They are asking us to do our part—not tomorrow, not after the storm passes, but now.

So here is a call to action, five points for this first day of fall, five steps to carry us through the storms ahead:

1. Protect the Endangerment Finding: Speak out, sign petitions, support lawsuits that defend the science recognizing greenhouse gases as a health threat. Without it, the foundation of federal climate action crumbles.
2. Center Frontline Voices: Demand that Climate Week panels, federal hearings, and local decisions include leaders from Black, Indigenous, and low-income communities — not as tokens, but as architects.
3. Invest in Community Resilience: Push for funds to flow directly to neighborhood groups building cooling centers, installing solar, and creating green jobs in vulnerable areas.
4. Vote and Mobilize: From local elections to national races, treat every ballot as an environmental justice ballot. Organize rides to the polls, protect voting rights, and make climate the question every candidate must answer.
5. Heal the Mental Wounds: Support initiatives that address not only the physical impacts of pollution and climate disasters but also the mental health toll, ensuring counseling, community care, and intergenerational healing.

We’ve weathered worse, but we cannot romanticize survival. Survival is not the goal; thriving is. And thriving requires power — not the kind handed down from podiums in New York or Washington, but the kind our grandmothers taught us to hold tight. The kind you only lose if you surrender it.

This fall, let us refuse to give our power away. Let us remind each other, and the world, that we have always been cultivators of our own destinies. And let us act like it, before another storm comes knocking, before another rollback strips away protection, before another season reminds us just how much is at stake.